Problem with my graduate adviser

[charlie_ram]

I'm working on my masers degree in Electrical Engineering and will be starting my PhD in about a semester. I've been having a recurring problem with my adviser. He basically doesn't spend any time with me to go over my project, the most I see him sometime is a few minutes in months. I see him talking to strangers and new students for hours about almost anything, and when it gets to me he's busy and just keep telling me later and when he eventually does see me; it's for a few minutes and then he wants me to rush and finish talking.

It's really frustrating. I understand he's busy and my work might not be on his top priority list, but I'm his graduate student after all and his job is to advise me on a project/thesis he assigned me to do.  Don't I at least deserve a few minutes, just so I can at least report what I've been working on. He very rarely answer my emails, and when he does is a simple yes/no. I just don't feel like I can continue working on a PhD with him, and he's putting me in a really awkward situation introducing me as his PhD student, even though I'm not a PhD student yet. His philosophy was that I need to be more independent, but to me it seems like he is cutting me off from everything. Being independent means I don't have an adviser basically.

I don't know what to do. I mean he would talk to his coworkers about my project and show it off in meetings, which I'm never included in any of those talks, so he seems to be happy with my progress when he gets to hear it.

I really want him to have a little bit more respect for my time, and stop cancelling on me all the time and rushing me when I'm talking. It's been mentally draining me and sometimes I don't know if I'm even good enough to be here, maybe he thinks I'm not good enough to use up his time, I don't know. I don't know how to bring this issue up, it's been going on for months now and I only see him getting more distant. 

[shinigamiasuka]

Next time he's not busy enough to talk to you about your progress, ask him about it and be frank but polite. Hopefully that might crack the ice a bit.

[firewitch]

Wow, not much advice from the community on this one.

 

I was reading because I've been having a similar problem. Anybody?

[med latte]

Can you sit down and speak with any other students who have worked with him? I wonder if they have had similar experiences. Perhaps he will get more involved when you are officially in the PhD program, or perhaps he is currently dealing with a personal matter that takes time/energy away from work....or perhaps this is how he would be for the next several years. 

I agree that you should try to speak with him, but you might sit down with a current or former students of his first to get some more insight into him. Don't trashtalk, just ask how their experience has been, how often they met, how involved was he at each stage of the process, etc.

[fuzzylogician]

^ echoing the above: you need to figure out if this is normal operating procedure for your professor. The best way to do that is to talk to other Masters and PhD students. Do they all have the same experience? Has it always been this way or is there something going on in the professor's life? Frankly, I think having a conversation with the professor may have limited impact on the situation. If this is how he advises students, he is not suddenly going to go from a few minutes a month to, say, an hour a week. You may have substantially different needs and expectations from the advising relationship. If that's the case, accept that likely he will not change. Either you can learn to make the situation work, or -- since in this case the gap seems too wide to bridge -- you may need to look for another advisor, whose advising style is more compatible with your needs. (To be clear, I think what you want is entirely reasonable! I just think that if someone gives you something substantially different than that, and is used to doing that for everyone, it's hard to imagine that they can change enough to accommodate your needs. It's a recipe for frustration and dysfunction.) The time to recognize that is as early as possible, so you can identify a more suitable advisor without too much loss of work.

 

On the other hand, if this is "just you," it's perhaps more addressable but it still doesn't sound good. I don't think I could work long-term with someone who I feel doesn't think I'm worth their time. Again, my advice about seeking other mentors stands. Here, though, a conversation may have more of an impact. I would concretely try to establish weekly/bi-weekly meetings. And again, having information from other students about what their experience is like will help. It'd be different if they had regular meetings as first/second years or if he only schedules meetings when needed. Knowing that can help steer the conversation in more helpful directions.

[TakeruK]

I also agree with the other posters that it would be a good idea to find out from other people working for him whether or not this is normal. 

 

Most Universities are faculty-driven and they have the power. The only way to get a professor to change their supervising style is when they choose to make the choice themselves. In general, there is very little that any other group on campus can affect the behaviour of professors (as long as the professor is not acting against policies). Administration will not force professors to meet with students X hours per month. In theory, the Faculty might be able to place requirements but it is very unlikely the faculty would choose to constrain themselves. 

 

At our school, we have tried hard to address the problem of bad mentorship. Good mentorship can really make a difference in a grad student's trajectory. We have considered a wide range of solutions and consulted with administrators at many levels. Ideally, we would like the school to have something like "Mentorship Training" for faculty, but this is not very popular amongst the people who have the power to make it happen. The next step is to consider co-authoring a "Best Practices" or "Guidelines for Student-Professor relationships" document with representatives from the Faculty but it's possible that in order to get the faculty to cosign, the content would be very vague and general and thus have no effect. 

 

Ultimately, I think the most practical path forward is to recognize when a professor has a working style different from yours and then either choose to: 1) change supervisors or 2) change your working style. 

[St Andrews Lynx]

It might be that the questions you're asking your PI could be answered just as well by your more senior coworkers. They might actually be more useful for answering technical questions (since they're running the experiments all the time) and they should have some good perspectives on what your advisor wants from your project (based on the feedback he's given to others about their projects you can usually extrapolate what he'll want from yours).

 

From the original post, it sounded like one of the main things you wanted was validation. Am I doing the right thing? Are my results OK? Do you want me to keep exploring X? For a busy advisor, providing validation at the grad student level can be seen as a time sink, and kinda unnecessary if you're broadly on the right track with your research (which, from what you've said sounds like it is the case). You're an adult, you don't need him to hold your hand and constantly offer platitudes. 

 

Again, I encourage you to make use of your peers. Use each other for support and feedback. Maybe your boss would prefer you to share your results by emailing him project reports file every month/few weeks (it's a useful exercise for you to do yourself, regardless of whether you need to send them or not). T

[fuzzylogician]

From the original post, it sounded like one of the main things you wanted was validation. Am I doing the right thing? Are my results OK? Do you want me to keep exploring X? For a busy advisor, providing validation at the grad student level can be seen as a time sink, and kinda unnecessary if you're broadly on the right track with your research (which, from what you've said sounds like it is the case). You're an adult, you don't need him to hold your hand and constantly offer platitudes. 

 

I generally agree with your post, just chiming in to say that some people do require the occasional validation, and I think that's a perfectly legitimate thing to want. The thing is, OP, you have to realize that some advisors just can't give it to you, because that's just not their advising style. So either you can learn to accept how your advisor works (=realize that no news means "you are doing well", and they will let you know if there is any problem), or if this is something you can't do without, you may need to find alternative ways of getting what you need. It's possible that more advanced students can give you that and it seems to me that this a good place to look for this support, or in the extreme case you may need to find a new advisor.* 

 

* My post above comes from my own non-lab-based perspective, where you'd talk to your advisor but you wouldn't necessarily expect older students to help you with projects or answer your questions. In light of St Ansdrews Lynx's post, I think she's right that you should first look at whether what you are looking for can be offered within your lab, by peers. 

[coffeelog]

I was having the same problem to the point where I'm considering changing schools. I understand she's busy, but my advisor's actions, especially her comments, sometimes borders on being blunt and unprofessional. I'm learning a lot from the academic courses themselves but not the advisor. :T

[TakeruK]

I was having the same problem to the point where I'm considering changing schools. I understand she's busy, but my advisor's actions, especially her comments, sometimes borders on being blunt and unprofessional. I'm learning a lot from the academic courses themselves but not the advisor. :T

 

In the ideal case, your dissertation advisor does all of these things: supervises your research, is responsible for your development as an academic, is an academic mentor to you, and will be your "champion" when you go on the job market. In reality, it's tough to find an advisor that will fill all of these roles to your satisfaction. Some people are really good at some of these things and really crappy at others.

 

My advice is to not limit yourself to just your advisor. The first role, the research supervisor, is really the only role that your supervisor must play. If you are looking for other types of support and training, seek this out yourself by seeking other mentors in your department. Maybe a postdoc or another faculty member will be a better person to train and teach you. Maybe another committee member will be your mentor. 

 

I'm not saying that you should take changing schools off the table, but before you do that, you might already be able to find solutions within your department. And how will you know that your next school will have a great advisor for you? I would say that the ideal advisor described above is the exception, not the norm. It might be better to figure out what you can get from your advisor and make the most of that. For the other things that your advisor is not providing, seek it elsewhere rather than to try to extract sub-par mentoring (for example) from them.