I had another talk with supervisor A via e-mail now. He re-assured me that discussing quitting with him was a good idea, in fact he feels that other PhD students should be in more frequent contact with their supervisors and able to speak openly with them about issues they are facing. In turn I re-assured him that I won't quit. He said that he is grateful for that and said that he can not think of a single reason on why I should quit and he can think of MANY reasons why I should stay. He suggested getting another advisor but not a formal supervisor, just someone to get occassional advice from on a specialized part of my thesis.

I feel better, and it seems we have worked things out for now :)

I've come to this late but I just wanted to offer my sympathies for that meeting and say I'm so glad you've resolved things :) I find it immensely hard to take criticism, especially when it's given by a ball-busting academic with no sense of tact (there seem to be a lot of them about).

Your sup A sounds really committed to helping you, and it sounds as if a third person might help plug any gaps in his experience. Other than that, would it be worth emailing Sup B and saying that his criticism was unexpected but that you respect his experience and would like him to help you improve. It's a good test aside from anything else, once the fit has passed these people sometimes back right down and say you're not so bad!

It's amazing how politics-conscious these supervisors are if they're junior. Both myself and my fellow student regularly have our work passed by our on-site team, only to have it destroyed by the senior external - and yes, our on-sites just sit there nodding. I once lost it and told the external "well they all passed this last week!" in the middle of the meeting because I was so exasperated!

Exactly! My supervisor A went through my 5 drafts of this document with fine tooth comb and we produced what was considered rubbish by Sup B together! Yet, sup A sat there nodding and silent, letting me take all the c#ap... I considered saying something along the lines of what you said either in front of sup B or alone with just sup A, but I held back. Thoughts like "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" came to mind and I didn't launch into any attacks on sup A. After all, I have no other support and can I really expect a supervisor to stand up for me even though it looks bad for him? I mean I have to be realistic: of course supervisors put themselves and their carreers first. We as students are lucky if we can any consideration at all....

This older supervisor, respected or not, has been rude, and perhaps unwise in the strength of his criticism, but this is something you can deal with. The object of criticism is to be constructive, and your other supervisor should have been helping you to view this in a positive light (your other supervisor seems either a bit of a wimp, or too scared of his own position to stand up to the other one). However, you have had your rant, and this has told one of them how you feel, which is good. The other one might be a bit more tricky, they probably have a bigger ego, so, what I would do is take a smallish part of your work, and try rewriting it, taking on board what they have said. Send it to the person with a note asking if this is more the style they require, and how much you would appreciate their comments before you go further. keep it low key and see what the outcome is. I expect they will be pleased to help. Having someone say how good something is isn't necessarily the best type of supervision, we are all on a learning curve, and part of it is learning how to write, and learning how to cope with critiques of your work, better sooner than later. Think positive if you approach it in the right frame of mind only good can come out of this.

======= Date Modified 18 Nov 2009 18:08:09 =======
Hi

Can I just get this straight: you produced something that by your own admission was far from your best which was heavily criticised by a very experienced individual with knowledge of the field. Your primary supervisor, for whom you are his first (?) and only (?) student didn't intervene?

Just out of interest, why did you take it so personally about the criticisms to your work? Is it because you thought that the criticisms to your writing were true and justified or because you had had hoped that your supervisor's input would have protected you from such an onslaught?

I'm just interested in this situation and am trying to see the situation as objectively as possible. Without being negative or unfair to you, it seems that you got a perhaps overly harsh savaging, to which you reacted on a personal level instead of a professional one (i.e. take away the insults and make sure that future work was not vulnerable in the same ways by using them to improve). Furthermore, your new and junior supervisor was unable to defend you because if he is a newbee in the department he has no place in telling one of the old hands what is right and wrong. That is the way life is. A new PI doesn't get to tell a 20 year experienced professor how to do things. Remember, he is on a learning curve too.

With some time to think about things and having let the dust settle a little, does any of this apply to your situation, as observed from a totally external viewpoint based on your descriptions?

You know, what pisses me off with this criticsm is this: the document I have produced is supposed to outline the simulation study I am planning to do. I mean, I will end up writing computer code based on this plan. The plan is not supposed to be a formal piece of writing in any sense, and was a long way off from being polished enough to include it into thesis. I merely wanted to get technical details right and thought that is what the meeting will be about. I planned to start coding after I get the details right, and then after I finish with that, go back to the document and give it appropriate structure and finishing touches for inclusion into thesis. Sup B went on and on about how it is not clear from my document the motivation for doing the simulation study and what are my data sources etc. Well, I have written documents on both data sources and motivation for doing this study in previous meetings which he seemed to have completly forgotten. This was not meant as stand alone document, and I will have previous chapters in my thesis explaining everything in detail before including this (polished) description of the simulation study. I mean I don't just plan to stick it into thesis as is as the first chapter or something.

I feel lots of supervisor B comments stemmed from the fact that he was too lazy to read technical details of the document so he sort of skimmed through it and because he had to say something, he decided to thrash my general writing style (even though again, this document was not even close to ready for inclusion in the thesis). UGH.

Adem, I looked it up and my own supervisor is not THAT junior. He has been in academia for 6 years and gotten a couple of promotions during that time. He has other PhD students that he is on a supervisory team for (as third or fourth supervisor), but I am his first and only PhD student that he is the principal supervisor to.

Acdemic B has worked in academia for 22 years, was principal supervisor to 12 students and secondary supervisor to many more. His experience and expertise are second to none, HOWEVER if he is too busy or too lazy to read what I send him in detail, his comments can still be somewhat of the mark. Also he has zero tact when delivering the cristicisms, and one of his favorite saying to students is "I feel like with you the lights are on, but noone is home". I mean how condecending can you be? With all due repsect to him , he is an arrogant, insensitive a$$hole.