There are two basic kinds of PhD supervisor.
There are the facilitators, who take some responsibility for their students’ progress and generally try to be helpful. Then there are the barriers, who see their job as to stop you progressing unless you meet their expectations (which may or may not be made clear).
The facilitator will try to give regular feedback, taking an interest in the work as it progresses and trying to point you in the right direction. The barrier will tell you to go away and come back when you have something worthy.
The facilitator will try to help you get better. The barrier will ask why you can’t do it already. Or worse, they’ll just stop responding to you entirely.
Doing a PhD is hard enough- it’s even harder when your supervisor works against you.
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PhD: an uncommon guide to research, writing & PhD life is your essential guide to the basic principles every PhD student needs to know.
Applicable to virtually any field of study, it covers everything from finding a research topic, getting to grips with the literature, planning and executing research and coping with the inevitable problems that arise, through to writing, submitting and successfully defending your thesis.
All the text on this site (and every word of every video script) is written by me, personally, because I enjoy writing. I enjoy the challenges of thinking deeply and finding the right words to express my ideas. I do not advocate for the use of AI in academic research and writing, except for very limited use cases.
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