So Much Supervision, So Much Learned

Today, I was updating my spreadsheet listing all of the students I have or am supervising.  Yesterday, an MA student defended her paper with distinction, and her work gets me apparently to sixty.  That when I entered her info into my spreadsheet, I realized that I have supervised successfully sixty undergraduates, masters students, and PhD students over the years.  This is probably a bit of an undercount since I might have forgotten to update the list with those students where I was the second or third person on the committee.  The total does not include those who did not complete their project for one reason or another.  That number is around ten or so--and is shaky since some students simply switched advisers, others had never really committed to me (and me to them) in terms of advising, but some simply didn't finish. 

I don't know if sixty is a "good" or "bad" number for someone teaching for 25 years at research universities.  I am sure some of my peers have done far more, and others have done far less.  All I know is that it has been a lot of work and a lot of satisfaction.  I do whine about reading many drafts of the same thing, that I have unwrapped many an onion, that I am tired of endless lit reviews, and so on.  But this supervision thing is worth it. 
First, I learn a lot.  I got in this business because I am deeply curious, but I am also very busy and have limited time to study stuff.  My students end up studying stuff that is mostly beyond what I study--different regions, different periods of time, different dynamics, different perspectives, etc.  So, I always learn from these supervisions, and that is cool.  So very cool. 
Second, it really is fun and rewarding to watch and sometimes help younger folks develop, challenge themselves, and see them puzzle through and then figure out the questions they pose and the answers they discover. 
Third, I create an empire of mini-me's.  Actually, nope, that does not happen.  My students often take issue with my work and push back pretty hard.  I don't tell them what to study or how to study it.  I mostly just poke holes in their ideas until their ideas are better developed.  Ok, third, their success makes me feel good.  This is the stuff of job satisfaction.  When teaching regular classes, the evals will always contain at least a few (and sometimes more than that) negative reviews, so one can always walk away noting those (negativity bias is a thing I learned today, thanks, Dan!).  But when a supervision ends (it often never does), the feelings are almost always satisfaction and pride.  Hence my page dedicated to TeamSteve.  Once again, to be clear, the work they have done is theirs, so I don't want to take too much credit for it.  I just like to bask in their success.

This supervision thing is a big part of what we do, but it is not in the classroom.  So, those who ask how many hours we spend in the classroom = teaching are missing the point.  Indeed, they are only noticing the tip of the iceberg.  That kind of sounds negative, as I really do mean it when I say that this is very much one of the best parts of the job.  Even if it does involve a heap of lit reviews along the way.