Now my wife would tell you the next trick is to get other grad students to write the paper and still list you as first author because of your amazing contribution to the project...
well, im working with a post doc right now and the 2 papers i have submitted so far have him as the 2nd author... i guess it depends on who comes up with the idea first... then who does the most work on it... but that can be argued
Milo, I would imagine it would be even worse in the engineering field, but my wife struggles over for authorship on papers. She is finally starting to defend her rights a little more as she doesn't publish as much as she used to. Not sure which direction you're going with your degree, but if you stay in academia, authorship can get very hotly contested. She has had other PHd's basically try to steal her papers by claiming they should be first author because the research is based on something they spent five minutes on at the beginning of a project...
ive seen shit like that happen too... usually not the case when ur working with someone from ur research group or maybe from ur department... but the problems arise when ur publishing joint work with someone from a different university... i know of a case when my advisor significantly helped another professor at a different university and all he got was a reference when he should have got authorship... i never asked him how the matter was resolved cuz he seemed pretty pissed
hahaha... hopefully that will never happen... otherwise we can park outside their labs and rev our engines all day