My supervisor is a senior Prof at my university, now I'm at the end of my second year of PhD program and passed upgrade in March. In the relationship between my supervisor and I, I always feel frustrated and stressful since he always ignore my meeting emails and Teams messages(shown as read). Sometimes, though we set up a meeting time and add it into the calendar, he's usually late for 20-30mins without informing me or cancel the meeting for a reason. Under this pandemic situation, in the past 5 months, we haven't contacted each other after my upgrade, now he doesn't reply to my email of new meeting again. I know he is quite busy in dealing with teaching sessions and his own research work on the senior Prof role, however, I still feel a bit disrespectful on his behaviors, I'm hesitating between talking with department chair, changing supervisor(may change my research area and delay my progress) and continue working with him.

How should I do? Plz Help Me

Hi VenessaChoi,

I am sorry I didn't reply earlier.

The PhD student- supervisor relationship is critical to all PhD students and differs depending on circumstances. As your supervisor is a senior professor he will inherently have less time for you but the upside is they should have more grants and a bigger network. I can't speak from experience as my supervisor was a junior lecturer when I started and had plenty of time to help me but has zero grants and a negligible network. I know that doesn't help you right now but I am pointing out there are advantages to having a senior prof as a supervisor and you can potentially maximize them in the long term.

If you are having trouble arranging meetings a trick is to be explicit in what the meeting is about. Bringing a project plan, results or a conference abstract can sometimes make them take the meeting more seriously. Other than getting a second supervisor would be a massive benefit. At my university all the professors are expected to have second supervisors for their PhD students for the same reasons you have mentioned. You can either mention it to your supervisor or the head of department. Although it might be easier if you approach someone else in the department yourself for some support and then ask if they would be one of your supervisors. Junior faculty especially might have time to help you with simpler matters that the Prof would find superfluous, and they might want to get a PhD completion for their stats. You can also ask postdocs or research fellows to help you but their are rules about them being full second supervisors.