Interesting. Perhaps it's different in the US (I'm an academic in Australia at UNE), but in the Australian system, the system is designed so that the student ha

Interesting. Perhaps it's different in the US (I'm an academic in Australia at UNE), but in the Australian system, the system is designed so that the student has a great deal of freedom. Ultimately, it is geared around your two major milestones of confirmation (at 1 year) and submission (at 3-4 years). As your supervisor is not an examiner for your thesis at submission, this means that you are very much in control of what you do and write in your PhD. Your supervision team are your board of advisors, not actually your boss. (Though usually their advice is good, well-intentioned, and worth heeding.) This does mean that in grants, we have to be a little careful what we say will be done by PhD students, because it's always possible they'll head in a different direction instead! Actually, as I understand it (I'm a fairly junior academic) most Australian academics prefer capable independently-minded students. That's not just because we're nice people, but because that's how the incentives work -- we're all time pressured, so students who we can be confident will produce a good thesis with just a bit of direction and advice are like gold dust. Ones that we need to give more direction to are also good -- we've been through the process a few times and can design some PhD-shaped research for you to do. Not-so-capable independently-minded students I guess could be a bit trickier, as it could take quite a lot of time and effort to get their research into a shape that will be approved by the external examiner. (I'm yet to encounter the last category though.) But I'm yet to hear of a 2am email that a student must answer at 2am. But then, Australian PhDs tend to be 3-4 years' pure research, rather than 5+ years including lots of TA work, so there are a few differences in the system.