Guys what do you think of the idea to ask supervisor for 6 weeks off? I think I might need to get some prospective and decide from there. And yes, there is a lot more to the story than what I said in here (and all of it negative). This is just the last straw so to speak.

BONGO, did your quiting negatively impact your supervsior in any way? If I end up quitting I want to at least do some damage to supervsiors career/reputation. Not sure in what way I could have the most impact though.

======= Date Modified 11 Oct 2008 02:31:58 =======
Since the yelling incident, supervisor has been very polite to me, even cracking jokes etc. I have since found other possible conferences to go to and suggested to supervisor and he has agreed but it was probably only to placate me. I have remained distant as I really dislike the man so much. We were supposed to do a full day of marking exams (just me and him) but the thought of making small talk with him for the whole day makes me ill so I have asked if I could do all the marking by myself - my reason was that I really need the money and he agreed (hopefully he didn't see through that!). I'm buying time as I hope in a couple of weeks I will cool off and be able to be polite. In the next 3 weeks, I could probably get by with completly avoiding him.

In a way I feel 100% trapped in this situation. The only way out is quitting PhD and I'm not prepared to do that :-(

What bothers me most is that supervisor makes the decision that's very negative for you and then tries to make it somehow look like he IS ACTUALLY DOING YOU A FAVOR. I can't win the argument for this year as I am all out of justifications and it is true that I don't have a good case for going but supervsior won't even discuss alternative conferences even within my country. On the other hand he goes to conferences that are irrelevant 5 times a year.

I have lost all motivation to do my PhD now...

======= Date Modified 09 00 2008 11:00:40 =======
So few motnhs ago, my supervsior has suggested that I go to an internastional conference. I have already started to make plans and work on anabstract/paper. Supervisor was supportive and it was assumed I was going. Yesterday however, supervsior suddenly said that I was not going. Reason is that it's not really that relevant to my PhD. I feellike that's bullshit as the same reason was there when he suggested that I go. I started a long argument as I was really pissed off. Therehave been other promises along my candidature that have never materilized. I feel that this is all to do with whatever suits his personal agenda at the time. Not to mention that I haven't been to a single conference outside of my city and I am 2 years into the PhD.

All in all I now can't stand to look at my supervisor and just want to avoid him for as much as possible. I do not know if I can hold it in for the next year or two until submission. I am the type of person who can not even make small talk with people I can't stand.

Question: how do you go on with the PhD when you hate your supervisor and are supposed to meet them frequnetly?

Second question: Can you get kicked out of a PhD for yelling at the supervsior?

A little over a year. I was assigned two at the start, but the second one left the country and academia (I never had any contact with her before she left anyway) so I had one supervisor for a while until it was picked up by the head of school..

Well I have decided to bring it up once more when I see him next and if he says it's fine or doesn't want to talk about it, then I will let it go.

As for co-supervison, they won't really have equal say in it. My first supervisor will still be my "primary" and it's actually agianst our school policy to have only one. Second one will still have SOME input in my project though.

There is also some "competition" involved between the two guys that I haven't been aware of. Second guy is a lot more senior than my original supervisor and I also got a weird feeling that the second guy was almost enjoying the fact that I went to him without talking to my supervisor. He was also over-eager to accept the role which was strange given how extremly busy he is. This was also one of the reasons I asked him before talking to my original supervsior - I was 90% sure he would say no, so I almost thought there is no need to discuss it.

Oh well, what's done is done.

Ah I know Jouri, I posted before you replied.. I'm not sure if it's better to just ignore this or try to talk to supervsior openly.. I don't even know what the right thing to say would be. I'm afraid that if I just pretend like nothing has happened supervsior will secretly dislike me while being fakely polite on the outside.

I guess I was asking if in most supervsiory situations this would be considered an OK thing to do?

Anyway now that I'm back from my holiday my supervisor is acting kind of distant (now I don't want to assume that this is because of what I did, he could just have his own problems). I meantioned a quick apology and said that I should have discussed this with him first and he said that "it's fine".

Did I make a mistake there or is it really fine and I shouldn't be thinking that it's a big deal? Now I'm kind of worried that I have ruined my good relationship with the supervsior for good.

I need some outside opinions.

Recently, me and my supervisor discussed getting another co-supervisor.

He had some ideas (none of which I liked) and no final decision was made. Keep in mind that I have(had) a pretty close relationship with my supervisor and see him every day. He always discusess everything with me and does things like call me a night before my talk to see if I agree on a slight change of menu of light refreshments that he thought of for our auidence (this is just a small example).

Meanwhile I went on a 2 week holiday. Some bad things happened, like a break up with my long term boyfriend. I tend to be very impulsive sometimes especially when things aren't going well and I made a quick decision of asking another person (that we have never even discussed as a possibility) to co-supervise me without telling my supervsior. This person ended up mentioning this to my supervisor before I had a chance to talk to him.

I do have a couple of people but I'm not sure if they would agree to supervise me. I also don't know how much time I would be expected to spend with my second supervisor.

Thanks, it does help and it's exactly what I was thinking. Lucky for me his research interests don't really coincide with mine and I will try to go for that angle. I'm not sure how will my supervisor react given that they are friends and he is surely going to be more loyal to him than some student. If supervisor is not accepting of this argument, I will have no choice than to be completly frank about the instances of him laughing at me etc.. and say that working with him would make me very uncomfortable and ultimately us not getting along won't benefit my PhD project. I just hope that my supervisor is reasonable.

The problem is Sjo that I am naturally sensitive person and I don't want to feel awkward and very uncomfortable around Dr X. The guy was even pointing at me and laughing during my recent talk. Simply put I can't stand him, and given this I don't want to enter into a supervisory realtionship with him. It is not like I can say, we will see how it goes. Once he is signed on and has any input in the project it would be impossible to get him off. So my best bet is not signing him on in the first place.

I am just not sure if I as a student have a right to say who I do and don't want to supervise me?

(Cont-ed)
What should I do? Should I stand my ground to not wanting to add Dr X as a supervisor? What should I give as reasons to why not? I was thinking of going for the nicer version of the truth. I mean thinking of years of meetings with them where they don't even make me feel human depresses me to no end. I would rather continiue poorely supervised. Please help guys....