Next: Preliminary organisation Up: text Previous: Aims and general advice

Why supervise?

Here are some possible reasons why you might consider supervising.

The money.
This is not a bad reason but you would do well to calculate how much you expect to earn before you start. You will find that the sum involved is useful but no more than that.

It will look good on my CV.
This is not usually a good reason. The number of openings for which having supervised at Cambridge is a strong positive recommendation is non-zero but small.

My college or my research supervisor expects me to.
This is a bad reason. If you are a research student, your college and your research supervisor want you to do good research. Everything else is secondary.

It is a good introduction to teaching.
This is an excellent reason. Like most skills teaching is mainly learnt by doing and where better to start than with a small group of able and motivated students? In supervisions you can actually see the effects of your teaching and learn both what teaching can achieve and what it can not.

The best way of learning something is to teach it.
Undoubtedly true, but you must remember that you will be improving your general mathematical culture rather than learning things which are directly useful in your research.

It is a change.
Research is a lonely occupation in which long periods may pass without apparent progress. Supervising provides social contact and immediate rewards as you see your teaching having its effect.

It provides a way of putting back into the system something of what you have gained from it.
Not a bad reason, particularly if you were a Cambridge undergraduate; but not a very powerful motivation.

Whatever your reason for starting supervising you should not continue with it if you find that you do not enjoy it or that it takes up too much time. In the first case you are cheating your students, in the second you are cheating yourself. Remember that unless you are a teaching fellow of a college (or have some similar appointment) you have no duty to supervise for your college or for anybody else. If you do not wish to supervise just say so. Nobody will hold it against you. In particular it is generally considered that Part III students should be so busy following this gruelling and testing course that they should have no time to supervise others.

If you are a Part III student and are very sure that you want to make time to supervise, then there are probably opportunities; however, you should tell the Director of Studies involved that you will almost certainly not be able to give revisions supervisions in the Easter term -- preparation for revision supervisions can be exceptionally time-consuming.