If I had to rank the top three factors that affect the quality of life during a PhD, I would choose advisor, advisor, and advisor. Funding matters, research topics matter, office windows matter; but nothing comes close to the person we meet with every week, month, or panic/happy episode. An advisor’s influence reaches far beyond research.

I started working with my advisor in the second semester of graduate school, and stayed with him until thesis defense. Over the years, we experienced agreement and disagreement, productivity and procrastination, happiness and anger, excitement and disappointment. Looking back, choosing him as my advisor remains one of my easiest decisions to stand by for a very simple reason: becoming more like him feels like becoming someone I genuinely like.

Our collaboration started by analyzing medical data together with physicians. I had relatively solid statistical training but little exposure to real data. I struggled to understand clinical questions, and more importantly, I could hardly turn vague clinical problems into something solvable with statistics. We spent many hours meeting with physicians. What amazed me most was the questions he raised.

  • Why these inclusion criteria?
  • How do ICD codes actually get entered in practice?
  • Why does one patient have 30 visits in a single month?

To experienced data analysts, these questions come naturally. To me at that time, they were revelations. I had treated data as something given, rather than something shaped by human decisions. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to watch how he thought through problems and how he spoke with physicians. Over months of learning side by side, I slowly developed a sense of how to learn and how to think by observing the process as much as the answers.

In fact, I was one of my advisor’s first students, and that meant we were both learning as we went. He advised me the way he had been advised during his own PhD, with a hands-off approach. As a naïve student without any special research talent, who barely understood what “modeling data” looked like in practice, I was overwhelmed by that independence. I carried the statistical theory in my head but had trouble turning it into something workable. He was unsure about the best way to help me, and I struggled to explain what kind of help I needed. Despite our common struggles, he took the time to sit with me, walk through reference papers, work out technical details, and even debug code together. The project itself went nowhere, but learning how to grow into our roles together became an unforgettable reward.

As time passed, I gained independence and confidence, and my advisor became more adept at guiding students. I brought ideas to meetings, and we examined them together. We checked assumptions, refined structure, and strengthened interpretation. Then he stepped back and offered me space to explore. When help was needed, he joined in. During that period, I realized I had developed the ability to carry a project from an initial idea all the way through a finished manuscript on my own.

My advisor also seized every opportunity to connect students with others in the field. Through conferences, emails, hallway conversations, connections accumulated gradually. Whenever I decided to apply for competitive awards (I apply anyway; optimism is my hobby), he always agreed to write letters. Although writing letters may be considered “part of the faculty job”, my gratitude deepened each time I saw the effort he put into supporting me.

Beyond research, our lab environment mattered. Our lab grew into an open space where people spoke openly. Such openness kept my curiosity alive. We also gathered casually outside research and celebrated small accomplishments for each other. Lab meetings often began with life updates in addition to work updates. As one lab member liked to say, “You have to have a life beyond homework, midterms, and research”. So claiming to have no life in the past week never counted as a valid life update. We talked about everything from marathons and tooth extractions to holiday trips and food recipes. Living in that environment taught me to stay curious, show respect, bring energy into shared spaces, and express appreciation openly for the help and accomplishments of others.

A good advisor builds good researchers. A great one builds good humans.