been doing my phD for two years now, it's a 4 year part taught programme, so I'm not really 2 years into the research, more like one. But my supervisor palmed me off onto another pHD student working on a related projevt to supervise me 18 months ago and has only, in the past 6 months, paid me any atention whatsoever. The 18 months being supervised with her student was a disaster- it was basically no supervision. When my supervisor 'took over' in Jan, she suggested I started trying to develop a long term project - quite a big experiment but meant not much data on a day to day basis.

I've reached the concusion that this 'procedure' is not going to work on our system, for what I believe are sound theoretical reasons. My supervisor has decided that it's not working because I am incompetent, despite the absence of any evidence for this, it's more like she has appointed a post doc on her grant (I'm paid externally by an epsrc scholarship I earned for myself) who has no lab or desk space unless I am not her after next month.

I have a major progress assesment just before then and with no warning whatseoever, but after the arrival of the new group member, she has failed my progress report and recommended that i am not allowed to carry on. She claims I have no understanding of my project and has put that on the report. She has not, as far as I know, carried out any assessment which could lead her to reach this decision and I have as god a grasp on the project as her last PhD graduate student did when she completed successfully.

She has told me that the transfer report I have to write should be up to MPhil standard yet she wouldn't read the drafts, insisting I gave them to our new post doc whi has arrived from a totally unrealated field and knows very little about my project.

She seems to be doing her best to get rid of me and I'm really at a loss as to what to do, I should have had a second supervisor appointed 2 years ago but despite 4 request she has not done this.

Any ideas on what to do? I'm working 96 hours aweek to get this report beyond perfect, but it's only meant to be a 60 page interim thing, not a thesis! help!!

Good grief, what a horrible situation... I never cease to be amazed by some of the horror stories on here.

It looks to me as if your supervisor has been trying to get away with murder. You're entitled to regular input from two qualified supervisors, and instead you've been left floundering with only a PhD student taking responsibility for you - which isn't fair on you or them. (Even established academics aren't left to supervise students solo with no prior experience.)

I know the politics here must be horrendous - you have to work with these people - but I think you need to look into complaint/grievance/appeal procedures. From what you say, you have some very concrete examples of your supervisor's failure to do her job. Normally you'd have a second supervisor and maybe an advisor to talk to, but in your situation maybe you need to go to the head of dept. or someone?

Hopefully other people will be able to offer some more expert advice - I'm a newbie myself. Very best of luck anyway.

This seems to me to be a situation which is beyond the point where you can remedy itself....from my own point of view, I would recommend taking your complaint right up to the top....it's outrageous to have been treated in such a way...it seems like time to take the details to heads of department, Deans,....everyone! Follow the procedures but don;t give up!! You have every right to fight your corner and have the mistakes of others called to account....

This sounds horrendous but there should be procedures in place to help you deal with it. I'd take it as high as possible and let as many appropriate people as you can know about this, but also you need to go through the complaints procedure as set out by your department/faculty, probably starting with the director of grad studies or equivalent. I think most Student Unions have people who can help you through procedures like this and getting your side heard so you might want to try that too. I thought it was a requirement of most universities that everybody have a secondary supervisor - I'm surprised you can get on the system without having one at least nominally - so you might want to use that as a starting point. Good luck.

In a situation like this, you cannot go it alone, get the student union involved first of all, then go to see your faculty head, with the member of the SU who is most appropriate. Go as high as you can, but keep everything formal. Take notes, send copies of minutes of meetings to everyone concerned. Also inform your supervisor of what you will be doing and suggest that any comments are made formally until the problem is sorted - that is in writing, or with neutral witnesses present. she obviously has no idea of the frmal procedure, or she wouldn't be acting like this.

Hi Joyce, thanks very much for your reply- yes I have been thinking about going to the graduate research office, which is like the union for research students; it seems such a big step to take but given the circumstances don't feel as if I have much choice. I posted this thread to ask really what others would do in the same situation (I wouldn't wish this on anyone though), and yours plus the other really helpful responses have convinced me that fighting my corner is the only way to deal with this. So I'll try and get to see someone this week having had a miserable weekend writing. Thanks again

thanks megara, nichola and magictime for your advice, will try and find out what our department grievance procedure is- fore-warned is fore-armed and all that. trouble is my supervsior is the department reader so second to the 'boss' and a very established member of staff. She works part time anyway and has another 2 students including me who she does supervise because they are paid directly from her grant. I'm a bit of a 'cookoo' because I work within the group by wasn't appointed by her to do any of her rant funded work, she's just given me a (pretty dire) project whihc is not generating any data because it's a chemical modification of DNA which won't work on our synthetic structures.
Will keep you posted if I have any luck with the powers that be.....!

Ref your note about the procedure not working - do it again with something you know should give you the desired result, if it does then you have proof that it isn't you it is the application that is at fault. You may then be able to suggest a way forward. that will be progress and therefore worthy of a 'progress report'; no result is still a result after all. Put a 'reserved' notice on your lab space and your desk and make it plain you are staying put :-)

Don't let the supervisor get away with it - basically ruining your further education/life!! Sink your teeth in and make sure you come out ok. Best of luck!

Yup, monster supervisor with huge ego and inflated pride. Definitely a no no in the business world of Guanxi and a no no in Asia. With this kind of attitude it is best you call it a day and move on forward by doing something more productive and possibly more profitable. Most academics might have high IQs but may have to go on a course of EQ. But then again it is those with the theoretical and mathematical rigour that brought down the major banks in Wall Street. So begs the question is there integrity?

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I *had* to respond to you after seeing your many similar posts. What's with the Asia thing? The other day you made some offensive comment on a thread which needed to be removed. Now, you seem to be replying on every thread with something like this above, and every time you have some reference to how things are/are not in Asia. I am completely confused! Why are you doing this and what do you really want to say on this forum?

Perhaps, instead of interrupting the flow of otherwise normally proceeding threads with these irrelevant rants, it is worthwhile to collate these very similar views, all of which seem to share some insight on a certain continent, and start a separate thread and see if there are any takers leavng aside the sudden one-off new posties that seem to 'turn up' from nowhere to support the OP in these cases!

Emotional intelligence - this is actually quite interesting!!