Do I Have a Bad Advisor?

[Derpus]

I'm doing a one-year MA program in history and I feel like I'm floundering and barely able to keep up, no thanks to my advisor.

My first semester went by okay, and he was able to give me a lot of good advice about where I should start my research and how I should frame it.  The first few weeks went all right, I got some very good research done, and I was starting to write my paper sample.  I met with him every week to give him an update on my research, how my paper was going, and paper updates.  He seemed to be okay with this until a week before doctoral program deadlines were due.  During that meeting, he expressed frustration that I was meeting him every week when I should be writing or at the archives, tossed my recent paper draft across the table towards me, and explicit stated "you've been sending me these papers every week and I've had no idea what to do with them."  A week before my first doctoral program deadlines and that's when he tells me (not during the weekly meetings two months prior) to provide him with cover sheets telling him what I want him to do with my paper and how he should guide my research.  Then he offers me next to no help on my SOP.  The only thing he did do was write me a LOR, God knows what he put in it.

 

Fast forward to yesterday (Thursday the 4th of February).  Since he flat out told me not to bother him unless I had an important question or something substantial to give him with a detailed cover letter, I go on doing my research and don't bother him.  I had nothing to give him, no questions, and generally nothing substantial to say.  I also had my laptop die.  Thankfully, I had all my thesis data backed up - but all the notes I took in and out of class for the Spring 2016 semester was (and still is, as of writing this post) stuck on a SSD.  Figuring that he didn't want to hear me ramble once again and deciding that salvaging my laptop was more important, I spent the morning setting up my new laptop, installing programs, and doing my damndest to get all my data onto my new machine.  Then I decide to check my school e-mail.  He sent me a message (halfway through his office hours) politely suggesting that I visit him.  Since I got the e-mail hours after his, I reply with an apology, I explain the situation that had befallen me suddenly, and write (an admittedly long) e-mail updating him on my situation with the laptop, my research, my thesis, and some of the problems that I was happening.

Later that day was a job talk that I was required to visit because of a class that I was taking with my advisor.  After the presentation, I tried to approach him to apologize and try to briefly touch on the e-mail.  He flat-out told me "no, I don't have time," joked about how my e-mail was too long, and said "we'll talk about it next week."  He refused to set up a time to talk about my research and told me to visit him during his assigned office hours, which also happens to be the day before he expects me to present my official thesis proposal.

It seems that he is trying to sabotage my entire project.  He didn't read my papers, now refuses to read my e-mails, and refuses to give me any time outside of his allotted office hours which are shared with undergraduate and graduate students.  On top of this, he's the history department chair for the entire school.  To add insult to injury, there have been times that he forgot what I was researching and has repeatedly mistaken where I did my undergrad.  I am going to talk with the director of the graduate program ASAP, but I really don't know what to do at this point.

[rising_star]

During part of my PhD, my advisor was also department head and would tell me to meet with him during his office hours, if possible. This wasn't because he was a bad advisor, imo. I have always figured it was because he had a very busy schedule, undergrads often didn't come to his office hours, and so it was time that he knew he had available. Forgetfulness is definitely a problem but, you can either find a way to help him remember OR use his forgetfulness to your advantage (e.g., he asks you to take your research in a direction you're not convinced about but then he might forget that he asked which lets you off the hook for actually doing this). 

At this point, I'm not sure what meeting with the director of the graduate program will do to help you, especially if your official thesis proposal is due next week. If I were you, I'd focus on trying to repair this relationship with your advisor and make it into something at least semi-functional. You have to handle this professionally, which means not making excuses, sending long emails, etc. Keep the conversations focused on your research and where it needs to go.

[fuzzylogician]

I am not sure what going to the DGS will do for you at this point. If you do go, I think there are parts of this story that you should rethink if and how you mention, because they will probably not be interpreted as you'd like. Asking you to come to office hours isn't all that unusual, as rising_star explains, and for the department chair to be busy right after a job talk and not have time to discuss something with a student sounds entirely expected. In general, you can't expect someone to be able to talk to you at any random time that you walk up to them. Your grad school application deadlines are most likely something that was a pressing matter for you, but your advisor wasn't keeping track of at all. Beyond that, your deadlines really aren't something that he needs to accommodate, your job is to be a student there, and he should be able to give you a task to do for the following week. Reading your SOP isn't part of his job description, so you get to complain that he didn't help enough. 

The main problem you seem to be having is with the frequency of meetings and amount/form of feedback you want to get on your work. Before you take this matter to someone else, I think you really need to try and bring it up with your advisor. You need to have concrete things that you want/need. Weekly meetings and drafts seem like too much for him (and frankly, that's not a big surprise, that's a lot to read on a weekly basis, even for someone who isn't the chair; I bet often drafts didn't change that much, and that's why he told you he wasn't sure what you wanted him to do with them). Maybe you can establish a routine that works better for both of you -- bi-weekly meetings? you'll send him drafts of chapters when they are close to done? You need to come to an understanding with him. Dropping off the face of the earth for a few months and then suddenly having an urgent request isn't a good way to handle someone busy. If he can't meet on a regular basis, maybe you can set up a weekly/bi-weekly email update system, with meetings with some lower frequency to catch up. This is a one-year masters, after all, so hopefully this relationship isn't too far gone to get you through the rest of the semester. It's all about adjusting expectations. 

[St Andrews Lynx]

There are plenty of hands-on advisors that love to have weekly meetings with their students, who will expect weekly updates and are happy to talk to their students whenever they happen to knock on the door.

Sadly, it sounds like your advisor isn't one of them. In answer to the question in the title: I don't think you have a bad advisor, just a hands-off one. It is unfortunate that your advisor wasn't comfortable communicating their dissatisfaction with your meetings/drafts, but I'm afraid that happens a lot with academics. Advisors aren't obliged to help their grad students with things like SOPs, work-in-progress paper drafts or to drop other commitments to talk to their students (there are plenty of administrative or research issues that will be higher on a PI's priority list than an update meeting with an MA student).

My advice would be to avoid bringing this up with the DGS, since I don't think there is much they can do. As I said, they can't force a PI to do all the things you seek, and it will probably annoy your boss that you are escalating something that you should be able to deal with one-on-one. Go the office hours - I'd suggest monthly - and only submit "polished" drafts when you are close to the final product. Maybe a more senior grad student can look over your drafts and give some feedback?