Category: You and your supervisor

This post is by Hillary Rettig, author The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism, and Writer’s Block. Hillary lives with her partner, a physics professor at a midwest liberal arts college, and her two fabulous rescue dogs. She is a vegan, a free software/free culture advocate, a living kidney …continue reading.

I want to tell you a story about a friend – let’s call him Todd. Todd used to work in an academic ‘think tank’ run by a famous professor, let’s call him Kenny. Kenny and Todd worked together for a number of years. Kenny was a demanding boss. He consistently tasked Todd with a series …continue reading.

What happens after you graduate? Some people tell me they feel like they have just run off the end of a cliff they never saw coming. That final sprint to the end and the immediate aftermath can be confronting. In this post Dr Lauren McGrow,full-time feminist academic, part-time poet and casual caver, has some advice …continue reading.

This post is by Inez Von Weitershausen, a PhD student at the London School of Economics who blogs on people, thoughts, experiences, feelings on the Epiphany blog. Inez first came to my attention when she wrote an interesting article in the Guardian about PhD survival strategies, so I was happy when she sent me this …continue reading.

I get a lot of emails from students complaining about their supervision experience. This one, from an anonymous student, stood out. I think it’s the way the student thought they had it all figured out – before it went so very wrong…. There are a lot of bad PhD stories out there. Stories of never-ending …continue reading.

Like many other academic developers, I have often run workshops called ‘manage your supervisor’ where I try, in an upbeat fashion, to empower students to feel they can take charge of their own learning and responsibility for the outcomes. I acknowledge in this workshop that supervisors are generally busy, time poor creatures who might need …continue reading.

This letter was written by an experienced academic at ANU to her PhD student, who had just presented his research to a review panel and was still licking her wounds. The student sent it to me and I thought it was a great response I asked the academic in question, and the student who received …continue reading.

Last year I published a post called “How I broke up with my supervisor” which detailed one student’s less than great experience of supervision. I got many emails after that post, some with really dreadful stories of neglect and bullying. I decided to publish some of them, with the authors’ permission, because I think they …continue reading.

If you start a blog called ‘The Thesis Whisperer’ I suppose you should expect students to write to you asking for personal help. What has surprised me however is how OFTEN I get emails from students who are upset, confused or just plain pissed off. Mostly these students are complaining about their supervisors. The rate …continue reading.

Resolving conflict with your partner in front of children can be a harrowing business. My parents were happy to have a domestic in front of my sister and I. When the dust settled, my parents would inevitably deny they had been fighting at all. “It was only a discussion” my mother would say. They sure …continue reading.