Hi all,

I'm learning very, very little from my PhD. I feel terrible for saying this as my supervisors are lovely people but I'm not entirely sure they're reading my stuff. I get comments, very general verbal comments from one as they don't seem to like giving hard copy or feedback via email. The comments just tend to be you're doing well but no specifics. So really how do I know they're reading my stuff? The other has offered some feedback in the past but since acquiring a number of other students and appearing to me to be very stressed the feedback is again very general and sometimes when I ask specific questions these go unanswered. I'm analysing data which I really lack confidence in doing and I'm being told everything is correct but I'm convinced some of it isn't and don't want to waste time writing up stuff that is wrong and having to backtrack.

Any suggestions? I have no-one in the department I can ask.

I'm feeling very frustrated :-s

I only have 1 sup (my second is like a silent/paper supervisor so has no idea even what my PhD is on - he actually didn't know he was my sup until recently). She reads nothing I send her until its the final final version. This is very annoying, but I've come to realise that I'm going to have to get her a draft thesis and THEN go back and edit edit edit, rather than hone my writing skills throughout the PhD. It may be best to get on with the writing and then hand them a lot all in one go?

it may well be that your sups don't know how you should analyse your data and are bluffing, they don't know everything and i know far more about stats than my sup, which is often worrying!

How far into your PhD are you?

This sounds a bit like my experience towards the beginning. I used to write analyses every fortnight for my supervisor and we'd go through the stuff verbally (with me recording each session) but no written feedback. He generally wouldn't read stuff beforehand, but we'd go through the analysis together and he'd comment during the meetings on what I had written. I was always told that I was doing really well but wondered how he actually knew that...

He is now on sabbatical and my second supervisor has given me comments on the overall structure of the draft of my first chapter (my first actual written feedback from a supervisor came 2 years in for me), but says that there are details which we will need to address later.
I was speaking to another student in a completely different department about this and she said her experience was the same and that she used to get general feedback with more detailed feedback coming later.

I think if you are at an earlyish stage some supervisors might not give you really detailed feedback because you're going to have to come back to it at a later date anyway as you may not be in a position to address all of their comments fully and produce something which is thesis ready. If you are being told that everything is correct don't worry and get on with it. As long as you are on the right track (and you have to trust your supervisors here!) writing isn't a waste at all and the only way to learn to do it to a high standard is to practice.

However having said that I found it VERY difficult before I'd had any sort of written feedback. The only thing you can do really is to talk to your supervisors about your concerns.

just to add/moan, I wrote 40k words last summer (2009) and handed it to sup - she hasn't even opened the file yet. But I have been able to use most of that writing since, so it is not a waste :p

Thanks for responding, you've both been very helpful. Sneaks I think I'm in a bad position but I'd hate to be in yours! Let's hope everything works out in the end.

I'm in my third year and very little was achieved last year. I'm anxious to get on with it as I have no interest in the subject area (never had), want to complete on time and move on. That said, I have all my data collected and analysis and write up are all that is left. It was lack of feedback from supervisors last year that held me back, in my opinion. Would it be reasonable to pay someone to check my analysis and to provide guidance should it be wrong?

For stats I'd get someone to check it, if you get a clued up examiner then I always think that getting stats right is easy in the sense that its a silly thing that could get you in trouble and is relatively easy to get sorted. feel free to pm me anything if it is general SPSS stuff, I (scarily enough) do the stats help for all postgrads in my department :$

From my experience, there's no point getting someone else to read your writing. My sup has her own style and if its not that style then she doesn't like it. So you could get the top Harvard professor to write a thesis and she'd red-pen it all saying it wasn't right anyway. So if your sup is like mine then getting someone else to read your writing might mean a whole load of unnecessary faffing about changing/rechanging it

Hi Sneaks,

It would solely be for statistics as I feel my writing is good and thank you, I might take you up on your kind offer but I'll try going through everything again first.

Thank you!

If thats the case then I'd definitely get someone to look through - it means you can then leave that as 'finished' rather than worrying about it and having to go back to it in 6 months when you've forgotten which variables are what etc. (up)

Hi Sneaks,

I'm sending you a PM now as I have a couple of questions. Thanks for the offer of help.