Good evening all,

I find my supervisor less caring towards me, both on a personal level and academic level,compared to his other phd. It gets to me, but I feel I simply cannot open up to them and address the issue. I feel less important and interesting and it makes me quite upset. How to stop caring?

Many thanks

As long as your supervisor provides feedback on your written work and some guidance when you have difficulties, you shouldn't let perceived differences interfere with your work.

Maybe the supervisor has worked with the other students for longer periods of time, so they are more confident around each other, or, maybe this is how you perceive their relationship without this necessarily being true.

In any case, you should concentrate on producing good quality work (that's why you are doing a PhD, not to make friends with your supervisor).

My supervisor also had her 'favourite' students. I think that these were students who did a PhD which was more relevant to her own work and interests. She often made no attempt to hide her preferences towards certain students. This happens in all departments but at the end of the day there is nothing you can do. As DrJeckull says, if your supervisor does his/her job properly, that's all it takes.

Supervisors are also human being and they get their emotions involved in their work and relation with their students. I do not believe that people can be totally fair to everyone. We can cap our emotions (which is called being a professional) but at one point it will blow up. I found people who hide their emotions difficult to deal with. My former supervisor was the nicest woman in the whole world and super nice to everyone but it was superficial. In reality she was very selfish and did not help anyone one way or another. What really cared was her status before she dropped the ball and moved to a different institute without telling anyone before the move was completed. Her behaviour ruined lives of at least 2 - 3 masters and PhD students, as some internationals who came to do PhD with her but she left them high and dry at the end and moved back to Norway where she was from. One student suffered financially as she could not secure another prof with a fund and therefore did not finish her PhD and moved back to her country after being 2 years in the program. I was the lucky one because I finished my PhD few weeks before she goes on her "sabbatical" from which she never returned. But ask anyone who talked to her, OMG she was the nicest woman in our department!