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

[ceb]

I had an awesome supervisor. I seriously wouldn't have made it without her. Here follows an assortment of good stuff she did and other good things:

* get your PhD student to write things up as she goes along, ideally for publication. This makes thesis writing less of a giant burden as quite often you can repurpose half-written papers as chapters. Also if any of it does get published that will be extra confidence and CV points for her.
* be enthusiastic. I don't just mean provide praise and encouragement, but every so often have a big joyous chat about how exciting and inspiring your field is and all the places your/her research could go. When bogged down in details of research it's easy to fail to see the wood for the trees.
* encourage her to have a life. PhDs are hard work and if she can find some fun and a support network that will help endlessly.
* she will probably take longer than she has funding for, most people seem to. Find out now about what options are there, then in two years' time you can say useful things like "you should sign up with this society now, and then if you need money next year they'll give you a grant".
* keep tabs on how she's progressing; make meetings frequent and low-stress and let her ask you questions as often as she likes. Don't be afraid to call her out if she's being crap - but be adult, constructive and supportive about it.
* keep her in the loop, and especially let her know when you're e.g. off on holiday/to a conference. There's nothing worse than feeling like your boss has forgotten you!
* encourage her not to get a job until she's written up; when you're supposed to be writing up, pretty much anything looks more attractive, and a job will probably mean it never happens...

[ceb]

Oh and I forgot to add, always do things when you say you will; set realistic deadlines for yourself as well as for them. One of the fastest ways to put distance between yourself and your minion is to make them feel like they have to pester you for everything (or even worse, to have them not pester you and sit there idle and annoyed).

[liv]

Good idea. I need to be setting and keeping deadlines for myself, and it's even more vital for me to be proactive at getting things done now that I have someone else relying on me. Thank you!

[liv]

Wow, it's really lovely to get at least one response of unbridled enthusiasm for an awesome supervisor, I was expecting mostly horror stories!

Writing up as she goes along, check. I need publications anyway, and this project is likely to be my best shot at them, since I don't have any other funding.

Enthusiastic I'm pretty much famous for. But thank you for the reminder that it can be needed when someone gets bogged down.

Encouraging life-having, yes, good plan. I'm really hoping not to be a slave-driver, and hopefully I can model having other commitments apart from doing science all the time, however much I do love science. This is something that someone at my career stage can easily get wrong, because I so desperately need to establish myself as an academic, plus I don't have family commitments which are the obvious reason to keep someone from working all hours.

Have a plan in mind for what happens if funding runs out: that is a really good idea, but there is a lot of institutional pressure for people to complete within the allotted time. As a small, modern university we don't really have a lot of spare funding, and we also get punished by HEFCE if our statistics for completion within four years take a dip. But still, it's true, it's well worth looking out for grants. And you're quite right it's better if at all possible to avoid starting a job in parallel with writing up, so we ought to make sure that doesn't become a financial necessity.

keep tabs on how she's progressing; make meetings frequent and low-stress and let her ask you questions as often as she likes. Don't be afraid to call her out if she's being crap - but be adult, constructive and supportive about it.
This bit is my favourite piece of advice ever! I might print it out and stick it somewhere prominent, because it exactly encapsulates the sort of supervisor I want to be. I need to keep reminding myself that this is what I'm trying to do. Also, yes, she needs to know when I'm unavailable or away, simply disappearing would be really rude!