Onboarding a new student in a week rather than a term

1 · Learn the move · Recipe pattern

The default onboarding model is osmosis - the student absorbs the lab over a term, mostly by interrupting your postdoc - and its cost lands on the people whose time you can least spare. The recipe replaces it: a day-by-day first week assembled from materials the lab already has. Ordered reading with a reason attached to each item; safety training booked through EHS on day one, because the queue is theirs, not yours; the ELN account and the lab's recording conventions before the first data point exists, not after; the first supervised technique scheduled with a named supervisor; an end-of-week checkpoint with outcomes you can check. The model assembles the sequence from what you supply and marks every gap [NEEDS: ...] - invented lab lore is worse than a visible hole, because the student cannot tell the difference.

Build a day-by-day first week for my incoming [student type] from these materials: [paste: reading list, SOP index, who supervises what, ELN conventions doc]. Recipe: ordered reading with one line of why per item / EHS safety training booked day 1 / ELN account + conventions before first data / first supervised technique with named supervisor / end-of-week checkpoint with checkable outcomes. Gaps = [NEEDS: ...], never invented lab practice.