Minion

[liv]

I have a PhD student! She started yesterday, and she is brill, I am so looking forward to working with her. I'm also a bit nervous, because I've never done this before, and I'm in very large part responsible for her career and quite possibly her happiness.

The PhD system is really weird in how heavily it depends on the relationship between supervisor and student. Modern academia is just starting to put safeguards in place to salvage the situation if the relationship goes wrong, but it's still essentially like a Mediaeval apprenticeship: your supervisor all but owns you and has almost unlimited power over whether you get your PhD, which is the essential and almost the only entry route into an academic career.

So I'm taking a leaf from rachelmanija's book: if you've ever been a PhD student, tell me stories! Tell me something your supervisor did that made things better for you. Tell me something they did that made the soul-killing struggle of getting through a PhD even worse than it should have been. (Like rachelmanija, I don't really need to know about obviously disastrously wrong things like sexually harassing students or completely ignoring them or stealing their work, because I already know I'm not going to do that. But hey, if it's cathartic for you to tell the internet how your supervisor was an evil crook who exploited you, go ahead!)

I have no problem if you want to give me general advice that doesn't come from direct personal experiences, or if you want to chime in with stories about a similar relationship that wasn't specifically a PhD. Also feel free to comment if I don't know you, if you found this by chance eg via Latest Things or Network. Anon comments are allowed but you may have to fill in a Captcha.

Comments

[forthwritten]

I've heard that actual praise is nice. I wouldn't know this though.

My supervisor is utterly terrifying. Even when she's trying to be nice she's utterly terrifying. I showed a friend (also doing a PhD) a draft chapter she'd written on and my friend said that if that was her chapter, she'd cry.

I do kind of adore her because she's tough but fair - she won't let me present bad work or submit a bad thesis. I'd rather it was her saying that I'd written a load of rubbish than my examiners at my viva! She also does care in her own inimitable way and will send me emails if she's worried - she's got a lot better at being supportive over the course of my PhD. I'm her first PhD student so no doubt she's had a lot to learn as well.

[liv]

I am scared that I am in serious danger of turning out like your supervisor. I know I can be terrifying, it keeps coming back on my undergrad teaching evaluations. And I know why it is, it's inexperience combined with massive enthusiasm for fixing all the things combined with a style of interaction that doesn't suit everybody. I get the impression that Minion is rather quieter than me in personality (wouldn't be hard!), though hopefully that's partly because she doesn't know me very well yet. So I have to be really really careful not not overwhelm her. But yes, I should remember to give sincere, constructive praise and not just assume that only the things that need improving are worth commenting on.