Hey all! I'm getting a bit hacked off. My sup has 9 MSc students whose projects she is supervising, but basically it's down to me and a fellow PhD student to do all the actual day to day stuff, while she just joins us once a month or so for a meeting to check on progress. Now I don't mind doing this, I actually quite enjoy it and our MSc students are all really nice. BUT my sup is loading so much of their work onto the two of us doing our PhDs with her- we are doing EVERYTHING for the MSc students, things that really they are quite capable of doing (building databases for results, including all the menial stuff like photocopying and printing measures and testing packs for them, sending their questionnaires out for them etc), and still she insists on us doing more for them. We are spending more time organising and doing their project than they are! The last straw came yesterday, when our sup announced in our meeting that because the MSc students 'have a lot on in the next few months', me and my fellow PhD-er would be responsible for preparing and conducting seminars that they have to put on for their participants. I don't dispute the fact that they have a lot on, but I am meeting myself coming back at the moment, and I have a review in June, a presentation to do in June, a conference in June to prepare for, not to mention all the usual testing, paper writing, data entry, transcriptions, post-doc proposals, you name it. Grrrrr. I am not good at standing up to my supervisor, but equally I am not happy about literally doing half of their project for them. How much time does anyone else put in for their MSc students? All of my other PhD pals say this is unacceptable, but I don't know what the norm is! I'm more than happy to supervise them, but no-one did all this for us when we were MSc students! Sorry about the rant :-s

Would you expect your supervisor to do your donkey work for you? No. Then why are you doing the hard labour for these MSc students?! This stuff sounds way beyond the call of duty. I don't have MSc students myself but I can't imagine them getting their projects done for them elsewhere. As you said, no one did this for you when you were an MSc.
Is there a chance that while supervisor is clued up as to their timetables, that she's not as aware of yours? I'm (probably naively) wondering if telling her about your own work load might change her perspective. Either way I think that you and your fellow phd student should definitely have a word, it's absurd for you to be spending your research time doing someone else's photcopying.

this is totally unacceptable - as you see my by spoonfeeding thread, I am not too happy with similar behaviour! I know a sup who goes to France for the whole of the summer holidays and just leaves his MSc students to cope. So of course they end up crying to everyone else in the department! Although the attitude of the sup seems different to yours i.e. he thinks that the students should just get on with it, whereas yours seems to think its your job to sort stuff out for them.

Is your sup expecting a few publications to piggy back on from these students? Has your sup asked you to do this in front of the students or privately? - maybe you could convince the students its their job and you are there for reference only.

Hey guys- thanks, you are right! We had a word with her this afternoon and said it was just too much for us and she was a bit grumpy about it but has agreed that we can give some of the responsibility back to the MSc students, although she said they had to be closely 'supervised'. I don't mind supervising them, I just object to doing everything for them! I pointed out that the two of us really didn't have time to do both a PhD and an MSc at the same time, which is practically what we are doing, and she did seem to take it on board. She did ask whether we thought they were capable of doing the seminars by themselves...they're MSc students for goodness sake, not infants, they are perfectly capable! Grrrrr! And yes, she is hoping to get publications from it....anyway, thanks for the advice, hopefully it is sorted out now! Best, KB

Glad its sorted KB - I can't imagine my supervisors doing anything like that for me, granted my dissertation is theoretical. The most my supervisor does for me is email me things I would be interested in, and I'm really grateful that he thinks to do that. Personally I wouldn't want someone else to be doing things for me, it is my project and I need the experience to learn from, how are the MSc students going to cope with a PhD if they get so much done for them this year?!

Well done keenbean, nicely handled! Have a sprout (sprout)

I just read your posts! Goodness you do so much. Undergrads who do their final-year dissertation may need more attention but MSc students should be more independent. I'm glad you also told your supervisor. Hope it goes well from now :-)
saturday satchi

ah, maybe she's hoping to push out some publications then and wants you to do the actual doing of the research so the method is correct? I'd ask to be on the publications if you are doing all the work!

Thanks guys, it's good to have other people's opinions on this. I think she genuinely doesn't realise how busy we are and how much of our time this is taking....hopefully she does now. She even texted me last night to tell me to take it easy over the weekend so I think she had realised how stressed I am right now. It was the same when I was the TA on her module last semester- I spent sooo much time doing all the organising and obtaining the (hundreds of) readings for the students, copying them all, dealing with all of their queries, running the seminars, maintaining the module online site and she even made me attend all of her lectures just in case she needed me to walk downstairs and get the technician for her if she had technical problems! Grrrr! Oh well, she is generally a very good supervisor and we get on really well but now and again I just think DO IT YOURSELF!! Best, KB