Category: You and your supervisor

This is a guest post by Geof Hill, who trains supervisors and coaches research students. Here Geof offers advice for supervisors and students in the last stages of candidature. It’s exciting when the individual parts of the dissertation start to come together to produce a coherent argument. But seeing the argument in its fullness also …continue reading.

The other day a student came to see me after his mid point presentation. He was upset because the panel chair had questioned the scope of the work and his ability get the rest of it done. The student felt the questioning was out of line. Who was this academic who hadn’t worked in a …continue reading.

In her first Guest post Julie Rudner wonders about the art of asking questions and its place in the research journey

Sometimes it’s the little things that count

It is well known that professors can have favourite students, which usually irritates the heck out of the students who finally work out that they are not on the list. Being the favourite student can carry a lot of power – like access to the supervisor’s time and resources (in a perfect world, of course, …continue reading.

When I was hunting through my reader request pile I found this email from @thetokenlefty asking about writing for different  audiences: I had a quick question for you about this 5,000 word literature review I have to write for my methods course.  It is going to be read and marked by people like yourself — …continue reading.

This one is about a complex supervisor / student relationship issue: what happens if you think your thesis is ready to submit but your supervisor doesn’t?