My advisor at the beginning was supportive. Then, she became overly critical, inconsistent with her advice-even avoiding wanting to talk to me. Chapters 1-4 she emailed back for a billion revisions and I did them and polished it. Well, now I have been working on my grounded theory and am planning on getting chapters 5-6 done in the next 2 months. I think I'm almost done with 5. I haven't sent her sections of chapter 5 (my grounded theory) b/c when i did that with other chapters she couldn't see the forest through the trees.

Anyway, she now tells me she will be out of the office alot in the next 2 months. I emailed her whether we could still correspond and how worried that made me with respect to our correspondence and she said, "probably not" She didn't say we'll work it out. Nothing. I'm worried about finishing this.

She won't let me send it to other committee members until its done and polished with her. Although I think I am going to send it to them anyway. I'm so stressed out. There are no words. Do i fire her? I'm supposed to defend in November. What do I do? I feel like she wants to sabotage my finishing this. It has taken almost 8 years. I'm so tired. I feel like giving up but I know I can't. Please, any words of wisdom on this anyone. I'm new here so I really don't know how this works but I need any kind of advice. Warmest, SoulStar.

So you have two months until you submit, and your supervisor decides to essentially go AWOL? That's not acceptable. The final few months of your writeup is the time when you most need the support of your supervisor. I would have another discussion about this with your supervisor, and really push your case if they continue down to same line. If push comes to shove, go to the department head or equivalent for support. Who cares whether you ruffle a few feathers - if it means you get your PhD.

Hello Soulstar,
You are describing exact situation that I have experienced during my PhD. My supervisor couldnt "see the forest through the trees" as well so she didnt even want to look at chapters before all manuscript was ready and she was also insisting (even forbidding) to send the manuscript to other members of committee before it is corrected by her. She wasnt helpful in interpretation of results also, so she started to get the idea of my work after all thesis was completely written. When it was written, she was out of office for 3 months! and email contact was not possible as well. Basically I was in deep s....t. I needed to postpone my defence few months. I stayed without money, waiting for her corrections to finish my thesis. She was changing mind all the time, made me re-write stuff and finally coming back to first versions of chapters.. Living hell that took a lot of wasted time.
But finally I defend, became a Dr. and trying to not fall into working with people like that any more in my life!
I trained my patience during this PhD and learn a lot of autonomy due to the conditions I was put into. I learnt also to be suspicious, especially when things look good on the paper.
Wish you courage to finish your PhD
Pati.

thank you for your responses I really appreciated your support.

Do you think that I should ask my advisor to whom do I speak with and confer with while she is gone? If I am taking dissertation 800 then that is an independent course, but I am still afforded an academic Phd chair at all times, right? She is gone a total of 25 days this semester.

I wish I could offer more advice but being in an Australian system (which my PhD had no courses/was purely research and no VIVA or qualifying exams) I don't know whether what I can say will be helpful.

I'm surprised you don't have a second supervisor, here in Australia we have to have two, so if one is away the other will be around. This system has worked well from my experience.

I found that the closer I got to submission, the less I heard from my supervisors. It was like I was being 'weaned off' so to speak.

I don't know about the PhD Chair because supervisors are more than just supervisors, they are research academics and have research to conduct, sabbaticals or study leave to go on etc, they aren't going to put their own careers on hold for yours, or lose out on opportunities.

Speak with the advisor, discuss your concerns regarding what can be done, but be prepared for a backlash. Academia is no stranger to politics.

A supervisor is allocated a set number of contact hours for each of their students per week. In other words, they are being paid for this service. A student is well within their rights to complain if the supervisor is not keeping their end of the bargain.

The problem with many academics is that they take on more students than they can handle. The ones that do this tend to be the ambitious movers and shakers, who are also inundated with other research and administrative commitments. Students take a back seat, unless they are part of the PhD student production line of publications with the supervisor's name on it.