MN wisdom needed:PhD supervisor problem (preg DD's DP very unhappy)

[Isabeller]

DD and her DP (DDP) are expecting their first baby in Feb 2014. They are both academics, she is now post doc but had serious thesis stress too, I completely realise this is normal and very tough (no direct experience).

DDP worked in industry before starting his PhD, he is an amazingly gifted engineer, gentle, not very assertive and every couple of years has plunged into a serious low mood, for example when faced with some difficult work relationships/non-technical demands. Because he is so technically and academically brilliant and outwards calm and quiet his serious distress is very hard to detect.

He is in the writing up stage and needs more help from his supervisor in order to finish and submit. His supervisor is interested and excited about writing joint papers and conference presentations but apparently isn't reading his thesis drafts unless they are physically together and always starts from the beginning and halts at the first question while DDP wants him to read the whole thing and comment.

I am seriously worried that DDP will have a breakdown at this rate. I am certain the supervisor has no idea that things are this bad. In theory he could finish writing up before the baby arrives which seems like a good plan and he also has a great (research) job offer for after he has finished and desperately wants to get on with it.

DD is his best support and is far more socially confident but she is definitely worried and so am I.

Please advise if you have any ideas at all.

[Lomaamina]

isabella I'm also an academic and have just read through from the start. I sympathise with the stressful time you're going through, bit I feel that you're not, understandably, fully in the picture.

You (or I should say your daughter and sil Have had excellent advice. One point of fact is that I've never heard of only having one supervisor, standard regulations require a second, sometimes referred to as backup, supervisor. The degree of involvement will differ between fields and circumstances, but they certainly should be involved at upgrade and at the final submission stages as they'll need to sign off nomination of examiners.

In short, SIL should see his postgrad tutor to talk things through and should, if the relationship has gone sour, have the option of showing his work (and even asking to be transferred) to his second supervisor.

[Isabeller]

Thank you everyone for the all the comments and advice. I feel I have a much better understanding of the various possible issues so I am less likely to do or say something unhelpful.

DD texted to tell me there has been a meeting/discussion between DDP and his supervisor (to clarify, there is only one) so I'm crossing my fingers they are starting to tackle the blockage.

[MagratGarlik]

I have not read the full thread, but have read most.

I have supervised a lot of PhD students to successful viva of their thesis though and I am a scientist.

I would say:

1. It is not appropriate for your DD to talk to the supervisor. The supervisor may (and should) even refuse to talk to her about him due to data protection.
2. Most universities insist that all PhD students have more than one supervisor, he should arrange a meeting with all his supervisors and agree some deadlines for both him and them. These should be written down and circulated to everyone after the meeting. He should then arrange a meeting in another month to check progress against the deadlines.
3. As others have said, drafting and redrafting of chapters is normal. It usually takes between 6-9 months from start of full time writing to production of a completed, submittable thesis.
4. Hand the supervisor only 1 chapter at a time both in paper and electronic format and ask for feedback by a certain date. If feedback is not received, give another week and then say, "if I do not hear otherwise by X, then I will assume this chapter is now OK".
5. Expect that even when a chapter has been read and commented on, if the revised chapter is submitted again, the supervisor will still have comments. This happens due to comments being inadequately addressed, arguements being unclear, supervisor needing to think through the students ideas, new publications coming to light in the meantime.

Part of doing a PhD is learning to manage your supervisor and the thesis writing is the most stressful time. Don't forget however, you do not need the supervisor's consent to submit (but the supervisor can make it known to the university and examiners that the thesis is being put forward without his/her consent). Also remember, if the PhD is funded, the supervisor will be penalised if submission takes longer than 4 years.

[UptheChimney]

kemmo I work in the humanities, and your advice is spot on for us too!

Bear in mind that you may well not be getting the full story. Don’t rule out the possibility that the supervisor has given your DDP very specific instructions for what he needs to do next which for whatever reason he is unwilling/unable to follow.
-All universities that I have worked at have extensive support networks behind the scenes to help grad students. But IME students are often unwilling to ask for help. This makes it very difficult for us to intervene when things get difficult

[Kemmo]

ok. I have lots to say :)

I work in HE and do the job of the person that he should be speaking to in a situation like this.

The first thing to say is that you have had very variable advice on this thread. Many of the posters come from an arts/humanities background, and unfortunately their experiences are very different to your DDP's situation and their advice is not necessarily applicable. Also many are only commenting from the student's perspective which doesn't necessarily reflect how things SHOULD work.

The second thing to say is that your DDP's supervisor has a responsibility to him. And if he is giving you a true account of the situation then he is being treated very poorly and his supervisor is not fulfilling his side of the 'contract' that a supervisor makes when he agrees to take on a PhD student. Although sadly this situation is not all that rare.

If you DDP came to me this is the advice I would give him:

1. email his supervisor with a clear statement of
   

• where he is at in terms of chapters written
  
• when he intends to submit
  
• what he needs his supervisor to do in terms of providing feedback.
  Ask the supervisor to confirm by email when he will be able to provide this feedback.
  

2. If this doesn’t work (which it probably won’t) then he should contact the next person in the departmental hierarchy. This should be clearly stated on the student handbook, but if he can’t work out who it is then he should ask the university’s graduate school or student’s union for advice. In most places it would be called something like the “departmental/faculty graduate tutor”. All unis will have someone who is responsible for all graduate students within their department/faculty. At this point he should be contacting this person to say. “I asked my supervisor for X, he is not willing to provide this, what do you advise that I do?”. At this point he is not making a complaint, he is asking for advice as to how to proceed. He needs to be clear that he wants to submit by X and is concerned that his supervisor is not giving him the feedback that he needs to achieve this. This person should offer to meet to discuss the situation.
   
   And finally a few more comments:
   

• Bear in mind that you may well not be getting the full story. Don’t rule out the possibility that the supervisor has given your DDP very specific instructions for what he needs to do next which for whatever reason he is unwilling/unable to follow.
  
• All universities that I have worked at have extensive support networks behind the scenes to help grad students. But IME students are often unwilling to ask for help. This makes it very difficult for us to intervene when things get difficult.

[chemenger]

I think that if the supervisor is really not willing to read anything there is a definite problem. I would be astonished if this is the case. It would definitely be worth talking to someone else in the department to try and clarify what is going on. There should be a PG tutor or similar whose job it is to act as intermediary in cases like this.

Thinking about it I think most supervisors here read only final drafts in detail (bearing in mind that they know the content of the thesis ie the methodology, experimental details, results and conclusions already through discussions with the student). Certainly they would only read the whole thesis in final form. I would expect to be reading something which was properly formatted and presented, and which the student believes will only need minor changes and corrections (words here and there, rearranging things, improving figures). If presented with something which was clearly not in this state I would probably ask the student to do more work on it and come back.

As I said before I would also expect to get a thesis chapter by chapter as they were completed. The first chapters probably get more corrections then the later ones, when the student is better at writing. I'm still not clear how a first draft of the complete thesis can be written so far before the end of the project, since we would allow months to write up at the end.

Is the problem maybe that there is a mismatch of expectations - the supervisor is asking for a final draft and is expecting that the student can transform what he has into this himself? If the student feels he needs help to do this he needs to make this clear and perhaps focus on doing this chapter by chapter.

Thesis writing is horrible and I remember being paralysed into inactivity by the self doubt and the sheer scale of the task, you have to find a small thing that you can do that moves you forward and breaks the spell. Drawing diagrams was my secret treat when things got bad.

[Isabeller]

I'm not sure if I will be able to clarify a situation I don't fully understand but as so many people have posted really thoughtful and helpful comments here goes.

The first complete draft was produced for a job application. This is not a final draft it does have to be rewritten.

I heard DDP say 'he will not read anything unless I am there'.

DD and I are concentrating on the idea that giving emotional support and encouragement (including encouragement to see other potentially helpful pepople) may bolster him to the point that he can take some decisive action himself.

[chemenger]

I am slightly mystified about some aspects of this situation. In Engineering it is normal, I think, at least here, to produce the thesis chapter by chapter over the course of the work, reviewing them with your supervisor as you go along. Its not usual to have a complete first draft a year before submission as seems to be the case here and then start the revision process. What has he been doing for the last year? In an Engineering PhD it is the results, not the writing itself that forms the work, I think this is subtly different from the humanities? This means the writing mainly comes after the work is complete.

It would be a problem to be presented with an entire thesis and find that there is a flaw early on which would then propagate through the whole work.

One approach, which I think was suggested above would be to ask to discuss specific parts of the thesis - so email and say "I'd like to come and discuss my literature survey, in particular whether you feel I have sufficiently covered the contrasting results from modelling and experimentation..." This forces the supervisor to have an opinion and hence read in detail.

[PenelopePipPop]

(Oh and speaking in my capacity as a former research student and not as an academic I found writing up pissingly horrible, it totally sapped my confidence and there wasn't a day that went by when I didn't look at the poxy thesis and think it was rubbish. I got it in because I knew I would go insane if I had to think about it ever ever again and fortunately my supervisor was very supportive about reading drafts etc. Thankfullyin my subsequent life as an academic I've never done anything as unpleasant.

I passed without corrections. As far as I can tell there is no correlation between a student's perception of the unmitigated awfulness of his or her thesis and how well he or she will perform at viva - though it is best if they try not to tell the examiners that the thesis is a shower.)

[PenelopePipPop]

Second Creamteas advice - there should be someone with pastoral responsibility for research students in his dept whom he should make an appt with as a matter of urgency. In our dept they are called the Research Postgraduate Student Advisor. Discussing what to expect from his supervisor at this stage with a third party would be very wise.

The lack of response to e-mails is worrying - but the OP's DD admits he may not have been precise enough and it is the beginning of term. I admit I am a terrible one for needing to be asked to do things three times at this point in the year and I care very much about my research students, I'm just very forgetful (fortunately they do know this).

But reading between the lines (i.e. I could be wrong) the problem may not lie between the DH and the supervisor but between the DH and himself. Sometimes students get demoralised at the end of PhDs and are just frightened to submit. You mention a cycle of negative thoughts and a refusal to accept feedback from his supervisor or treat this as constructive. If this is the underlying problems then meetings and feedback won't solve it. Only clarifying his own anxiety will help him. Has he had friends get major corrections lately? Is becoming a parent frightening him? A couple of people have mentioned counselling which might be a useful complement to actively tackling the supervisor and help him get his head straight.

Also on the point about drafting/re-drafting being useful, one of my fellow PhD students bitterly resented every comment made on her draft thesis by her supervisors and eventually had a stand-off where they would not sign the forms to allow her to submit until she had completed some substantial and necessary corrections. She did them with bad grace and passed her viva with no corrections. I met her the following day and she told me triumphantly that this proved how stupid her supervisors were to expect her to keep working on her thesis after she'd completed her first draft...

Ahem.

[UptheChimney]

What ommmward says, basically. Especially that lovely explanation if the PhD as a Guild piece. That's what I was trying to say (far less effectively!)

From the account in the OP, which is third hand we need to remember, it sounds as though the candidate has got himself really wound up, and is not thinking completely straight. He really needs some help and support, but I think he's too emotional. He could try taking a step backwards by talking to someone such as the Postgraduate Director for the Department would be a good way of trying to untangle the mess.

Clearly, the supervisor needs to be reading a whole draft at this point, but as LRD says, maybe theres an issue early on that really needs dealing with. And I have in the past spent several days commenting in detail on a supposedly full draft only to be told rather impatiently that that wasn't the final draft, and the candidate had already made the changes i suggested, I have a wee bit of sympathy for supervisors reading supposedly "final" drafts. I know I thought I'd be finished about 6 months before I actually was ready to submit.

The candidate sounds like hes in a bit of an emotional bind: his anger suggests he's rather too dependent in the supervisor, a bit like a child trying to wrest independence from a parent! I think he needs to try to take the emotion out if it. It's not reasonable to expect a supervisor to deal with a candidate's personal problems or issues. Although that said, I did have one supervisee who would start every supervision with a long tale of their financial woes. As a person, obviously i was sympathetic, and made what suggestions i could, but really ... Supervision at phd level is about the research and the professional development of the candidate. If the OP's son in law can't speak up, or raise the issue of how the supervision process is working, how can he go on to direct other people's research?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

You're probably right, I'm reading too much into it.

[Habbibu]

But how can you get to writing up and not have had major methodological problems pointed out? Surely all that work was ironed out in previous years. It isn't terribly clear what's going on, though given that the op's dd is an academic, I guess she knows something's amiss.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I thought it was that the supervisor won't field questions, and will only read the draft for the supervison. I may be wrong - can you clarify, OP? If he genuinely is only skimming it in the supervision that is bonkers.

The only thing I'm thinking is, if there is something the supervisor sees as a major methodological problem, that could be why he won't get beyond it, couldn't it?

I mean, there must be things you could write in a chapter draft that would simply make the supervisor say 'nothing after this can possibly work' - more so I think in engineering than an arts discipline (my dad's currently examining an engineering thesis, so I'm speculating from a position of very, very, very vague awareness how it might be).

If this is so, and the supervisor is seeing major issues, there is obviously more need for this bloke to get in touch with someone else and get some deadlines set up.

I'm just coming at it from the perspective where, although nothing went particularly 'wrong' for me, I did completely fail to understand why my supervisor didn't think my full draft was finished.

[Habbibu]

Sorry!

[Habbibu]

But why would the supervisor be reading in the supervision? Or are you reading it as "reads at home/office to first problem and thn does supervision"? Which, unless you're being supervised every day, is a bit inefficient at best.

[Habbibu]

But why would the supervisor be reading in the supervision? Or are you reading it as "reads at home/office to first problem and thn does supervision"? Which, unless you're being supervised every day, is a bit inefficient at best.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

If that is what's happening obviously it is a problem, and obviously he should talk to someone anyway.

But to me, it read as if it was possible he was saying 'well my supervisor only reads to the first problem then asks me to solve that, and I want him to read the whole chapter'. I think I would find that incredibly frustrating too, but I would also wonder if the supervisor had a good reason for stopping where s/he did and insisting the problem be sorted out.

[Habbibu]

I read it as the supervisor wasn't reading stuff unless he/she was face to face with the student. Which strikes me as a bit mad.

[ommmward]

The supervisor should definitely be reading stuff, yes. :) I may not have read the ops posts carefully enough myself :)

[Habbibu]

That's all true, but if the supervisor isn't reading stuff, surely that's not the student's fault? I maybe need to re-read the OP's posts.

[ommmward]

What upthechimney said. Once a student is beyond their third year, I get no credit in my workload for looking after them at all. At that stage, the onus is on the student, with me being the critical friend who judges the finished thing before it gets officially submitted.

I ask the student to get the PhD to a state where they think it's ready to submit. Then I give feedback on the whole thing (and reading it will take me a whole day, by the way, which is unpaid and unacknowledged overtime, and the students hardly ever say thank you). I'll say everything I can think of that would make the thing ready to submit. The student then goes away and gets the PhD "ready to submit" again. They don't act on all my advice, and I'd be horrified if they did - they are supposed to be getting themselves ready to be independent scholars.

In my experience so far (NB humanities) it takes 4 or 5 iterations of the complete draft before both of us say "yup, that's it, ready to go in". At that stage in the process, it isn't helpful for the supervisor to look at individual sections independently - they might work on their own, but do they work in the context of the whole thesis?

Remind your partner: a PhD is your guild piece. It is a license to award PhDs to other people (there is no further qualification you have to have for that). Using your own judgement to decide that "yes, this is of PhD quality" with your own work is the first step towards the position of being able to decide that about other people's work.

HTH.

[Habbibu]

I would contact the postgrad convener in the first instance - DH has this role in his dept at the moment, and he does deal with issues of supervisors not doing the job properly. Not reading the chapter ahead of time is not acceptable, and he really should look for institutional support. This is where I'm starting to think that co-supervision is a good idea.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Gah. That's what I meant about the frustration, obviously.