I have been given a pass with minor for PhD. However, the supervisors are not cooperating to give timely feedback so I can proceed with corrected version and their behaviour is very confusing. I am loosing patience at this stage as I need to graduate on July as the correction are very minor and already discussed with the internal examiner. I don't know what has caused this communication breakdown, but one of my supervisor is no more around this institute and the current one is biased against me as I am not British and trying to seek British jobs and he already has his British students that he wants to see successful and hopes that I return back home. Well, I am not. I have full confidence of Landing with a postdoc because I am already working with some and everything is going very good. In that case, I am not sure if I should give a **** about what this supervisor thinks and is acting vengeful and want to punish me by delaying my submission or should I listen to him considering has has been with me for so long and no doubt, without his support reaching so far would have been challenging. Which is why it is coNfusing as to why he is delaying in giving me the last few feedbacks so I can submit soon and graduate in July. I don't want to spoil relations with him as he is the next HoD from September and it will look good on my job applications to mention that if he wrote me the reference letter. However, this is now going a bit too far. I, along with other international students, are very upset already for seeing British students passing their phd's before us and getting jobs before us. I have allowed that already, all I am asking him is to give me the feedbacks so at least I get my PhD. But, if he continues to make it so difficult, then I will submit any ways and relations between us will decay.

Hello

Sorry if it is an obvious question, but are you chasing it up when you don't hear back?

From what I've heard it is best not to make enemies/fall out with folk, as academia is a very small world and you'll see each other at conferences etc, not to mention the reference part!

Does anyone else have any experience of this?

Hi Tudor_Queen

Yes...have been chasing him since last Thursday evening when we met. He could genuinely be occupied with personal stuff, who knows. But the problem is he is been with me for so long, could just drop a line. Maybe will hear from him later in the evening.

I am giving up on graduating in July as this week is my last chance, but is wont push my luck and jeopardise relations with him. He is too powerful for me take on and besides, he is not so bad. Always has been there to read my drafts but I am not that particularly impressed about his intellectual abilities. He is if anything, more political than intellectual. He himself is not British, he is European and, frankly, there is not much difference between them and me, like all Europeans, even people from commonwealth have to make it in the Anglo-Saxon higher academic institutions. Coming from the commonwealth, I have advantages that he does not have as comes from EU. so, the politics is complicated as his idea of success is not to promote a commonwealth scholar as we are a threat to EU people seeking same jobs in UK. Fair enough, I get that. And supporting a white English man as opposed to a postcolonial third world academic scholar is not as critical on his CV. I hm Happy to just get the certificate and gradually move away from him.

Thursday isn't actually so bad - he may have been away for the weekend.

Good luck.

If you got touch with him on Thursday, you can't expect him to respond by Monday even if it is urgent and you put that in your email heading.

If he doesn't respond by end of play tomorrow, phone him up or send another email. I would strongly advise you not to damage your relationship,especially at this very final stage. You need him at your side.

I am not sure why you need any input from your supervisor for very minor corrections. You've passed, it's your thesis and you defended it successfully (well done btw), just do the corrections and send them to your internal. I did that last year, not because I thought my supervisors would deliberately be slow and try and hold my graduation back, but because I knew I could make the necessary corrections without advice and they would prefer I sorted it out for myself.

It may be that your institution is different and supervisors have to sign off corrections as well, in which case ignore me - just call him, be polite and ask him for a date when he will respond. Check that when he does respond you can use his comments and can submit the corrections without asking him to give further feedback.

You will appear on his CV / grant applications as a successful PhD student, so he is not going to prevent you from graduating in the long term.