My supervisor send me a friend request on FB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There's no way am accepting it! lol. How do I make this less obvious. I suppose I can always ignore the request?

They might ask you about it at a meeting ;-)

Haha I think you should accept...My supervisor has some of his PhD students on his FB...he hasn't added me though :(

i can't!!! my fb is so personal..... re the meeting, i could say am not on fb!

do you not like them / get on with them? i talk to mine on fb all the time, hes more like a mate tbh

Eeeek, that's awkward! I get on really well with my sup but I sure wouldn't want her to have access to my facebook and see photos of all the dodgy drunken nights I go on etc. I like to pretend I am grown up and civilised lol! Not to mention the fact that my pals (including some of her undergrad and MSc students) are fb friends with me and leave messages referring to her by her nickname on my wall! I am facebook friends with everyone else on my team but not the sup, no-one is fb friends with her even though she is on facebook! I think I would just ignore it and hope it doesn't get mentioned lol...KB

oh my :-) I think you will eventually have to accept the request :-) :-)
love satchi

Remember that very soon, people will try to look you up on Google/Bing/Yahoo/etc. to get a better grasp of your research, past, etc. Facebook is not a very hard site to 'open up' and see all of those fun things about you that you don't want to be seen. Rule of thumb: if you don't want your supervisor (or other professional contacts) to see it, don't put it up online.
As for friend or not, that is a personal call. I wouldn't mind having my sup as a 'friend' as it would open up their network of other researcher friends that I might be able to do future research with, should interest align. It is a networking tool that has several elements of social life incorporated into it. But ignoring the request is probably the easiest way of avoidance. If I was you, that would be my plan, most people forget about it after a while and don't bug you with 'why haven't you accepted yet' stuff.

Hmm, you can ignore and there is nothing wrong with that, or you can accept but put them on a limited profile (can't see your wall/photos/whatever you choose to block). I wouldn't panic though, a lot of these requests are generated automatically by FB accessing the persons email list - sup may not even know he/she has added you (plenty of people who apparently accepted my "requests" were folk I didn't even recognize - they were just on email lists from uni stuff and FB took the liberty).

@Teek - am hoping that's the case.

i have chosen to totally ignore it! i had changed my name hoping no one would find me that way. i think they may have used my email.. its complicated.

LOL@keanbean: it's for similar reasons that i cannot have my supervisor on my fb. maybe after graduation. lol.

i agree with the networking idea.. just not now. after passing my viva i will be interested. lol. right now it could affect how my supervisor sees my work!

Hi Jojo, I think the best think to do is to accept the request and then only allow him/her to have very limited access to your profile. You can change security settings to affect only your supervisor and keep you photos/wall/status updates to yourself.....That way you are being polite but keeping your privacy at the same time. had the same problem with my boss few months ago!!

cellardoor - thanks for the idea. for now am pretending i have not visited fb for ages and therefore am unaware of the request. ;-)

Well don't accept it then. Problem solved.