How to defend myself to my adviser

[MonstersU-Terp]

My advisor is notoriously MIA. I only see her once a week in our 1 hour lab meeting which I have to share with her other students, and she frequently is late or reschedules. Communicating with her over email is nearly impossible. I'd wager that about 90% of the emails I send go ignored. I am mentored by a post-doc so luckily I don't need much of my advisor’s support, but it would be great if she could actually give me input when I really need it...

 

Anyways in May we are going to a conference. She asked me and the other grad student to apply for a travel scholarship. We have been discussing this sporadically for about 6 weeks. So she knew that the deadline was approaching. The application required a personal statement from me and a letter of recommendation from her. Last week (6 days before the deadline) I emailed her and the lab my draft statement. I asked everyone to please give me any comments if they had a chance and I reminded her that I needed the letter of recommendation. I didn't hear back from her. On the day before the deadline, I emailed her again and told her I was finalizing my statement. I did not mention the rec letter again in this email. On the day the application was due, I emailed her my final draft of the statement and again requested the letter. The deadline was midnight and she never got back to me.

 

This morning she sent me an email saying that she could not do things for me "last minute" and that in the future I needed to reach out to her 2-3 days in advance...

 

How do I defend myself without sounding rude/argumentative? Should I just drop it? Honestly I know that even if I reply there is a good chance she wouldn't answer me anyways. 

[rising_star]

3 hours ago, MonstersU-Terp said:

How do I defend myself without sounding rude/argumentative? Should I just drop it? Honestly I know that even if I reply there is a good chance she wouldn't answer me anyways. 

You really can't say anything about this without coming across defensive in all likelihood. Were it me, I'd probably drop it. But, if you wanted to bring it up, you could ask your advisor how far in advance they like to know things and how often they like to be reminded about upcoming deadlines. And you would want to ask without talking about this scholarship unless specifically asked about it.

[knp]

While you're at it, also ask "What medium would you prefer me to use for these reminders?" If she says email, well, that's a problem. But if she says she likes to hear by phone and gives you her phone number, or that she prefers you mention it when she's in her office in the morning...then you've solved it for next time!

[ZeChocMoose]

I wouldn't drop it because I imagine this is going to come up again and again given that your advisor seems unresponsive to emails and doesn't come to the lab frequently. I like knp's script on how to proceed about asking her which method she prefers you to send those reminders.

Another way I try to curtail this is the language I use in my follow up reminders. What do you say in your reminders?  Usually what I do if my advisor hasn't answered my email after a week and she hasn't been in the office due to travel - I send a follow up email saying something to the effect that I sent her an email last week and I haven't heard back so I am just checking in to see if she can [state what you need your advisor to do.] This part is essential because it reminds your advisor, hey MonstersUTerp has tried to reach me already and I haven't responded - maybe I should do something about that.  If the deadline is super pressing - I would call my advisor if she was not responding to my emails, hasn't been in the office, and I wasn't sure if she had even received my multiple email requests.

As a grad student you need to learn how to professionally advocate for yourself and this seems like a good time as any to do it.  You don't want this occur in the future especially for a high stakes opportunity such as her dropping the ball and forgetting to submit a recommendation for jobs or funding.

 

[fuzzylogician]

Yep, I would also suggest addressing the bigger issue of how to effectively communicate with your advisor, beyond this one situation. I won't repeat the good advice that you've already been given, which I agree with. One other thing I didn't see above but I've found to be useful is not to send new emails each time but to forward/reply to the same email again and again. This way you create a record of your prior attempts to get in touch with her, and it'd be harder for her to claim that you sprung it on her last minute (though not impossible, I've seen it all). Then when you send the follow up email, instead of saying "I sent you an email last week, I haven't heard back so I am just checking in to see if you got it" you actually refer to the content that's quoted in your current email and just repeat the highlights. It also helps her because then everything is in one place and she doesn't have to go fishing in her inbox for another email that's a week old. 

[Eigen]

To the other helpful advice, I'll add this:

When emailing reminders, be very clear in the subject line, and brief. To use this case as an example:

You sent an email a week before the deadline to the whole lab, with an attachment, asking for comments, and also reminding your advisor. She probably didn't note that, or if she did, it was lost in the "email from someone to a group about a draft". 

Then you didn't remind her again until the day of. Is there any reason you didn't include a reminder in the email you sent her the day before the deadline?

My suggestion for being proactive in the future would be to send her an email reminder, separate from anything else, a week out. Put in the subject line "Reminder: Letter for Travel Scholarship Due in 1 Week". Don't put other topics in the same email, just the succinct, pertinent information. 

Do the same thing 3 days out. 

Were this one of my undergrads, I'd be a bit annoyed in the situation you describe. They wouldn't have really reminded me a week out, and wouldn't have reminded me again until the day of, which might be too late to really get it done. I would have expected an email reminder (just to me, specifically reminding me) about a week out, and then another a few days ahead of time if I hadn't done it yet. That said, I'm clear to them about what I expect from them in terms of reminders. 

On the general introduction, when you say your advisor is hard to get time with, do you mean she's not in her office during the day? Or is she in her office, but doesn't have time to talk if you stop by? What happens when you email her or stop by her office and say "I really need your help on something, can we schedule a time this week or next week to meet"? Have you been explicit in telling her you need her help with things?

I'm amazed that any department lets her get away with not being in her office a significant amount during the day. Most of my faculty, even the most MIA ones, clock a good 4-6 hours in office/around the department. 

[St Andrews Lynx]

Always assume that your PI forgets everything. Always assume that they are unreasonably bad at joining the dots.

Of course it would be reasonable to assume "multiple grad students discussing with PI about a travel grant application over ~6 weeks" => PI knows that the deadline for letter of rec must be coming up soon and so should be on the lookout for grad student's reminders. But that was not the case. As others have said above, you need to be explicit and break down your demands into single chunks that couldn't be lost in the middle of any other messages (be it email, in person chat meeting).

For this case, I'd just apologise profusely. Say that you thought you had sent an earlier reminder and leave it at that. I don't think arguing would make her read her emails more closely in the future.

[ShogunT]

There are so many practical advice people here have pointed out for you. I just want to give additional comment.

With all due respect, I think you made a wrong assumption. PIs in big lab are extremely busy to keep the lab functioning. They hire assistants and post-doc to cover part of their jobs including mentoring (PhD) students, so that they can go networking and bring the money to the lab. Therefore, you should not suppose that your PI will remember what you have said and have to be very proactively in reminding him/her about what you want. My recommendation is to directly inform the PI several weeks in advance followed up right away by an email as a meeting memo. Then keep following up every 4 or 5 days. Also as other people pointed out, communicate with your PI for how long in advance he/she wants to receive the notification. (but don't assume the PI will remember what he/she tell you)

However, I also want to ask you how many times this has happened to you? If you have tried to improve the situation but your PI is still not responsive, then it would be a bit of a problem. But again, the priority of PI given to the lab is as follows: grant/networking/promotion/top journals/budget > post-doc > ..... > lab manager > .... > PhD students > ... > MS student (you). So, take it in stride then.

In addition, working with post-doc has pros and cons. I saw you are in MS biology, so this may not be a big deal for you. One of the cons is post-doc may leave before you finish your dissertation, and you don't want to risk changing the topic at your 4th or 5th year in the program supposed that you decide to pursue a PhD in Biology.

Best of luck!

[juilletmercredi]

This is unhelpful, but I want to say that I absolutely agree with what most people have said here about reminding PIs but for Christ's sake, it shouldn't be that hard for grown people to keep their own deadlines in check. Directed at the PI, not you, OP. Yes, sure, it's your responsibility to make sure they get their letters in but at some point it also becomes their responsibility as well. I feel like in academia we have become so used to professors using "busy" as an excuse for poor deadline adherence, particularly when it comes to recommendation letters. Everybody's busy; professors do not have the monopoly on busy. And yet many professionals in other very demanding fields don't have the cultural expectation that they will miss deadlines, ignore emails, and forget things all willy-nilly. If my current manager (non-academic industry) ignored 90% of my emails she'd get fired.

If it were me, I'd be annoyed, and I might say something like "Oh, sorry - I sent you a mail reminding you about 6 days before the deadline; perhaps it landed in your spam folder/maybe you didn't get it?" and then move onto the next thing. You could even build that out and say "Oh, sorry - I sent you a mail reminding you about six days before the deadline, but perhaps you didn't get it. Would you rather me remind you in person or over the phone in the future?"

Were this one of my undergrads, I'd be a bit annoyed in the situation you describe. They wouldn't have really reminded me a week out, and wouldn't have reminded me again until the day of, which might be too late to really get it done. I would have expected an email reminder (just to me, specifically reminding me) about a week out, and then another a few days ahead of time if I hadn't done it yet.

I would find this kind of behavior a bit bizarre from a professor. It's not the students' fault that the professor doesn't read all of her emails; the student sent an email directed towards the professor with a reminder in it and the professor didn't read it. But that doesn't mean the student didn't actually remind the professor - it doesn't mean the reminder "doesn't count." The PI is well within her rights to clarify with the student that she'd rather reminders come in emails that are directed only at her and not at a group, but that doesn't negate the fact that the reminder was sent in the first place. The PI simply chose not to read it. That's her fault.

And the thing is, she's only going to use this excuse again whenever she hasn't read an email very closely.

Again, what is stopping this professor from making a quick calendar entry that says "Sally's recommendation letter due 4/29" and then adding a reminder to write the damn thing a week before the deadline? That is what every graduate student is expected to do when deadlines come and go, and this is what I did when students asked me to write a recommendation letter. I did ask them to remind me by X dates if they hadn't heard from me by then, but far more frequently I sent them an email letting them know I had finished the recommendation well before the due date. That's what electronic calendars are for.

I know I'm banging my head against a wall and my irritation is not helpful, OP, but know that I am irritated for you. Nonetheless, others have given you good advice:

-This professor has shown already that she is unreliable, so you need to do everything much earlier than you think you need to. 2-3 days isn't enough - she's going to need at least a couple weeks to get her shit together. Really, this is the most important thing. This is the kind of advisor who says she'll review your drafts in 2 weeks and really takes 4 weeks.

-You may have to do some office drive-bys. I hope you live close to campus, because I'd be cruising by her office multiple times a day until I found her if I needed something. This is what comes of advisors who don't answer emails - they get ambushed by their students. Try early in the morning when she may be dropping her belongings off in the office or in the late afternoon when she may be gathering her things to go home. Or, if you know or can find her office phone number, call it. Professors get caught off guard when their office phone rings because they aren't expecting it. However, this might work only 2-3 times before it loses its effectiveness and she starts ignoring your phone number.

-This is probably not the most productive thing in the world, but I use slightly passive-aggressive tendencies. Like if a professor said I didn't send them something, I do the "Oh, sorry, you must not have gotten my email! I will forward it to you" and then forward the email with the timestamp and everything still there. Of course, you have to know your advisor...if this is likely to piss them off, don't do it. But for me, I wasn't doing it to be deliberately pedantic (well, not completely). It was more of a record of yes, I am doing things when I am supposed to be doing them.

-Find a secondary mentor who has a better sense of time. Cultivate that relationship. When you need a last-minute recommendation or someone to bounce ideas off of in the moment, you have this person to go to.

Can you tell I had an advisor with some similar tendencies?

[Pitangus]

On 2/24/2016 at 10:47 PM, Eigen said:

To the other helpful advice, I'll add this:

When emailing reminders, be very clear in the subject line, and brief. To use this case as an example:

You sent an email a week before the deadline to the whole lab, with an attachment, asking for comments, and also reminding your advisor. She probably didn't note that, or if she did, it was lost in the "email from someone to a group about a draft". 

Then you didn't remind her again until the day of. Is there any reason you didn't include a reminder in the email you sent her the day before the deadline?

My suggestion for being proactive in the future would be to send her an email reminder, separate from anything else, a week out. Put in the subject line "Reminder: Letter for Travel Scholarship Due in 1 Week". Don't put other topics in the same email, just the succinct, pertinent information. 

I understand your frustration OP, and you advisor doesn't seem all that reliable, but like Eigen I can also see why she dropped the ball in this case. My advisor has a habit of using vague subject headings and changing topics mid-email thread, which leads to her forgetting things even a week later. So when it comes to deadlines that require advisor letters/forms, I make sure to create a new email specific to the deadline and what is needed, and send that a week ahead of time.

Fortunately my advisor is good about responding to emails, but if she wasn't, then as others have suggested I would get into the habit of mentioning important emails during lab meeting or by calling her.

For now, I agree with the advice of responding by asking her what is the best way to send her reminders. If she says email, then again you should start sending more specific emails and plan on following up on important emails whenever you meet in person. If a deadline is 2-3 days away, and you haven't gotten a response from her, then that would be a good time for a phone call reminding her that you sent an email about letter XX due on XX and would like to confirm that she received it. Hopefully she has a daytime phone number that she answers.