I am PhD student in CS and I have a budget to employee a student assistant, but I'm not sure how I can manage them.

Unfortunately, my supervisor moved to another university. I'm still working with him, however, now I have no any another members in the research group here. The problem is that I have no idea what I can give a Student assistant as work. As I worked as a student assistant, usually I had my own research theme and took a part of research in the group. But there is no chance to enter new students to my research because I'm not a professor and I can't give a research theme as their graduation projects. Then I have no idea for what kinds of work that I can give them who can work for 40 hours/month. I think it's better to employee a student assistant if I have a budget though.

Well, I need to write some documents in the local language, so I think I can give it to a student assistant as work. But it's only one or two times for a year. Is there any tips to manage students who only can 40 hours/month?

Thank you very much in advance.

Hi. I think you should discuss with your supervisor first, and ask him/her to introduce someone who is really knowledgeable in the research area. If your supervisor is a well-socialized professor, he/she should have many collaborators and can introduce them to you (maybe as 2nd supervisor). In this case, you have a high chance that you can work on the project with the collaborator for the long-term. Finding secretly new supervisor have a risk that makes professors angry (it often depends on their personality though). And when you find conflicts in the comments between your supervisor and another professor, it's sort of crisis.

However, networking with researchers is really important in my mind and often it helps to accelerate your projects. I hope you will find someone who can help you.

Thank you very much for your kind advice. As you mentioned, I feel that I need time to think. And probably I need to find a supervisor at conferences because I think there are not anyone who submit the paper to same conference as me at the current university. Participating in another phd program might be an option for me.

I totally agree with that "the fear of being wrong is worse than being wrong". I couldn't behave so at least for last half year though. When I worked at the office, I felt rapid and pounding heart rate from the some point after the supervisor blamed me. Literally I screamed in the office for many times. Nowadays I feel better because I work at home because of Covid-19. It happen again when I think about my phd somethime though. First I might need to fix this mental issues.

Anyway again, I appreciate for your advice.

Thank you very much for your comment.

No, I don't have. There is any post-doc research for the project too. Theoretically, the current supervisor is my secondary supervisor because he can't supervise me as the primary for my PhD (under the current PhD program, I need to find the primary supervisor in another university).

thank you very much for your advice. It might be nice to ask him directly. Honestly, I'm really afraid of that though. At least I feel that he doesn't believe in me. When I don't agree with his comment, he probably thinks that I can't understand his comments because of my English skills (this is really ridiculous). After presenting the first paper in a conference last year, he blamed me for the paper because he was really frustrated about the result. And then he has also told me that he will move to another university (actually, he had already applied for another professor position when I started to work, I guess). He also told me that "forget about project matters, and just do your PhD research" because there is not anyone (except me) who works on the project in the university. I'm now thinking that I work for next few months, and if I can't get any good results, I just leave the university and find a new job.

Hi. I need a bit of advice. I'm now currently doing phd student in Computer Science and I am facing troubles with my supervisor.

I am now finishing my 1st year of phd, however, I couldn't get any good results. The biggest problem is that the relationship with my supervisor is not good. I had meetings with him in several times, however, it has never worked well. When I present the progress, he only gave comments that the project direction is different from what we discussed last time or he can't understand (he said the progress was good only when I present research idea without any implementation). I know that I might be not good as a phd student, however, for me, his comments were too general and does not contain tips to implement or research direction from my perspective. After every meeting, I lost confidence and I didn't know what I should do next. Even if I invest much time including weekend time for the project, the progress made him angry and irritating.

Now he moved to another university this year and he is now supervising me unofficially. I didn't have a meeting for the last few months because I felt a large depression and I couldn't make much progress. Covid-19 makes my situation worse because I usually do experiment employed many users, and now it's hard to perform. This is why I feel the necessity to have a meeting with the supervisor, however, I can't expect any good results from past experience. I have no one to discuss this. I have only few colleagues and I usually work alone. I think a lot about quitting and finding a new job, but still I am looking for a way to turn around the current situation.

Could anyone give me tips or advice about how I can cope with the current situation?

Thanks.