Your relationship with your
advisor is key to your happiness as a graduate
student. An advisor with whom you have a good
relationship will advocate for you, share their
enthusiasm and ideas with you, help you maneuver
new and difficult research challenges, introduce
you to their colleagues at scientific meetings,
help find funding for you, encourage you to excel
in your field, help land you a good postdoc position,
and write an invaluable letter of recommendation.
In fact, a good relationship can last your entire
career, benefiting both you and your advisor.
You may enter graduate school as a trainee, but
you leave as your advisor's colleague.
But professors are not taught
how to be good advisors, and some may not even
try. Moreover, there is no such thing as the perfect
advisor. "People are people after all," says Peter
Uden, professor and graduate program director
in the Department of Chemistry at the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMASS). Plus, he
says, "it's a two-way street." As with any relationship,
problems are bound to arise and, when they do,
knowing how to deal with them can be vital to
your professional development.
One of the most important
lessons learned by one recent PhD is that "you
need to learn how to pick your battles." Sarah
(not her real name) picked an advisor who she
really liked. His research interests matched hers,
she had tremendous respect for him as a scientist,
and his work and research style was compatible
with hers. For her first two years, everything
was fine. In fact, she couldn't have imagined
a better advisor, she says.
When it came time to publish
her first paper on which she was first author,
she encountered some nasty resentmentnot
from her advisor but her advisor's spouse who
was also a professor in the department and, as
Sarah describes it, very jealous of both her husband's
and her husband's students' success. Even though
her advisor and his spouse had their own research
programs, they worked on about half of their projects
together, including the one that led to Sarah's
first publication. Sarah had clearly done most
of the work on the paper. She had supervised the
lab work, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper:
"I basically did all of it, except for the original
planning of the experiment. We all sat down together
and thought that out. From the beginning, it was
pretty clear that [my advisor's spouse] was just
being included and wasn't really essential. Of
course I didn't care in the beginning. I was ecstatic
just to be involved and know that I was going
to have my name on a paper."
Gradually, however, Sarah
started to realize that her advisor's spouse was
going to be a problem. The spouse told Sarah that
Sarah didn't deserve to be first author and that
she should "pay her dues" before she started earning
so much credit for her work. The spouse also kept
Sarah from being assigned to a new TA position
in an upper-level course that Sarah was clearly
the most qualified for. But Sarah was afraid to
talk to her advisor because, other than the spouse,
things were going well and she was still, in the
end, coming out ahead. She was publishing, making
all the requisite connections, and had a stellar
postdoc lined up. She decided it wasn't worth
risking her relationship with her advisor or her
professional reputation by rocking the boat. "Maybe
because I was older and had enough confidence
to bat it away and think of it more as her problem
and not mine, I did," Sarah says. "But it was
definitely a thorn in my side, and in the beginning
it made me almost doubt myself." Her advisor should
have been aware of what was going on, she said,
and on some level she thinks he was. But he obviously
didn't know how to deal with it. Other than that,
he was a terrific advisor, Sarah says. "We were
very compatible in a lot of ways, and that made
it easy."
Indeed, the most common problem
that students have with their advisors is "personal
incompatibility, with either the goals or style,"
says Uden. Of course, the way to avoid this is
to pick an advisor with whom you are compatible
to begin with. It's rare for a person's compatibility
with their advisor to change over the course of
time, he says. Sandy Wortham, a PhD student in
the chemistry department at the
University of Vermont and graduate student
representative to the university's advisory committee,
agrees. He attributes his good relationship with
his advisor to the fact that he had worked for
several years before starting graduate school,
and so he had more perspective, knew what he wanted,
and was able to pick somebody with whom he knew
he was compatible.
But compatibility is only
half of the equation. Equally important is "communication,
communication, communication," Uden stresses.
Ideally you should be comfortable enough to talk
with your advisor about problems or conflicts
as they arise. Wortham agrees: "If you are not
a clear communicator, it can become a problem."
Wortham feels comfortable enough with his advisor
to talk about both social and professional concerns.
However, he knows many other students who have
had problems with their advisors, mostly due to
lack of communication or, as in Sarah's case,
an advisor's lack of sensitivity to an issue.
If you don't feel comfortable
talking to your advisor or they are not willing
or able to work with you in solving a problem,
talk with other grad students, postdocs, or faculty
who you trust can give you a more objective perspective
on the situation. Decide whether the issue is
something that you can let go or a serious problem
that is hindering your progress and keeping you
from achieving your goals.
If it is a serious problem,
then depending on what the issue is and how issues
are generally dealt with in your department, you
might seek out the advice of the chair, the director
of the graduate student program, or the members
of your dissertation committee. In the chemistry
department at UMASS, where there are about 100
graduate students, "we know what everyone's doing,
so if necessary we can triage," says Uden. As
the graduate program director, he maintains an
open door policy for consultation.
Again, depending on what the
issue is, the student counseling center on campus
is another good resource for handling problems.
Their services are usually free and always confidential.
Talking with a counselor doesn't mean that there
is anything "wrong" with you. Many students use
the counseling center and for good reason. It
can be tremendously helpful to get an outside
perspective from somebody who is trained to help
people understand and achieve better relationships.
As a last resort, you can
always switch advisors. About 10 percent of the
more than 4,000 PhD candidates, including 574
chemistry students, who were surveyed in a recent
national study on doctoral education reported
that they had switched advisors.1 Speaking
from personal experience, if you need to switch,
do it. During my first semester of grad school,
I realized that my research interests were actually
very different from those of my chosen advisor.
At first, I thought that I would have to leave
school and reapply elsewhere the following year.
But my original advisor encouraged me to talk
with another faculty member with whom he thought
I would be more compatible. I felt pretty bad
for a while, feeling as though I had rejected
my original advisor. But both he and I got over
it soon enough. In fact, he ended up writing one
of my letters of recommendation and is still an
important professional contact.
Some people might caution
against switching, arguing that it stirs up too
much conflict and bad blood. But remember, it
is your degree. You need to respect your own goals
and needs. Moreover, it's probably better to switch
before more serious problems arise and you end
up severing a relationship with somebody who could
become a future colleague.
Leslie Pray is a freelance science writer based
in Leverett, MA. She has written extensively on
the educational and professional development of
grad students and postdocs for Science's Next
Wave and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She
is also a regular contributor to The Scientist.
Leslie earned several national awards from scientific
societies in recognition of her accomplishments
as a graduate student. She received her Ph.D.
in Biology from the University of Vermont.
1 Golde, C.M. &
Dove, T.M. 2001. "At Cross Purposes: What the
Experiences of Doctoral Students Reveal About
Doctoral Education" (http://www.phd-survey.org).
Philadelphia, PA: A report prepared for The Pew
Charitable Trusts.
Related Resources
Stanford
Graduate Student Handbook
Caltech
Graduate Student Handbook
Re-envisioning
the PhD (a project sponsored by the Pew Charitable
Trusts)
|