Rt-H agreed processing was good for her to start with and she's been doing this for the past 3 or 4 weeks. Things were going smoothly, but she is crazy slow at doing anything. It sort of works out because it keeps me from having to find more work for her to do. Perhaps her slowness is balanced by her attention to detail you say? Nope. She skips files and overlooks important coding. I also have to work on the computer next to her (the only computer with my analysis programs) to ensure she doesn't watch too many music videos. Up to this point, all these things were merely annoying. Kori is nice, helpful and I appreciate her work. Her presence allows me to be doing other things and this is priceless.
Well, today Kori took it to a new level. I asked her (via email because I was driving back from a weekend with the Grackle when she was to be in the lab) to cut and paste data from a bunch of files into one spreadsheet. In my email, I set up what the spreadsheet should look like. When looking over her sholder today, I see that she just made a list, in a spreadsheet, of the file names. No data anywhere. Nothing like what I asked for. Ugh. Luckily, it wasn't anything too important.
How long does it usually take to know what a particular undergrad can be trusted with? Perhaps almost a year without dealing with students has skewed my ideas of what to expect and how much hand holding I need to do. If nothing else, I need to communicate a bit more about specifically what I need from Kori. Hopefully we will go back to moving forward, despite doing so at a snail's pace.
*After the Kori Bustard. Bustard come from the latin for 'slow bird'
UPDATE: Some of Kori's slowness and flakiness could be because she is a graduating senior this semester! If nothing else, I only have to work with her for a few more months. Rt-H was telling me about the young woman she is hoping to lure to the lab next year. She sounds really amazing student!
