Signup date: 12 Jun 2015 at 10:54pm
Last login: 14 Jun 2015 at 2:28am
Post count: 1
I'm a PhD student about 1.5 years into my degree.
My supervisor fluctuates between being friendly to very formal and cold. She is fixated on the fact that I am not in my office 9-5, 3-4 days a week, and is very abrasive when raising this point. She says I am too emotional, unprofessional, and this not how I should behave as a PhD student, and that I am being paid to do this research.
I'm really upset with how little progress I have made so far in my PhD. I only have a systematic review finished and even needs a lot more work. I feel that I have not been given proper guidance by my supervisor. She can rarely answer any of the methodological questions I have and her feedback is usually only concerned with writing style and structure/clarity, rather than methods and analysis thus leaving a number of problems being unnoticed until someone else (e.g. 2nd supervisor) reviews my work. I received feedback for my draft transfer to to PhD report today from my second supervisor, and there are quite a lot of things in my review that need to be fixed before it is of publishable quality.
My relationship with my supervisor has been very strained since last November. In November she was angry with me and said I should be working at a faster pace. Now she is fixated with me not being in my office all the time. I feel that my supervisor is completely unapproachable and that anything I say or do will only be met with harsh criticism. Some times I get conflicting advice from her. Upon receiving feedback today she commented that the point of the PhD is to learn how to write and do research, yet said I should send her a "perfect" transfer report next Wednesday. She said she is "concerned" about me but when I tried to explain my feelings she said that I am being too emotional and unprofessional.
I feel completely trapped and hopeless.
What do I do?
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