Hi all,

I'll try to summarise my PhD thus far and then explain the advice I need. My studies began really well up until the year before my transfer exam - it was around then that I had serious family problems that essentially left me working as a part time carer for a family member. I did the best I could to keep up with work despite this, but as the stress from home and the pressure from work built up my progress screeched to a halt. I felt unable to discuss the highly personal I family problems with my supervisors and was left with no where else to turn, and ultimately I failed my transfer to PhD, being told instead to finish an MPhil due to not having enough time to finish all the work. I appealed this based on the department's poor support in various areas and explained the family problems that had affected me and this was accepted and I was granted a very reasonable extension.

BUT I'm having problems even now. My tutor has become increasingly aggressive and insulting towards me.,I understand they are frustrated with my lack of progress in the past but they are aware of the circumstances of my appeal - I was both underfunded and seriously compromised by problems at home. Nevertheless they keep sending me very curt emails about lack of certain work, absence from whatever seminars that I wasn't told to attend, times when I replied to emails but then had to change statements later, times when I DIDN'T reply to emails fast enough... I once emailed them personally asking for advice about submission, and they gave me a very angry reply which they forwarded to all my other supervisors and tutors! The embarrassment, I just wanted to die.

Cont.

I want to maintain a good relationship with all the academics I need to work with, and I understand in the past I was not a great student, but I don't think this justifies the way my tutor is treating me now. They are very high ranking and not neglectful so I don't think I can request a change to another tutor. What should I do about this unpleasant tutor who seams determined to be so unkind?

I should probably mention that I'm a student with complex disabilities as well, and these aggressive emails from my tutor are pressuring me into some severe anxiety attacks, any advice on how I can ask this person to not be so cold and unconstructively critical?

This is a very common situation. All you can do is try to appeal to your supervisors' reasonable sides, and tell them that you are trying your best, you find it better if they do ABC and not CDE and that you have set these goals for yourself based on their feedback and ask them whether they agree.

This way you are trying to ascertain what they want and work on something that is good for both of you.

Bear in mind that some supervisors are just not reasonable though and you can be the best student in the world and still not good enough for them. This is their problem, not yours, but you have to learn how to manage this.

This is terrible and you should really just believe in yourself and your work. The worst position to be in is to crave their approval. In my experience they only give it to you when you are useful to them or if you are anyway insisting on making it with or without their approval. Cut out the emotional/ personal emails to them. they are not your friends and they are not mentors in the old sense of the world where a teacher was also a personal guide. If at all they encouraged it, it was to be able to have you at a weak position, which you seem to be in now. Also get a good analyst/ therapist that you can talk to, i would not have made it so far into my PhD without analytical support and a building a small network of strong student support. Students especially at research level are the most abused and exploited class in the world especially in terms of intellectual and emotional abuse. Don't become another victim. They treat it as a rat race and try to kill competition in this time by destroying many students. Don't aim for a 'good' relationship with them, aim for a professional one. Treat them as a class like you would the local politician, police and mafia in your area. You need to know how to communicate to get work done and be professional but these people are not your circle of support or warmth. At best they form strategic alliances at different junctures. Also you need to know your work better than anyone else. Find people you can trust to talk to about your difficulties and learn on your own too. Supervisors at this level don;t teach, they're more like patrol police or quality check trying their best to keep people out of the academia. But academic is the entire field of learning and it belongs to the students and tax payers ie rest of society. You have to be a lot more self-reliant than you sound now to survive.

As for the embarassment etc etc they betrayed your trust and exposed you when you were vulnerable and it is they who should be embarassed and feel ashamed not you. Your trust is however misplaced. Please don't trust them ever again. Get focussed on your work, develop your own inner critic, attend conferences/ seminars, even just to listen, read in your area widely, aim for publications on your own and always come back to why you want to do this research. Do try to create atleast a tiny support network of students you can talk to about these things or even someone outside. Please keep aside family problems while you focus on your work or take a year off to deal with that and then come back. Get a good therapist to help you keep boundaries with these things. Just one other person to talk to can make a difference. Your PhD is about your relationship with your work and with knowledge and learning not with the rats in the advisor chairs. Always remember that! Sending you lots of strength and support as you find your voice in your research again.