Adventures in Adviser/Advisee Relations

A correspondent who (for obvious reasons) wishes to remain anonymous writes:

I have a problem.  I turned in some material to my adviser four weeks back.  Yesterday, I receive an email from [her] that reads: "I'm too busy to read this right now.  You should have sent this to me a month ago."  Does [she] mean I should have sent it to her two months ago? 

Because I sent her [different] material then, to which [she] replied: "I can't look at this now.  You should have sent it earlier.  You need to be more responsible."  Does this mean I should have sent it to her four months ago?  I wouldn't impose on your time, but I'm working on a deadline (which she imposed), and I need feedback on my work if I'm to meet it.

The other members of my committee defer to [her].  I need them to stop doing that.  I'm not sure how to break [her] "I'm too busy it's the end of the semester/summer of research/beginning of the semester/personal issue/personal issue/personal issue" cycle, nor how to tell the other members of my committee about it so they'll stop deferring to the judgment [she] refuses to render.

I've never dealt with an adviser like this, so I'm loath to comment on it.  Do some of you have experience with this situation?  Or maybe some of the faculty members out there could comment on how you would feel if a graduate student came to you for help with this situation?

Comments

[CR]

I don't quite understand what it means that the other too advisers "defer" to other. They won't read the work? Or they do read the work but come to the same (non?) conclusion as the main adviser? Understanding this would help me give advice. Is this person a) looking for feedback from the others or 2) looking for the others to intervene on her/his behalf with the big dog? If the two others are junior, the latter is likely not going to happen.

[todd.]

I'm a big fan of poking my head into my advisor's office after a week of silence on something and saying, "Hey ... so ... have you had a chance to ...." This is usually good for, it not an immediate review, a promise to meet soon.

[JPool]

My advisor is pretty fab, but I have known folks with just this sort of an advisor (though much more commonly it's the apologetic rather than blaming version of this experience, ie "I know I owe you some comments, but I'm really swamped right now. Let's meet week after next.")

The short answer is the one from Dan Savage, DTMA! If you can't confront this person by telling her "This is the schedule we agreed to. You needed to tell me if this changed and you needed those materials earlier." then you've really no hope. The other members of your committee will always defer to her, because she's your advisor. As for breaking her of her habits, well, good luck with that. I've know grad students who were able to shift particular kinds of interactions by letting their advisors know just how upsetting or counter-productive it was for them, but that presumes the ability to communicate such a thing and have it be heard and cared about.

In this circumstance, it sounds like you need to either suck up the craziness, because they're somehow worth it despite their abusive tendencies, or (the more healthy approach) talk to your DGS about changing advisors (after, of course, scouting out a replacement you can trust -- if you're not sure if you can trust them, then you need to keep looking).

[Anastasia]

I think this person should ask her--and make sure to pin her down!--for a specific date, a due date, when she can plan on reading the work and set aside time to do so. I say that because it may be a problem of planning on her part. She isn't thinking about the student's work as a demand on her time and therefore isn't scheduling any time to take care of that responsibility the way she should.

it's frustrating because it is her responsibility and she's blaming the student for being inconvenient when, yeah...hello? Students mean work for you!

So. I'd put out an email or sit down in a conversation and say "I'm concerned that I'm always giving you work at the wrong time and distracting from your own duties. Could we set up a timeline for when I should hand things in, so you can plan for it?" That's a little awkward. I'm really informal with my adviser, so I'd probably say it more casually. The point is, I would play up how much work she has to do and humbly ask to be penciled into her schedule. Let her set the timeline that works for her and then--and this is so important--stick to it, no matter what.

[CR]

hmm... First of all, I'd try to make sure I had at least 2 advisers in my home department, but maybe that's not possible. A lot of people end up with a gray eminence who writes letters and sometimes reads and a person or two who will actually work with you on the project. Having one junior faculty member can be really great in this regard - we have to work with you, lest word gets around that we're being uncooperative, and then the axe falls. Obviously, I have no idea whether this is possible or not in this case, but as a rule of thumb, it serves pretty well.

In dealing with this person, though, I might try to engage them with a smaller chunk of work, a discrete question that isn't so dauntingly large a thing as a chapter for them to handle. Bust into their office hours with a question like this. "I'm working on X, and I was wondering if you have any suggestions about how I should approach it." Shows earnestness and might restoke the flame of advisorial interest or at least guilt. This person sounds like they've fallen into the hole of escalating-paper-despair. (For an illustration, see Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History, Thesis IX - you know, "The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.") Happens to the best of 'em - but it really isn't a good excuse for this sort of thing.

I'm afraid direct confrontation is a dangerous path, as is DGS intervention. Just being honest. You're going to need to trick them into paying attention.

I wonder if they have a lot of advisees, this person?

[Ahistoricality]

Change. Advisors. Now.

Seriously, an advisor who refuses to give feedback is damnation incarnate.

Useful ideas? Ummmm.... If the department seems unlikely to respond productively, talk to a Dean. They have no power over departments, but they can be stern and department chairs hate dealing with them, so they can sometimes motivate change.

The other option, I suppose, is to ignore the lack of feedback and go ahead and finish the damn thing, submitting pieces as they're done and then moving on.

[Sisyphus]

Yes, ahistoricality has a point: I do know someone who couldn't get one of her readers to ever read or sign off on anything, so she just kept going, and then when it came to time to walk in the graduation ceremonies, she went to him and said, "you had your chance; if you read those three chapters right now and have any comments I might incorporate them, otherwise I'm revising everything based on my chair's comments without you." That seemed to embarrass him so much he read the chapters forthwith and didn't say much about them. And she just filed yesterday (whoo-hoo!).

But, this was not her _advisor_ and I don't know if you can pushback on the main committee member the same was as a recalcitrant second reader.

And while I love the idea of the advisor as Benjamin's Angel of History, I personally think there's some level of power-tripping going on here. Perhaps unconscious, but there seems to be an element of imposing shame back onto the advisee all the same.

[alkau]

While I am not a grad student I can honestly say that a solution needs to be found. One thing that hasn't been said is that this advisor is paid for doing her job. It seems this advisor is being paid for not doing her job. Because she is not doing her job, the student is suffering and that is not acceptable. It seems the student needs to seek help elsewhere without pissing off the advisor. This is a tightrope walk for the student, but the student deserves a responsible advisor. If this happened in the "real" world of business the davisor would be fired for not doing her job. I can not offer an easy solution, but I can say a case can be made for changing to another advisor, but feel this should have been addresses months ago. Since I feel sure I know a student wiht this problem, I would say to her, "Stop being sooooo nice and accepting this situation. You need to fight for what you want and I would hope you would find a way around this person". It's never to late to make a change and you are paying the university money to get an education. Do you want to waste time and money or do you want to get what you desire. Move up the ladder of the department until you find someone willing to take on the job of advisor and seek a change.

[Dragon Management]

Out of my three committee members, two were great. The third proved to be the bane of my existence. I think ahistorically makes the best point, but unfortunately, sometimes that's just not possible.

Here’s how I handled it. I confided in my primary advisor (with whom I had a very close relationship) and allowed him to guide me where the third advisor failed to do so. This only works if the "good" advisor and the "bad" advisors are NOT best friends. If they are, then you could easily be accused of backbiting and rumor mongering.

As a PS, I made it past my comps with the third advisor, but he pulled some crazy-ass bullshit on the comps that I was able to wing. If he had a bad day when grading my comps, I could have easily been held back by him.

In the end, it's a crap shoot, especially if you are only getting your Master's and only have a semester or two to evaluate profs.

[CR]

If the department seems unlikely to respond productively, talk to a Dean.

You're kidding, right? You are aware that it's totally frigging probable for a prof to 1) get schooled by a higher up 2) start treating the student better after the schooling and then 3) write a kiss of death letter of rec when said student heads out on the market. A letter that absolutely guarantees that zero jobs will come his or her way. In this case, it would be especially damning - as the student would only have one advisorial letter from the home institution... Profs Y & Z might know the work, but they wouldn't know the "person," therefore the kiss of death would stand.

In fact, I almost guarantee that it what would happen if you took this to a dean. Even the chair.

(Ha! In the middle of writing this comment, just at this point, I went out to have a ciggy in my garage. [Smoke in the garage as not to bother the neighbors. I'm that nice...] Heard rustling. Flipped on the light and backed out of the garage. While I'm on my hands and knees looking under my car, guy comes around from the side of the garage with a big ass stick... Yelling "I was just taking a piss!" (No, he was trying to steal our brand new bikes, which fortunately were locked up...) I start walking, and then running, down my driveway. Guy follows me down the driveway, big stick in hand, yelling "Get the fuck out of my way! I was just taking a piss!" I lose my flipflops, keep running out to the street. He reaches the sidewalk, and turns right, and heads on his merry way... We are both relieved. I call the cops. They do not come, as far as I can tell.)

I'm glad I'm still here to finish the comment. My wife keeps saying "Why are you smirking!?!" It is because I was born for trouble. Or to run away from trouble. I'll go looking for my big ass stick and my flip flops tomorrow morning.

[Ahistoricality]

CR, that has to be the most trouble anyone's ever gone through to respond negatively to one of my comments. I'm honored.

There are dangers to the "kiss of death" letter for the writer, too. First of all, it can be ignored, which is harmless, but a little embarassing. Second, a negative letter -- even an unenthusiastic one -- about one's own student reflects very poorly on the advisor, particularly if it's unsupported by the other documentation in the packet; it'll be an outlier (assuming the student is smart enough to get multiple letters covering research, teaching, sends good documentation with the applications). Third, even someone with a "kiss of death" letter in their file could end up getting a job somewhere, and then tenure, then they're reviewing the advisor's books, and the advisor's students books.....

I'm not convinced that a down-the-chain-of-command smackdown would necessarily provoke that kind of response, either. Odds are pretty good that an advisor who treats one student that way is treating other students that way as well: perhaps finding student colleagues who can approach the Dean as a group, instead of as individuals, would remove most of the risk and maximize the likelihood that other committee members would take a more proactive role.

[The Constructivist]

My advice is to change advisors. If that's not possible, do your thing and get feedback from your other readers. On the letter issue, at my program we had a job search advisor who read everyone's letters and unofficially advised you if there was one you didn't want to be sending out to anyone. If that structure doesn't exist at your department, get very friendly with a key department secretary.

One of my best friends got his defense delayed for years b/c his advisor (who happened to be chair at the time) basically went nuts. It wasn't until the dysfunctionality of the department passed and formerly junior profs got to positions of authority that he was invited to defend (DGS and chair forced the crazy advisor to go along, bascially). A few years later her got his book out and a year after that he got out of adjunct hell. There's all kinds of career paths--but a fucked-up advisor can ensure you take the scenic route.

[Schwa de Vivre]

First of all, my sympathy to this graduate student. I've had enough advisor issues that I'm finally adopting a pseudonym on this page.

And then: What Ahistoricality and The Constructivist said. The two main choices here are 1)change advisor or 2)keep advisor and do it yourself. And then there's option three: run and don't look back.

But I think the key here is that this all depends on the department and school the student is at. Only the student, and possibly other students/professors in the department, can know which will work in this department: whether there are alternate candidates for advisor, whether those advisors would be any better, whether the DGS or Dean would help or hinder or just be utterly ineffective. I recommend the student talk to a few students and professors first to get their read on the situation; in most departments, I'd wager, there are at least a few such people who are trustworthy. I think, too, the student needs to evaluate whether s/he can function without feedback.

[Timothy Burke]

Sadly, I think CR's pretty much correct.

Graduate advisors who have trouble getting back to advisees in a timely manner, well, that's a lot of people. Honestly, if I were working with grad students, they'd probably complain about me being slow with comments. I don't think this is really that horrible an issue as long as the advisor eventually coughs up the comments, and the comments are good and detailed and useful, and the advisor is otherwise a terrific patron who looks out for his/her students on the job market and so on.

Delay is not the issue that should alarm Scott's correspondent. The really alarming thing is that the advisor is blaming the delays on the student, and in a very direct way. That is a very aggressive, worrisome thing. A decent delay-prone advisor who isn't dangerous, just mildly frustrating, will say, "Sorry, sorry, my fault". When an advisor starts taking an aggressive, negative stance towards an advisee over these kinds of issues, it's a sign that this person may potentially be a threat in other respects. The kind of threat who holds up getting out of grad school altogether.

So if it is at all possible, switch advisors. I have to warn though that this is often a very, very dangerous maneuver and must be undertaken with extreme caution. Be really careful about how you go about it.

Do NOT try to send a letter of complaint to the chair or the dean. That is just goddamn fatal unless the advisor in question is a generally isolated and disliked figure, and even then, it would only be sensible if you were planning to switch advisors. If you have to maintain a working relationship with an advisor, you do not want to generate a complaint on paper against them. Not the least of which is that there really isn't anything a dean or chair can do, in all probability. If you happened to be chatting with the chair, had a friendly relationship to them, and could casually work a mention of your frustration with your advisor into the conversation, that might help out, particularly because it's deniable.

Best case scenario is that when you meet with the advisor, you fall on your sword and say, "Yeah, sorry, I know I need to work out a schedule with you, my bad. Can we do that now? Come up with some dates that we can both commit to?" But if I've got an advisor scapegoating me for their failures, I'm thinking that that behavior could grow into something way uglier if I'm not careful.

[Rich Puchalsky]

I recommend that this person take the intriguing approach mentioned in CR's comment. Namely, they should rush into their advisor's office, waving a big stick, and yelling "I was just taking a piss!" After a merry chase and a few flip-flops left behind, no more problems with the advisor not reading materials right away.

[CR]

One way to do the "advisor switch" elegantly is to find a new "second" who can "shed valuable new light on your project." Intensify the work with the new person until they are your de facto advisor, even if not on paper. Sometimes you can find a newly tenured person who is not yet jaded, who'd like the opportunity to work with a grad student intensively. In certain institutions, you could even turn to an assistant prof, if its the feedback that you need more than anything else. Assistant profs are always hungry for attention.

Cast the shift as intellectually driven rather than provoked by personality conflict. Make it gradual - no need to go around declaring your intentions, formalizing things if you don't have to. But it's much harder to get seriously pissed at someone for "broadening their interests" than for not being able to work with X, Y, or Z.

[CR]

I recommend that this person take the intriguing approach mentioned in CR's comment. Namely, they should rush into their advisor's office, waving a big stick, and yelling "I was just taking a piss!" After a merry chase and a few flip-flops left behind, no more problems with the advisor not reading materials right away.

Actually, I didn't really want to say anything about it since it's an "on-going police investigation," but yes, I found a copy of one of my grad student's seminar papers from last spring in the corner of my garage this morning, completely drenched in urine.

[Rich Puchalsky]

Good God. Could this have been one of your grad students, trying this very technique on you, CR? Maybe you didn't recognize him because you'd been putting him off for so long that you forgot what he looked like, and he peed on his own never-reviewed seminar paper and left it in your garage as a gesture of disrespect.

[JPool]

Yeah, I should have been more clear above that the "I'm sorry, I'm really swamped right now." response is entirely different from the "You should have gotten this to me earlier, this is all your fault and reflects badly on you." response we seem to have here. That's why this seemed to me less of a "How do I manage my committee" question, and more of (the beginnings of) an abusive relationship, in which case the question should not have to be how to cope with it, but how to get out of it in the best shape possible. Ahistoricality's scenario might have worked out for someone at some time, but it seems an unlikely and unnecessarily painful way to go. Just because it's theoretically possible to survive having your advisor work against you doesn't mean that it's something worth risking, much less pursuing

If this person were at the exam stage, then I would note that while changing advisors or, as Schwa de Vivre offers, even changing programs at this stage will be painful and represent a delay, it will be less painful then trying to do anything about this at the diss stage.

Your advisor needs to be your advocate. It's OK for them to push you, to insist that they know better than you, to tell you that you haven't convinced them that the way you're appraoching something is the way it should be done, etc. What's not OK is for them to project their own failings and neuroses on to you. I have seen this happen before. Such people tend to have very few people working with them and they don't change. Unless you can be really sure (through the testimony of others who have worked with them in the past) that this is an isolated tic and that they will, in general, support you, be a strong advocate for you and ensure that you do your best work, then you need to look at ways of getting out as cleanly as possible.

CR's suggestion about pursuing a second advisor within your department through "broadening your interests" is, I think, the best possible approach and one that I have seen work in the past.

[Sisyphus]

I would add that sneaking around your professor's house and pissing on rival grad students' seminar papers would not be the way to go, here, anonymous advice sender-iner. Save that for the English department lounge, or at the least, a Parthian shot after one has been accepted to another grad program.

And it's important to remember that a good advisor is an advocate for you --- not only should s/he write a strong encouraging letter for your job search(es) but ideally help introduce you to more senior members of the field and take you around extolling your praises at conferences. Now none of the profs I work with are together enough to do that, but they would never grouse about me and bad-mouth my disorganized, deadline-missing ways, which this advisor conceivably would do, if she keeps stating it in the email.

You could finish the program working with such a person, but in addition to the psychic costs you'd be severely hampered in launching an academic career.