Here is a tip: Ask them who their advisor is and how they are getting along. This is hugely important to any graduate student, whether working on M.Sc. or Ph.D. Get them to talk about that.

Want to take it one step further? See if you can find that advisor’s web page. It will usually have a photograph and may also list hobbies or, for example, show that advisor on horseback in a competition.

This will slowly make that advisor come alive to you and you’ll be able to connect much better with that favorite nephew or granddaughter. You may still have no clue about what their research is about, but that does not matter. People always matter, and the advisor is the most important person in any graduate student’s life. After you, of course.

If you want to go beyond that, I’d suggest you contact my boss and purchase a gift voucher. My boss can make the life of that graduate student so much easier. She can help them with manuscripts for scientific journals or conference proceedings, and she can also carry out literature reviews for them and save them a lot of time. She has already done that for many others.

Be sure to let my boss know whether there is a special occasion, such as a birthday. She will send you the voucher nicely gift-wrapped. You can then hand it to your favorite grad student and leave it up to them how to spend it. My boss, of course, will know that your favorite grad student is about to contact her and she’ll take it from there.

The Guardian published an article on it on Friday 30 October 2009. You can read it here. It is an interview with Dr Anastasia Miliou, manager and head scientist from Archipelagos Institute of Marine and Environmental Research of the Aegean Sea.

http://www.nrcnext.nl/blog/2010/02/26/zo-diep-is-het-diepste-punt-onder-zee/

As you can see, my boss left a comment.

Help out any way you can. Go to this Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Our-Seabirds/168444475341 or to http://www.saveourseabirds.org/