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Advanced grad students needs advice (wanting, long, very long)
aQAalt
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Not too sure where to begin, but let's try this.
I'm an advanced (dissertation stage) graduate student at a higher institute of education in the US that will go unnamed, and I'm at the end of my wits.
To put it in not-so-strong words, in all the glory of a PhD Comics strip, I think my adviser is ducking me.
For the past semester my adviser has been very hit-or-miss on many, if not all, of our agreed upon milestones for my dissertation. At first it wasn't too bad, since I am quite capable of working on my own and conducting my own research. However, certain things do still require my adviser to sign off on before I can progress. My dissertation being the primary concern.
At first, we would agree on a given deadline, at which I would turn in my dissertation draft for my adviser to comment on then return to me to revise. My adviser would constantly miss the deadline and simply say "I have not yet read the draft", after which I would revise my dissertation on my own and inform my adviser that changes have been made, and email the latest draft. We would then agree on a later deadline, at which the cycle would begin all over again. If this was any other semester prior to this, no problem.
However, this year is my job market year. I need to have at least proposed my dissertation in order start collecting data and be presentable on the job market. The original deadline to do so was mid-April, then late-April, and now mid-May. When we missed the mid-April deadline, my adviser had been out of country for a month. The idea would be that we would do everything via email. Due to various reasons that I am not very clear on, that never happened, and I was left to stew for a month with no input. I approached our program director and another senior faculty member for advice, and was told to do what I could, and see my adviser as soon as my adviser was back in country.
When my adviser came back, we met, and I got the sense the faculty members I had approached had put pressure on my adviser to progress my dissertation in a timely manner. My latest draft, with comments were returned to me for me to revise over a weekend and return for further comments. I was told that I would have further comments the night of the day I sent the revised draft. Did not happen. Come Thursday, I see my adviser on campus and ask if we would have five minutes to quickly meet. I am told that the day was extremely busy, however it should be okay after my adviser meets with Student A. A short while later I meet Student A, and find out my adviser had scheduled a four-hour meeting with Student A, and I have another meeting that ensures I would miss that time slot. However, Student A tells me that the meeting will most likely go for only two hours, so I should have plenty of time to meet with my adviser. I wait.
Two hours past, and I really need think about heading to my other meeting. I poke my head into my adviser's office, and am told that I'll be rung within a few minutes when the meeting with Student A is over. I keep waiting, and 30 minutes pass. Finally, I get a phone call from my adviser saying there's not a lot of time, but I'll have the comments so I can work over the weekend. Nothing arrives over the weekend. I email an inquiry, and receive no response.
Come our usual weekly meeting time (this past week), and I send an email asking if we would discuss my dissertation during our meeting. The morning of our meeting day my adviser emails back and says due to one thing or other, my adviser is extremely busy and won't have time. However, I will receive comments on my draft "soon". Afterwards, I bump into Student A, and find out Student A had been in constant e-mail contact with my adviser over the weekend, AND that my adviser has a meeting scheduled with Student B that, from my understanding, spans our usual meeting time. I decided to stay home for the rest of the week.
So this weekend is about to begin again, and I am again with nothing to do. My adviser has put a freeze on a lot of my new projects, as the original intention was for me to focus on my dissertation. I have data collection ongoing that won't be complete for another week or two, so I am literally left twiddling my thumbs. I sent another email yesterday reminding that I would need comments in order to work over the weekend, and that we were now two weeks behind schedule. No response yet, of course. Beyond this, I have no idea what to do any more. Once we miss the mid-May deadline, my adviser will be out-of-country again for up two two months.
Here begins the endless speculation and venting part of my story.
Is my adviser ducking me? There's no reason to not let me know anything of WHY I have not yet received comments. I don't really care that I don't have comments (well, I do), but to me the primary issue is the stone cold silent treatment of not even letting me know WHY. There's no reason to be able to be in communication with Student A, have meetings with Student B at our usual time, and not even respond to my emails on issue such as proposal scheduling and committee communications. I don't know. Maybe my writing is atrocious and my adviser finds it horrifying to read. Maybe my research topic is so esoteric that it is hard to digest. Maybe Students A and B have research much more in line with my adviser's true interests (they do), so working with them is a pleasure, and working with me is not. Student C, our seen-it-all, says to not make it a social comparison process, however I do not live in a vacuum. When I cannot get five minutes of meeting time, and see other people getting two hours in, I cannot help but compare. I have taken to simply not showing up on campus just so I will not have to know if this is still happening. If there are countless meetings going on, just without me. I wake up in the middle of the night worried that I will not have a dissertation, that I will not be convincing on the job market, that I will not be able to find a job. Did I do something wrong to piss off my adviser? Is my own department out to get me? Am I so low on the totem pole that I am fighting a losing battle in the face of rising junior level doctoral students who show much more promise, while I'm the graduating-soon-and-let-us-get-rid-of-quickly-we-do-not-care-if-the-dissertation-is-even-good has-been? Am I being too self-centered? Is this what people talk about when they say "Academic sense of entitlement"?
I'm trying very hard to maintain optimism, since otherwise I know it is an endless spiral of doubt and anguish. However I need some sort of input, any input, in what else is there that I can do? Is there something obvious that I'm missing? Am I meant to simply churn out a complete dissertation draft with little to no input? I can do that, and am willing to, however I am told by senior faculty members that I am not to do so, but maybe I am misinformed?
I'm an advanced (dissertation stage) graduate student at a higher institute of education in the US that will go unnamed, and I'm at the end of my wits.
To put it in not-so-strong words, in all the glory of a PhD Comics strip, I think my adviser is ducking me.
For the past semester my adviser has been very hit-or-miss on many, if not all, of our agreed upon milestones for my dissertation. At first it wasn't too bad, since I am quite capable of working on my own and conducting my own research. However, certain things do still require my adviser to sign off on before I can progress. My dissertation being the primary concern.
At first, we would agree on a given deadline, at which I would turn in my dissertation draft for my adviser to comment on then return to me to revise. My adviser would constantly miss the deadline and simply say "I have not yet read the draft", after which I would revise my dissertation on my own and inform my adviser that changes have been made, and email the latest draft. We would then agree on a later deadline, at which the cycle would begin all over again. If this was any other semester prior to this, no problem.
However, this year is my job market year. I need to have at least proposed my dissertation in order start collecting data and be presentable on the job market. The original deadline to do so was mid-April, then late-April, and now mid-May. When we missed the mid-April deadline, my adviser had been out of country for a month. The idea would be that we would do everything via email. Due to various reasons that I am not very clear on, that never happened, and I was left to stew for a month with no input. I approached our program director and another senior faculty member for advice, and was told to do what I could, and see my adviser as soon as my adviser was back in country.
When my adviser came back, we met, and I got the sense the faculty members I had approached had put pressure on my adviser to progress my dissertation in a timely manner. My latest draft, with comments were returned to me for me to revise over a weekend and return for further comments. I was told that I would have further comments the night of the day I sent the revised draft. Did not happen. Come Thursday, I see my adviser on campus and ask if we would have five minutes to quickly meet. I am told that the day was extremely busy, however it should be okay after my adviser meets with Student A. A short while later I meet Student A, and find out my adviser had scheduled a four-hour meeting with Student A, and I have another meeting that ensures I would miss that time slot. However, Student A tells me that the meeting will most likely go for only two hours, so I should have plenty of time to meet with my adviser. I wait.
Two hours past, and I really need think about heading to my other meeting. I poke my head into my adviser's office, and am told that I'll be rung within a few minutes when the meeting with Student A is over. I keep waiting, and 30 minutes pass. Finally, I get a phone call from my adviser saying there's not a lot of time, but I'll have the comments so I can work over the weekend. Nothing arrives over the weekend. I email an inquiry, and receive no response.
Come our usual weekly meeting time (this past week), and I send an email asking if we would discuss my dissertation during our meeting. The morning of our meeting day my adviser emails back and says due to one thing or other, my adviser is extremely busy and won't have time. However, I will receive comments on my draft "soon". Afterwards, I bump into Student A, and find out Student A had been in constant e-mail contact with my adviser over the weekend, AND that my adviser has a meeting scheduled with Student B that, from my understanding, spans our usual meeting time. I decided to stay home for the rest of the week.
So this weekend is about to begin again, and I am again with nothing to do. My adviser has put a freeze on a lot of my new projects, as the original intention was for me to focus on my dissertation. I have data collection ongoing that won't be complete for another week or two, so I am literally left twiddling my thumbs. I sent another email yesterday reminding that I would need comments in order to work over the weekend, and that we were now two weeks behind schedule. No response yet, of course. Beyond this, I have no idea what to do any more. Once we miss the mid-May deadline, my adviser will be out-of-country again for up two two months.
Here begins the endless speculation and venting part of my story.
Is my adviser ducking me? There's no reason to not let me know anything of WHY I have not yet received comments. I don't really care that I don't have comments (well, I do), but to me the primary issue is the stone cold silent treatment of not even letting me know WHY. There's no reason to be able to be in communication with Student A, have meetings with Student B at our usual time, and not even respond to my emails on issue such as proposal scheduling and committee communications. I don't know. Maybe my writing is atrocious and my adviser finds it horrifying to read. Maybe my research topic is so esoteric that it is hard to digest. Maybe Students A and B have research much more in line with my adviser's true interests (they do), so working with them is a pleasure, and working with me is not. Student C, our seen-it-all, says to not make it a social comparison process, however I do not live in a vacuum. When I cannot get five minutes of meeting time, and see other people getting two hours in, I cannot help but compare. I have taken to simply not showing up on campus just so I will not have to know if this is still happening. If there are countless meetings going on, just without me. I wake up in the middle of the night worried that I will not have a dissertation, that I will not be convincing on the job market, that I will not be able to find a job. Did I do something wrong to piss off my adviser? Is my own department out to get me? Am I so low on the totem pole that I am fighting a losing battle in the face of rising junior level doctoral students who show much more promise, while I'm the graduating-soon-and-let-us-get-rid-of-quickly-we-do-not-care-if-the-dissertation-is-even-good has-been? Am I being too self-centered? Is this what people talk about when they say "Academic sense of entitlement"?
I'm trying very hard to maintain optimism, since otherwise I know it is an endless spiral of doubt and anguish. However I need some sort of input, any input, in what else is there that I can do? Is there something obvious that I'm missing? Am I meant to simply churn out a complete dissertation draft with little to no input? I can do that, and am willing to, however I am told by senior faculty members that I am not to do so, but maybe I am misinformed?
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Posts
Absolutely not. I would keep talking to your adviser's peers and the head of the department. If the lack of input is actively impeding your progress, start putting a bit more pressure on this person, especially if they're going to be gone for the summer. You say you're at the point where you can't continue because you aren't getting feedback (well, you could but it's not a good idea from the sound of it), make yourself a fixture outside of this individual's office.
Maybe, as you say, he just thinks there are other projects that are more interesting, but that doesn't matter - he can't miss deadlines that prevents you from completing your work in a timely manner.
Also, if you lodge a complaint, you must appear to be working hard as well, not staying at home hiding away. You can't hide from this problem. If you are having a meeting next week and he again tries to ditch you in an email, you have to go and ask. Physically go to him to reschedule.
Yes and no. Your committee doesn't really have that much sway since they have no direct influence over your adviser. Really I would advise going to 2 people: your graduate student counselor and the head of the department. Your counselor should have all the info on what is legal and not legal as far as your adviser's behavior. Often times there are specific regulations put in place for situations like this where your adviser can't delay you indefinitely. Once you have a better understanding of what is allowed, then you go to the head of your department and let them know what is going on. They're really the only person who will have significant influence over your adviser's behavior. If this all comes up short you can maybe get in contact with the head of whatever college your department is in, but it gets much harder and messier from this point on.
Above all you should be constantly communicating with your adviser. Keep requesting meetings and asking for up dates on the status of your dissertation edits. Email them every day if they don't respond.
edit- Also keep in mind that often times professors can be spread pretty thin, and they may actually not have time right now. It doesn't sound like this is the case here, but it's not unreasonable for your adviser to be preoccupied for a month or two with other students work if they are trying to write a proposal on it. Ideally they should still have time to look over your work as well, but sometimes it just doesn't happen. If it's been longer than that though something is clearly wrong.
There's no reason not to talk to your committee, but in my experience they just don't have a lot of sway. Having a coworker mention something they think you should focus on versus your boss is dramatically different. It's pretty easy for a professor to brush of anything the rest of the committee says, it's not so easy for them to brush of the department head. If the problem is lack of motivation/time for the OPs adviser then it probably wouldn't be necessary for the committee to get involved, as it will eventually get worked out. If the problem is active obstruction of the OPs thesis than it's very likely the committee won't have any effect.
So in the end it's perfectly fine to go to your committee, but I would suspect that you will have better luck talking to the department head.
When I was doing my undergrad I knew a graduate student who just had the worst time with her advisor... one I knew well and had told her beforehand "anyone else, trust me." I got a "yeah, well, I think it'll be okay." That professor screwed her out of so much money for no good reason, and was hostile to the point of being unprofessional. For my friend's part, unfortunately, instead of documenting and reporting first, she went to every faculty member saying some not-nice things, would talk loudly with her friends about it in the hallways, and by the time she got around to do anything there had been plenty of time for her advisor to label her as a problem student with the department head as well as the dean.
That's why my advice in this sort of situation is always first and foremost: document, report, and above all STAY PROFESSIONAL. I'm not sure what happened to that person, but she should have had her MS before I graduated, and when I walked she was still trying to get her advisor to sign her off to another professor so she could finish her research, and the paperwork kept getting "lost".
Can you give a hint as to what field you're in? I'm guessing something physics-ey, based solely on the fact that I've personally heard more bad stories in this particular vein in that area, but I think the approach is going to be a bit different in different disciplines (in addition to obviously being school- and department-specific).
I've known people and have been in similar situation in the past. As hard as it is, I would not take it personally. Professors often make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew, which often means someone is arbitrarily and routinely ignored due to lack of time and a sort of emotional investment.
Being intellectuals, professors get excited by and take on many projects without actually thinking how much time they can dedicate to each one. This causes them to make an unconscious decision to only be invested in some fraction of what they actually committed to doing. The problem is that they are either unaware or will never admit to this, which is why you're constantly finding yourself starved at the bottom of the stack.
I'm going to ask a very obvious question: can you switch advisors? If so, get on that immediately.
I personally do not think the field of our program matters, so I will not go into it. However, data collection spanning multiple months/years is not unusual, and most people's careers are made or broken due to their choices of research focus.
Within our program, the adviser IS the committee chair. I had actually already approached the other committee members with my concerns, and received sympathetic feedback and suggestions on actions that committee members could possibly take, however always with the caveat: "That is, make sure your adviser approves." I took this to mean: Whatever you do, it has to be with the adviser's full knowledge and approval, otherwise it will be going behind somebody's back, which is not kosher. As I have not been able to see my adviser for any length of time prior to now, approval has been difficult to obtain.
I emailed a recent graduate of our program, who proceeded to immediately call me back stating "This is off the record...", then expressed how her own degree was almost delayed due to my adviser being on the committee. She strongly urged me to discuss with our graduate student counselor, as this issue has occurred before and our counselor would know how to handle it. She also recommended thinking about changing advisers, however warned my adviser was already under notice for not being very available to graduate students, and to think fully about the political ramifications of doing anything official.
Up to date two more events have occurred. First, I emailed our counselor that I had concerns about managing my adviser in terms of my degree progress, and asked for advice. Second, I was finally able to meet with my adviser and discuss my dissertation at length. We also agreed upon an accelerated schedule to meet again on Friday. As of this writing, I just saw our counselor walk into my adviser's office and close the door, so I assume they will be discussing my email. I guess we'll see what comes out of their meeting.