Justin Hosbey
Observer
SciCycle
When you first are asking you start to realize that you're going to be demanding so that you will asking somebody for a chunk of their time and for their attention and for them to build something of a trusting relationship with you. What is important to you in going into that relationship? I think Being honest and just being upfront about the fact that I am an academic and this is helping me to get my dissertation and this is actually helping my career. It's helping me financially doing this project. So I can't act as if it's just for the love of the research topic. And of course I'm passionate about the issue, but also this helps me... This is my job, my career. So I think being honest about that and thinking about what my goals and aims were and trying to make their relationships feel as least exploitative as possible. That's what I just try to do. Because I know there's an imbalance in terms of resources from off the top. I just try my best to mitigate that by just being honest about it and also just doing what I say I'm going to do for people being on time and showing up in those key ways, and having that face time with them. I think that's really the only way because people have to decide whether they want to trust you or not. And I think they can only decide that after getting to know who you are and say, if you're consistent and you show up and you're honest, I think that lets people start trusting you and then they want to support you from that point forward. That's been my experience. I love how these conversations tend to go. They get deep and thoughtful and often times some of the answers as you get deeper, start to sound very straightforward. Show up on time. That's thinking that actually... I think behind that is a humility in a sense of your place in the relationship. I agree with you, Ben. That's why I do it.