5 ms·

I’m starting my PhD this fall and the prospect of an advisor mismatch terrifies me (having seen this first hand). Thankfully my program has 2 or 3 faculty who a

I’m starting my PhD this fall and the prospect of an advisor mismatch terrifies me (having seen this first hand). Thankfully my program has 2 or 3 faculty who align well based off of my interviews but you never know…

enchiridion 4y ago
Don’t be terrified, just keep pushing. That’s what separates those who finish from those who don’t. I say this as someone who nearly did not finish a PhD and had terrible mismatch with my advisor. If you have a mismatch with your advisor, I have three pieces of unsolicited advice. 1. Find the community of your research topic early and get involved. Partially due to covid there are now many ~weekly seminars that meet online and post recordings on YouTube. They tend to be welcoming, and getting to know the people drives home the idea of “if they can do it so can I” 2. Pick a problem with extremely clear benchmarks. If you exceed the benchmarks, then congrats on your state of the art work! If not, write about the good parts and explain why the bad parts exist. 3. Write about your topic early and often. You don’t have to publish it necessarily, but writing has a clarifying effect acknowledged by every PhD student I know. Stay positive and remember to take care of yourself! Good luck!
chrisseaton 4y ago
Pick your advisor before you accept the PhD position.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I'm actually very surprised by many of the posts here. I know that in the humanities advisors are often picked which are only partly related to the research question. But I would have expected to find many more natural science/engineering PhD here. In those areas picking an advisor is directly linked to picking a topic, i.e. you pick the advisor because you want to work in his area of expertise.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Right - you should apply to an advisor and compromise on the university, not apply to a university and compromise on the advisor.

enchiridion 4y ago

Don’t be terrified, just keep pushing. That’s what separates those who finish from those who don’t. I say this as someone who nearly did not finish a PhD and had terrible mismatch with my advisor. If you have a mismatch with your advisor, I have three pieces of unsolicited advice. 1. Find the community of your research topic early and get involved. Partially due to covid there are now many ~weekly seminars that meet online and post recordings on YouTube. They tend to be welcoming, and getting to know the people drives home the idea of “if they can do it so can I” 2. Pick a problem with extremely clear benchmarks. If you exceed the benchmarks, then congrats on your state of the art work! If not, write about the good parts and explain why the bad parts exist. 3. Write about your topic early and often. You don’t have to publish it necessarily, but writing has a clarifying effect acknowledged by every PhD student I know. Stay positive and remember to take care of yourself! Good luck!

chrisseaton 4y ago

Pick your advisor before you accept the PhD position.

cycomanic 4y ago
I'm actually very surprised by many of the posts here. I know that in the humanities advisors are often picked which are only partly related to the research question. But I would have expected to find many more natural science/engineering PhD here. In those areas picking an advisor is directly linked to picking a topic, i.e. you pick the advisor because you want to work in his area of expertise.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  Right - you should apply to an advisor and compromise on the university, not apply to a university and compromise on the advisor.