advisor question for PhD mamas

[mamatosaskia]

Hi,

Do any of you have a tough time getting your advisor's time or attention? I am trying to figure out how to approach this issue without rocking the politial boat. My advisor is very well regarded in field and in my school. Yet she is a major flake when it comes to reading drafts of my papers and getting feedback to me. I need this to advance to write my proposal and advance to candidacy.

Just want to know what your strategy has been to get more attention from your advisors. I am thinking of asking her to remove herself from my committee if this continues!

Thanks

Jacqueline

[Carita]

is she your advisor, or just a committee member? i mean, how could ou remove your primary advisor from your committee?

First approach - try asking her for feedback with specific deadlines and make face to face appts. Can we please meet wednesday to talk about feedback for my paper.

I have had mixed feedback from my advisor. sometimes he doesn't really give good feedback, sometimes its great. I really have to pin him down and I still struggle with it. But I am not afraid to go to my collegues, postdocs in teh lab, etc to ask for advice as well. Chances are, if I had out my paper to 3 people, at least 1 will have the time to give it thoughtful feedback. In life, we won't always have an advisor to give us feedback - I look at it somewhat as a learning experience for developing my own network of people from whom I can get feedback for things.

[LynnS6]

Sit down at the beginning of the term with your advisor and work out a plan for what you'll get done that term. THEN e-mail that plan to your advisor as a "this is what I'm planning on doing" message.

As the pp said, make face to face appointments to talk about your papers. Just like most students don't read things before the deadline, most faculty don't either! If you can make a standing meeting, say every Wednesday or every other Wednesday, then things might go better. Out of sight is out of mind.

Remember to give your advisor about a week to read things. Really, we schedule that far in advance. So, if you give it to her on Monday, don't expect to meet with her until the following Monday.

I also agree with forming your own 'support group'. What other students are at similar spots in the program? Find 2-3 good ones and meet weekly to give each other feedback on your papers.

Finally, if you do all of those things and you still can't get decent feedback from your advisor, consider switching advisors. Is your advisor just bad about giving you feedback on written stuff or is she overall not a great mentor? Is she helping you submit things to conferences? Introducing you to people? Helping you get your name out there? If not, you might be better off with someone who's a slightly less big name but better advising skills, and have her as a member of your committee. I know that in some programs that's just not possible, and then you really have to be the squeaky wheel to get attention.

[Geofizz]

Lynn's got it. A gentle reminder really helps. :

One thing to realize is that you probably don't see the whole scope of your advisor's job. A solid half of what I do is either service stuff (much of it external to the university) or collaborations with other groups outside the university. That means that while I have two student's papers on my desk right now, I also have several other things on my plate on top of teaching, but from my students' perspective, all I do is teach and advise them.

The problem is that everything else has a deadline. The papers don't. However, when my grad student oh-so-effectively said last week "I'll be by on Monday for feedback on my paper" you'd better believe that I've got his paper read on Sunday.

<cough> Back to that paper now... </cough>

[GranoLLLy-girl]

I think it's different in every situation. Now when you say advisor do you mean your dissertation chair? Or just someone who helps you plan your degree schedule? I think answering these questions helps a lot.
My chair was also my advisor--and I watched him through my degree program and listened to other doctoral students when they said: don't pick him/her as your chair, you'll never get a proposal/dissertation defense date! Or, he/she is good and will help you get through. I went to a well-known brick and mortar institution (i.e., not an on-line PhD) and my school has a reputation of dumping out students who can't cut it long before the dissertation process (even before comps, actually)--which means by the time they get to the dissertation process, most (not all, but most) of the professors are anxious to get you through the degree so that they can hit you up for publishing materials, etc. LOL!
Anyway, what worked for me was to give my chair a time line of anticipated events: I want to defend the proposal on THIS date, so that I can collect data from this date to this date, so that I can write from THIS date to THIS date and defend the dissertation on THIS date. I gave him a written copy (attachment) of my plans and he rubber stamped it--then I would email it again from time to time to keep him aware of my self-made timeline. My goal was to finish the dissertation process over the course of an academic year and a summer (it took a little longer, but the plan still helped).

If this doesn't help and you try and try, I would say move on to a new chair/advisor (again, depending on the situation) and do not feel like somehow you are hurting that person's feelings--because this is one of those cases where it IS about you and NOT the other person. Get what you want out of the process--that's why you are there.