I will start by saying that I'm a first year grad student so I know about as much as John Snow. However, I shared a draft of a paper with a professor and I must say I'm pretty excited abut the research. He seemed very interested and got back to me with questions after a few days and now he said he'll be happy to co-author since it's my first paper and I could use some help. I'm uncertain since I have already collected and analyzed the first half of the data and I've been working on the project by myself for the past two months. I have no idea how to interpret this - is the professor really trying to help a clueless first-year, or am I really onto something and he wants credit for it? I'm equally afraid of turning down useful help and of being that useless co-author of known professor on my own research.
Thanks