This isn't really a whinge as my sup is being pretty helpful at the moment. It just amuses me!

Last supervision:
Me: I was thinking of Journal X for this paper.
Sup: No, no, I don't think that's the right place. They're very picky there.
Me: Okay, how about Journal Y?
Sup: Yes, that's a definite possibility- have a think about it.

Yesterday:
Me: So am I okay to go with Journal Y for this paper?
Sup: Hmmm- have you thought about Journal X?
Me: Well yes, but you said they were very picky and you thought it would be rejected.
Sup: Well Journal Y is also very picky. I think you should go with Journal X.

Last supervision:
Me: So roughly how long would my thesis discussion need to be?
Sup: Well that depends on what you have to say.
Me: Yes, I realise that- I was just looking for a rough guide.
Sup: Well, you should be finding these things out for yourself. Your office mate completed her PhD last year- look at her discussion.

This supervision (after looking at my office-mate's discussion section in the thesis that was passed last year without corrections and spending a week writing mine):
Me: So here's my discussion- would you mind having a look at the headings and see if I'm on the right lines please?
Sup: No, no, this isn't really right- you don't need to include sections X. Y and Z. You need to start again really.
Me. Oh, right. Well I looked at my office mate's thesis as suggested and based mine on the structure she used.
Sup: Well I don't really like that discussion. You shouldn't be looking at that as an example.
Me: Right. Thanks.

Arrrgh! I'm sure it's not just my sup but these profs are like the kings and queens of contradictions!
Any other sups just like mine?!! KB

haha, my sup is EXACTLY the same! I'm supervising dissertations this year and wondering if I'm the same now! haha.

My advice - ignore everything she says until the last possible moment.

Ouch Keenbean. Oh well "it's all a part of it" that's what they say. But I totally get you. It is so frustrating!!!

It all sounds very familiar! I just wish they would make up their minds! Perhaps that is an academic trait we have yet to discover! ;-)

Mine doesn't seem that bad for that so far, but then I haven't hit serious writing yet.

I do have fun with him when it comes to experiments though... we had a meeting the other week where we looked through my results and discussed what I should do next. He suggested "experiment A"... a few days later I'm sitting in the lab running experiment A when he decides to come in and see how we're doing:

Him: What are you doing there?
Me: Experiment A
Him: What? You mean "experiment vaguely similar but not experiment A"?
Me: No... I'm doing experiment A
Him: (looking confused) Why are you doing that?
Me: Um... *lists reasons we'd discussed*
At this point he still looks a bit puzzled so I have to dig out the results I'd shown him at the meeting in order to explain why he suggested this particular experiment in the first place.

Maybe somebody should do some research into the foibles of supervisors. There might even be a PhD study in it! :-) Maybe there is a link to how they themselves were supervised? I can see a nice longitudinal study coming up.

I have to say, so far my two supervisors have been lovely. :-)

Mine are lovely too, but they do keep forgetting things we've previously discussed. Like, that we've got a target date for my first main bit of data collection. The last five or six times we've met, they've asked me if I have a start date in mind, and we've had exactly the same conversation word-for-word about why Thursday 16 June is ideal.

I got to the point where I was quite pleased mine forgot deadlines :-)

Last year me and my sup went through a lovely process of editing a publication, and it went through about 9 complete re-writes/revisions, this included completely removing key arguments, and yes, guess what, the final one, where she liked it, was EXACTLY the same as the original. :-s

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That just about sums up most supervisor's knowledge of what exactly students and research assistants / associates / fellows (yes, up to that level) in their care are up to.

I'd put that down to sheer volume of people and material they've got to cope with, and at times failure to manage that. Do you honestly think many of them read properly the work you are doing?

Mine was an exception in that he at least read what was being written and would discourage submission unless he was 99% certian the person would get throgh viva with no more than minor corrections. But even so, he'd lose track of whatever else you were up to.

One annoyance I had was he'd sometimes want to see me when I was in the middle of shutting down my high temperature rig (mid-afternoon was his normal call-up time). He expected me to drop everything (making it clear he didn't want me to delay), even when part of the shut-down procedure had to be completed to ensure the rig was safe. I could never get this through to him and sometimes had to be quite blunt.

I was based in a different building to him, which didn't help matters.

Ah, it's not just my sup then! I didn't think it would be!

To be fair, my sup is very thorough in her reading of my work and with her feedback, and also very prompt- I think the longest I have ever waited for feedback was 10 days, and that was an exception. But she has the memory of a sieve! So many times she has suggested a change to my work, only to change it back again one draft later, assuming it was a mistake that I had made- I hardly dare tell her that a lot of the time she is commenting on her own changes to my work!

I don't really blame her though- as you say Mackem, these guys have so much on their plates that I don't really expect her to remember every single little detail of our discussions, and I know from other members of the team that the same happens to them too, right up to fellow level! I go from being mildly amused to mildly irritated and back again!

Best, KB

Oh yes, it's all totally understandable, and kind of endearing unless it gets too frustrating! Absent-minded professors everywhere...

Had exactly the same thing - all the way through the ten drafts - and in the end he was correcting his own bits. After the viva he said, 'why didn't you tell me that's what you'd done? You went behind my back!' and I had to point out he'd seen it all, and corrected it 10 times. In the end, when I was doing corrections, he'd become so useless, that I was in total despair so went away and did them all myself. He never did see the final thesis.