How to show special respect to a famous PhD advisor? I am about to enter a 3-year PhD. Neither my bachelor’s nor my master’s were research-oriented nor very typical for my field, and I had to find a potential supervisor on my own. Due to my background, I also do not have a good grasp of academia’s unwritten rules.
Last year, I fortuitously met a rock star professor, one of the top 5 most cited scholars in quite a large field. He got interested in my project, gave me huge support for my proposal, and wrote a wonderful LoR. We also got very well along on a personal level and would chat about things loosely related to academia. He is someone with a very casual style but with clear respect for boundaries. I admire him enormously, both as a scholar and as a person.
I was accepted under his supervision by a very laudatory committee. Academia being a very hierarchical world, I feel compelled to show &quot;extra respect&quot; to him, partly because he is famous and partly because my unconventional background sets me at a disadvantage compared to others. It seems likely that high-status academics would tacitly expect their students (i.e. without explicitly asking for it) to go to greater length for them, whether in terms of work output or in overall signs of deference. I know that they are &quot;just human&quot;, but they are also around the top of a very special system.
I tried mentioning this to my now-supervisor, but he keeps blushing when I remind him of his academic status. He seemed to think that I was worried about my application &quot;not being good enough&quot; rather than about failing to show adequate deference to him. The obvious thing I could do for him would be to submit a paper before the start of my PhD. I have never written a paper before, as it seems uncommon in my field (but not unheard of) to do one that early. But he said a few times that he does not need me to do that right now, and I do not know if he means &quot;don’t do that&quot; or &quot;I politely say no but would be happy if you did it anyway, and slightly disappointed if you didn’t&quot;.
I have a half-done paper addressing a recent debate around my supervisor’s main theoretical contribution, and I am confident that it can be a substantial paper if well-executed. Yet I am exhausted, and my supervisor is unlikely to help me on it before I start my PhD. What should I do?

EDIT: To clarify, this is a question about the &quot;extra&quot; that famous professors may expect from their PhD students. In my case, I went for a writing a paper on a subject of my choice, then submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal and hopefully avoiding desk-rejection. It feels like a huge task, but how to do it is not really the issue at hand. I would happily have presented at a major conference instead, but the conference I was accepted to did not manage to move online. A couple editors from reputable journals encouraged me to submit a paper as a master’s student, so I assumed it was a tough but realistic thing I could as that little &quot;extra&quot; for my supervisor.
For context, I studied in France and my supervisor is in/from Northern Europe. My field is in the social sciences.
I don't know what field you're in, but in mine, writing such a paper would be viewed as unnecessary and perhaps a bit strange. You seem to feel that you don't deserve your place with this supervisor, and so you need to prove your worth, or impress them, by writing a paper. This is unecessary, as you have already impressed them with your project idea and PhD application. They would not have taken you on as a student otherwise. Along these lines, you might want to search the term &quot;impostor syndrome&quot;, both on this site and on Google.
&quot;I am exhausted...&quot;. The last thing you need to be doing right now is writing an unnecessary paper with no help from anyone. A PhD is a several-year-long marathon, and you will need all your energy and stamina to complete it. Take a break, rest and recharge before you start. This will have a far greater benefit to your PhD, and accordingly to your relationship with your supervisor, than writing a paper.
Once you have started the PhD, show your current paper draft to your supervisor and work on it together. The paper will be much better for it. Again, this is field dependent, but in mine it would be extremely rare for a beginning PhD student to be capable of writing a publishable paper entirely on their own. You may be underestimating the challenge. This is something that your supervisor will help you with.
But for now, have a holiday, and celebrate your success at being accepted for a PhD with a great supervisor!