Life Off-Label

I now understand why professors love having grad students. They can tackle so many tasks that faculty don’t want to do (or have time to do): literature deep-dives, formatting posters, the random “can you just look into this for me?” requests that pile up. I’m not in academia, so I assumed I wouldn’t get to have one of my own.

That was before I met Claude.

Claude is the ideal grad student: eager to please and willing to work hard. He researches, summarizes, and helps me be more efficient at work without complaint. And unlike an actual grad student, he has also cheerfully handled non-academic tasks: trip itineraries, dinner ideas, and a mahjong cheat sheet for some friends I was teaching (I’ll save that obsession for another post).

But here’s the thing about grad students: You still have to supervise them. If Claude helps with a literature review, I still pull up the original studies to make sure we are correctly referencing a figure or finding. When he helps me troubleshoot code, I still want to understand what every line is doing. He’ll help me revise a manuscript or white paper, but ultimately my experience and expertise lead to the final product. He makes my visualizations look polished, which I appreciate because I am about as good a graphic designer as I am a mechanic.

Claude can’t do everything, but he does a lot. I’m glad to be his faculty mentor.