On mentor/mentee awkwardness, issues, drama, and disagreements

[fuzzylogician]

A blogpost by a psychology professor on how to deal with mentorship gone awry, and how to avoid lots of potentially awkward situation.. There is a lot of good advice there.

 

http://psycgrrrl.blogspot.ca/2014/10/on-mentormentee-awkwardness-issues.html

[fuzzylogician]

In particular, *so much pain* can be avoided by just asking for clarifications as soon as something becomes unclear, and keeping some kind of a paper trail to make sure that you and your advisor are on the same page. Also, regular meetings for setting goals and checking up on progress. 

[TMP]

The key is.... be an advocate for yourself and don't be afraid to fall flat on your face in front of your adviser.  Your adviser's job is to help you get back on your feet and steer you in the right direction.  A good adviser won't get upset as long as you tried and don't make assumptions about what s/he wants/expects of you.

[juilletmercredi]

SO MUCH good advice in that blog post.

 

I think my two favorites are the one about keeping the paper trail and "consider what the minimum is needed for you to get the hell out."  I recommend the latter even if you have good relations with your advisor, because I think it's so easy for doctoral students to get hung up on the small details of their dissertation in a desire for it to be "perfect".  It is never ever going to be perfect, and you are going to spend a substantial amount of time revising it anyway (both for deposit and for publishing as a book/papers) so just get the damn thing done and get rid if it.  Trust me on that one.

 

I took notes at every single one of my meetings with my advisor.  He also took written notes - he had a hanging file for me with all of our notes in it.  That's nice, but I would take notes too, and take some time to think about them afterwards and sum up what's going on.  Oh, and advisors really do love it when you draw up your own agendas for the meeting - and by the time you get to the advanced stages, you really will be directing the meetings more or less and your advisor should be asking *you* what you want out of it.

 

(Also, now I want to follow this blog!)