Livre d'Or

Firstly, congratulations! It's just wonderful, and you must be so excited about it.

Now, my experiences:

My PhD supervisor bogged off to Germany for two of my three years on extended sabbatical/personal leave. Saying that, he was the best supervisor ever. I think part of it is that we're alike in our approaches to material (especially in how cautiously to treat linguistic/epigraphic data) - and he's a complete perfectionist and a total worrier, like me, and also is very responsible and kind and prepared to stick up for you if needed and extremely knowledgeable. Now that I have the BA fellowship, he's agreed to be my mentor, so we get another three years of a similar sort of relationship (but obviously different in various ways). And that's even though he is again off to Germany for a whole year in the middle :)

But the personality experiment is something you can't control of course - I was just very lucky to end up with someone that I ended up adoring. More practically, he was always very receptive but honest when I suggested something he just didn't buy; he kept in touch by email all the time and read through my drafts fastidiously whenever I asked him; he made sure we met up at least once a month or so, even when he was away; he was incredibly sympathetic when I was going through a rough time healthwise; he never put pressure on me or gave me deadlines (maybe in part because he knew how much pressure I was putting on myself - a different type of student would obviously require a different approach); and above all he was generous with his time and ideas, and that's something I think every PhD student needs.

I hope that helps!