Accountability in supervisor-student relationships: Setting boundaries

It was my first meeting with my new supervisor. We had reached about the third point with simple politeness, when he said "Be visible. Be very visible or I'll simply forget about you. I have too many to supervise." This statement got me thinking hard about the difficult balancing act of being very visible without being a nuisance. It also reminded me of the predicament of a postgraduate friend of mine in China. She was one of forty-six postgraduates working on a rare earth minerals project.