I'm here tonight with a bottle of wine venting my spleen after the usual weekly (Friday afternoon!) supervision meeting. With hopes of quickly flicking through a draft presentation to get feedback, it went downhill. Slide 1 "Stop. Explain to me what you mean by .. ", thirty slides later I was ready to walk out of the PhD. I know I know it's good to be pushed, avoid stagnation n'all that, good to get feedback and be challenged. But! but .. I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!!

I appreciate the need for viva style supervision meetings, but what ways are there for PhD coaching that don't push us to the brink? What methods have you used to "manage your supervisor" as the good book says.

Is it bad form to take the bottle of wine into the supervision meeting? Now there's a thought .. "you don know me ya .. f .. where's my shoe"

no one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

you can send a summary of the meeting with action points the day after and see if your supervisor agrees. Then your sup might start to realise all the things he is saying e.g point 1, change this, point 2, change that, point 3, change everything, point 4 re-do whole PhD etc etc.

I would go with the wine being a no-no lol, but how about being a teachers pet and taking the odd box of chocs?

At least you are meeting your supervisor and there seems to be some positive feedback from it, alhtough it takes a bit to get there. I think there does come a point where ya have to fight for your way of doing things (provided you have good reason). Believe me, its better to be meeting the supervisor even if the meetings are a pain (take minutes and bring them with you every meeting - at least then you have got a record of what was meant to be done and if it was or not).

I would suggest some cheap beer, a bottle of rum and a sing-along with Opeth and then hit the town - a good blowing off of steam always is good to do.