Ask Doctoral Advising

An advisee who felt he had not accomplished anything during his first quarter in dissertation recently sent me an email to complain about it. The advisee told me that he had gotten feedback twice during the quarter from his mentor, and each time the advisee had responded to the feedback by making quick corrections and turning the work around within hours.

Basically my advisee wanted to know, “Is That All There Is?” to the dissertation. (Cue Peggy Lee.)  He did not feel that he had worked very hard. I agreed with him; he had not worked very hard. It appeared that his mentor had done more work so far on the advisee’s dissertation than the advisee had.

I also included a list of questions in that email – because I wanted to get a sense of just what he thought his role was in this process. I also wanted to know if he and his mentor had held the phone conference that I strongly encourage all of my advisees to hold during the first week or two in their first dissertation quarter. I think it is important for the mentor and mentee to get to know each other a bit. I tell them to establish the ground rules for their communication and turnaround times. I want them to talk about how this mentor approaches the proposal phase because mentors use many different (but successful) approaches to getting that proposal approved. And I asked additional questions.

The learner responded that he felt like I was yelling at him (well, I was) and no, he had not really asked any of those questions of his mentor.  I encouraged him to have that conversation as quickly as possible. He did. The learner let me know that it was an amazing discussion. He came away from it with a whole new perspective on and understanding of the dissertation process. He understood that just because he got on the dissertation horse, it did not mean that the horse was going to actually go anywhere unless the learner took the reins in hand. I think the learner has now settled into the saddle on his dissertation horse.