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I am a PhD student. My advisor is great, but like all academics is very busy (administrative duties, other students, research...).

What happens almost every time I try to have a meeting, since the beginning of my PhD, is the following:

  • We set some date, say Thursday at 10AM.
  • He isn't in his office at 10.
  • At 10:30 he arrives.
  • It turns out Thursday isn’t great, actually, so let’s meet Monday instead.
  • Comes Monday morning, and the meeting is postponed to Monday evening, and then to Tuesday.
  • But Tuesday is a busy day too, so let's say Thursday at 10?
  • But at 10 there are emails to be sent, and more meetings, so let's say 5.
  • At 5 he isn't in his office, but at 6 we can meet, meaning I come to his office, sit, and wait sometimes half an hour until he's done writing emails, calling people...
  • Then we can finally start talking. Six days after the initial meeting was set, at 6:30PM.

I think over the past three months I’ve been able to have a total of five to six hours of meeting with my advisor.

Writing all this, I realize I’m a bit upset, and I’m afraid it’s going to show if I try to talk to him about it. Because let’s be honest, I don’t want to continue like this. I cannot plan my work day, sometimes I have questions that could be answered immediately but I have to wait weeks, and it’s just generally an unpleasant experience. (And while I know some people are able to work very late into the night, I basically become useless after 6PM on a normal day...)

Of course the long-term solution is to become an independent researcher and not rely on meeting with my advisor. After all, I won’t have an advisor all my life. But right now, I’m not quite there yet. How should I approach my advisor about this, without sounding selfish or upset?

To clarify: yes, whenever I have questions I try to exhaust all possibilities before asking my advisor: internet, my advisor's other students, other people in my lab (though this is a very specialized field, few people can help me if this is about my research). But for some questions, either I am not able to find an answer elsewhere, or there is no alternative to asking my advisor, e.g. "do you think I should go to this workshop", "where do you think I should submit this paper", "is my abstract ready to go", "I found this and it looks promising, should I continue in this direction or stick to the original plan"...

user54760
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    "sometimes I have questions that could be answered immediately". You cannot count on meetings with your supervisor for that. Use your email instead. – Alexandros May 27 '16 at 09:32
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    If you have urgent and easy questions, you generally have other people in the lab being able to answer – Blue_Elephant May 27 '16 at 09:42
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    @Alexandros When I send an email, he generally prints and reads it during our meetings. – user54760 May 27 '16 at 11:00
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    @Blue_Elephant Yes, obviously I ask them first or even ask on the relevant stackexchange site... when I can. But sometimes it's not possible (e.g. "is this revised version of my abstract now ready for publication", "I've been invited to this conference, what do you think"...). ("Immediately" isn't to be understood literally, but there is a difference between "weeks" and "I need a few minutes to think about it"). – user54760 May 27 '16 at 11:09
  • Does your advisor have other students? Do you ever talk to them? Your most recent comment makes it sounds like you don't. Did you talk to anyone about what your advisor was like beforehand? I had an advisor with a similar approach to meetings, but I knew about that going in and it didn't bother me. It sounds like it bothers you, so why did you pick this advisor? – Noah Snyder May 27 '16 at 14:29
  • @NoahSnyder He has other students, with whom I speak a lot, yes. But they're more advanced than I am and don't need to meet as often as I do. According to them this is a rather recent change (when I started my PhD more or less...) due to ever-increasing administrative duties and a big research project coming to an end. I was already working with this advisor before my PhD, in fact: as I said, he's great (just disorganized I think), and he was more available at the time. I also wasn't working literally on the same floor let alone the same city, so "meeting" was a more formal affair. – user54760 May 27 '16 at 14:58
  • (I had to take a train to go meet him, so postponing the meeting every day at the last minute was not possible because it would have started to get expensive. Now I'm here all week long so...) – user54760 May 27 '16 at 15:04
  • your situation is really complicated for more than one reason. First, you should not complain about an advisor not having time for you, BUT it's a part of his job to help you with what you are doing anyway. Second, he seems really desorganized, which happens quite a lot when someone has new responsabilities. That part is the most annoying, because you can't help him on that. Third, and not the least important, he's postponing your meeting because he thinks you are always up for it, you have to tell him it's not like that, by explaining him you're in a bad position a the moment. – Gautier C May 30 '16 at 07:33
  • @GautierC Not to mention that if my advisor never had time for me I would feel like I have a right to complain, but here I'm complaining about meetings being indefinitely postponed. I understand having a busy schedule, and wouldn't have cared if he had told me from the beginning "let's meet in two weeks" instead of "let's meet next week" and then postponed the meeting five times. Secondly, I'm not "in a bad position at the moment", I dont understand where you got that. – user54760 May 30 '16 at 07:42
  • @user54760 Maybe you can ask him to setup a meeting every 2 weeks for example ? that way, he will know that it is your turn, something like that. You can't complain, but you can give him some clues about what you think, without being impolite. Currently, you are wasting time in your PhD, which for me, is called "being in a bad position" ^^. – Gautier C May 30 '16 at 07:46
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    @GautierC you should not complain about an advisor not having time for you I think that is a very reasonable complaint. – Davidmh May 31 '16 at 06:24
  • @Davidmh You can't complain about time. I mean, it will really destroy the relation with his advisor. But you should come with a proposition to fix the problem, like my example. – Gautier C May 31 '16 at 06:41

2 Answers2

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Tell him you would like to have more guidance, and ask to have regular meetings with a fixed schedule, same time every week. This way he will have a permanent entry on his calendar, and be more likely to reschedule tasks around it.

Some weeks you'll have more results, some others you'll have less, but it will be good if you can keep having at least a short chat every week.

Davidmh
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Where is your funding from? If you have somewhat independent funding (NSF or other external fellowship) I would recommend making yourself less available. Set a firm meeting time that reoccurs once a week at the same time and place. If your adviser isn't there in the first five minutes, leave and don't agree to meet again until the next scheduled meeting time. This might annoy your adviser but if you are independently funded there is nothing he or she can do about it. They will eventually adjust to retain you.

If you depend on your adviser for funding you may be more forced to adapt to their way-of-working. If it really bothers you, you could change advisers and work with somebody more consistent. I know this isn't a good option. My adviser was the same way and it made everything much harder to get publications out. Luckily it is just a PhD and not a marriage.

DBB
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    It's weird to think of your relation with your advisor as a purely financial matter... –  Jan 03 '18 at 08:38
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    I'm searching my memory to find that poor unfortunate adviser who had to adjust to their student's schedule. So far, my search has reached year 2002 with no positive results. –  Jan 03 '18 at 15:16
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    If your adviser pays you, they are your boss... if you pay yourself they are lucky you work for them. – DBB Jan 03 '18 at 20:33
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    Alienating your coworkers, regardless of your relationship to them, is generally a bad idea. Regarding "they will eventually adjust to retain you", if you keep that attitude, they may also consider you aren't worth the trouble, or not go out of their way to help you when you need it. – Davidmh Jan 04 '18 at 09:55
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    skipping scheduled meetings on a constant basis is unprofessional and is alienating even if you're a professor. OP can't let themselves be disregarded on a daily basis and be expected to maintain self-respect and project enthusiasm. – DBB Jan 04 '18 at 10:48