Hi fellow PhD,

for more than 4 months preparing for my PhD proposal defence, I meet my SV weekly and discuss with him about the proposal, he order me to make some formality corrections. Every time I try to discuss with him the main idea of the proposal, he starts to deviate away. Until I finished 4 months, in the last meeting while we were discussing about some formalities of the proposal, I tried to orient the discussion toward the main idea or the methodology. Suddenly he said to me "take this new title of the proposal, its better than the existing one", I got shock and asked him "so you need me to change the whole proposal", he became angry and replied "changing the title doesn't mean changing the whole proposal". Actually the new title is his PhD thesis title, I have his PhD thesis, and completely different from the idea and title of my proposal. I tried to discuss with him about the difference, but he showed that he doesn't want to continue the meeting, and asked me to make the correction and come back after finishing that "unknown modifications". So now I don't know what I should do. What I realized, that my SV doesn't know the idea of the proposal (he gave me the idea, by the way), and doesn't want to show me that he made a mistake in supervision.

I am now frustrated from this situation.

Sorry about long post. I am Just wondering whether this situation is normal or not

Thanks,

Hi group member! I would like to ask one question.

Is there any interview in Ms in Finance at Imperial College London?

Can I ask why the research direction really matters? Most supervisors are there to serve their own agenda in terms of research outputs, and they probably know better than you so have you considered maybe he is right? I think it took me a year to work out what my supervisors intended my direction to be, and this has changed with recent developments in my projects. I just roll with it. It's less stressful and I'll still get a Phd whatever direction it takes.

Hi Mr_ammar,

Here is a forum that we support each other; however, I find it arrogant to say that your supervisor doesn't know what he is doing. You have to consider that he is in the field for a while, so he has a very good idea of the general direction and the gaps of knowledge.

If I was in your place, I would follow my supervisor's direction (at least in the very beginning of the PhD). You also need to have a very strong knowledge of similar publications, limitations of different methodologies etc. Main while, try to keep detailed notes of what you read, and try to write in a daily basis. Universities offer graduate courses that can help you with academic writing, give you guidance on how to write a literature review, methodology etc. Effective writing comes with practice.