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.