The Seven Supervisors

The Seven Supervisors 1. The Oracle One of the academic differences between MIT and Cambridge is that instead of having recitations they have supervisions . A supervision consists of 1-3 students and a supervisor that is either a graduate student, who has some background with the course, or a professor/fellow. These supervisions are setup within your college (another system Ill talk about in a future blog) and are where a significant portion of learning happens at Cambridge. Heres a handy chart I threw together to show contact time at MIT vs Cambridge for IB Computer Scientists (it varies heavily based on year and course). .tftable {font-size:12px;color:#333333;width:100%;border-width: 1px;border-color: #729ea5;border-collapse: collapse;} .tftable th {font-size:12px;background-color:#acc8cc;border-width: 1px;padding: 8px;border-style: solid;border-color: #729ea5;text-align:left;} .tftable tr {background-color:#d4e3e5;} .tftable td {font-size:12px;border-width: 1px;padding: 8px;border-style: solid;border-color: #729ea5;} .tftable tr:hover {background-color:#ffffff;} MIT Cambridge 3 Lectures/Week 3 Lectures/Week 2 Recitations/Week .75 Supervisions/Week ~4 Office Hours/Week No concept of Office Hours But the difference doesnt end at class size or contact hours. Course work at Cambridge revolves around supervisions. Each supervision is paired with some form of work. This work could consist of an essay, pset style questions, or past exam problems. The goal is to finish the work and hand it in 24 hours before the supervision so that they have time to grade it and provide feedback. What actually happens in the supervision is largely dependent on the supervisor. And thus we get to the point of this post. Since coming to cambridge Ive had a wide array of supervisors and Ive noticed that there are seven types of supervisors/recitation leaders youll encounter, each with their pros and cons. Disclaimer: All of the supervisors Ive had this year have been absolutely wonderful and this post is just my poor attempt at a joke. Mostly. 1. The Oracle Major Trait: Can explain any subject with startling clarity. This individual is truly a cut above the rest. Every student who has had them will have a story of how given 20 more minutes they wouldve given a solution to the halting problem. Youll spend hours working on a problem only to have it explained in 5 minutes. But the supervisor doesnt usually stop there, they push you to fully understand the solution and be able reproduce the answer. When youre completely stumped in a lecture for a course that they are supervising, you stop taking notes because you know itll make more sense when they teach it to you. Youll run into these supervisors once in a blue moon, treasure the short time you have and hope theyll supervise future courses. 2. The Prover Major Trait: Draws the most beautiful mathematical symbols youve ever seen. This supervisor has one simple motto, there is no theorem, lemma or concept that isnt better understood. with a rigorous proof  While there is more than a grain of truth in this motto, you typically wont be examined on rigorous proofs. Youll come with questions about how to solve a specific type of question thats appeared in the last 8+ years exams and youll leave with 5 pages of rigorous proofs and no more knowledge on how to solve the question. Some people love these supervisors, others cant stand them, it all depends on your personal learning style. 3.The Rebel Major Trait: Isnt held down by the shackles of a syllabus. This supervisor has taken their own spin on things. Ignoring the recommend supervision topics they decide to teach whatever they find most interesting.  While its always relevant to the course and uses topics you have touched on, itll take an interesting detour that isnt examinable. This supervisor is also hit or miss for students. This method of teaching is useful for those who understand the lectured material and would like to get a further understanding thats outside the scope of the class. On the other hand, learning material outside of the syllabus is frustrating when you dont already understand the lectured material. 4. The Uncontactable One Major Trait: Sees nothing wrong with thousands of unread emails. Not much to say about this supervisor because chances are you still havent had the supervisions yet. You send email after email and never receive a response. It kind of makes you wonder how a computer scientist survives so long not checking his email. Hopefully youll get through to them before exams roll around! 5. The Intense One Major Trait:  Has an unrivaled ice-cold gaze. This supervisor comes in many shapes and sizes. They can be intense in that they expect a lot of you or they can be really into the subject at hand, but these arent the type of intense supervisor I want to concentrate on. Instead, I want to discuss the supervisor whos just overall intense. You can never feel truly comfortable in their presence and supervisions tend to have awkward staring matches where no one wins. Time will slow to a crawl as you work on the same question for half an hour with no aid. Im shivering just thinking about it. 6. The Lazy One Major Trait: It doesnt matter how early you hand in your work, they still wont get around to marking it. This is a tough supervisor to have because youll find yourself asking the awful question Can I skip this question without anyone noticing?. And then a few weeks later when youre late night psetting that question will shift to How much of this problem set can I get away with skipping. By the end of term your work will consist of a few thrown together answers(in beautiful LaTeX) and a slew of question marks. Unlike MIT there wont be be graded psets and midterms to force you to do the work,.Exams are in June and its up to you to have learned the material by then! 7. The Average One Major Trait: Reliability, you can be sure theyve prepared for the supervision. This will be the supervisor you run into most often. Theyll mark your problem sets, give you useful feedback and answer any questions you might have, heck, theyll even bring candy once in a while. If these last two terms have taught me anything its that supervisions, much like recitations, are my saving grace. Where as Ill usually be too afraid to ask questions in lecture of 80+ peers, its easier ask questions in a supervision of 2-3 (in fact, its extremely awkward if I dont ). And that concludes my list of the seven supervisors. Sorry for the long delay between posts, I hope to get back to the 1 post a week/fortnight schedule I held this summer. Let me know if there are any topics you want me to cover!