Close Home Forum Sign up / Log in

Fixing strained relationship with my advisor

D

Hi everyone I would really appreciate any advice on fixing this situation so that I can tidy over the PhD &also maintain a relationship with advisor afterwards.
Earlier this year we discussed conferences and summer schools which she was totally in support of and said she had some money for conferences. I was more into summer school, but she suggested one conference and said if I was interested I should apply. At the end of the meeting I told her okay, that I would modify a previous abstract from another conference and submit it for the one she recommended and she agreed. I went ahead modified and submitted and it was accepted.
So here’s the catch, after modifying the abstract I sent it to the conference without sending it to her since it was from an old conference and I also thought I had a go ahead from her from that last meeting. Well unfortunately I was soooo wrong, and when I told her that the abstract had been accepted and I was ready to proceed with payment, she was quite annoyed because she said she didn’t hear from me so she assumed I didn’t want to go, meanwhile I had submitted the abstract and it got accepted without her going through the modified abstract. I had to remind her of the meeting and tell her why I sent the modification without thinking about sending it to her and I also apologised for the omission and asked her to let me know if she wanted the abstract withdrawn but she said it was okay.
A couple of days later, I sent her a link to another conference I found and abstract I wrote for this new one. Well, she wrote me back saying there wasn’t money anymore. So I asked her to please provide feedback on abstract let me see if I can find external funding ; I couldn’t find so I wrote her back saying I didn’t find and that’s where we are at right now. I can feel the tension and I don’t know what to do

T

It's a miscommunication that's all. You have apologised and so now she just has to get over it!

T

It's also best to have these conversations face to face if possible.

B

Hello, it sounds like you are making a bigger event out of this than your supervisor. If you still feel badly then just do the following either by email or face to face. Face to face would be best. Just say (in your own words), I still feel badly about the miscommunication regarding the abstract for conference x. I learned a valuable lesson here and appreciate that you are supportive of my attending conference x. I am so excited to present our findings in [field x]. If any other opportunities to present at similar conferences come up I'd be very keen. Best regards, talk to you soon etc depending on your relationship with your supervisor.

M

I am also in an almost similar dilemma. I am a final year PhD student. In our university, we are required to published 3 papers in top level journals (SCI) as part of PhD graduation requirements. By late last year, I had submitted 3 papers but had not gotten acceptance on any. So I decided to submit a paper to a conference which was a subset of one of the papers submitted to journals. At the beginning of the year, I was lucky and got acceptance of 2 journal papers, hence I decided to withdraw the conference paper mid January and did not participate. However, end of February, my supervisor accidentally discovered the paper I had submitted to the conference without his knowledge had been published and was online, he is the second author yet he was not aware. He is now mad at me and has threatened to disqualify me from graduating this July. The conference I submitted the paper to turned out to be a fake conference and have refused to withdraw and remove my paper from the publications online despite my numerous appeals to them. Every time I get a chance to meet my supervisor, he would only quarrel me that I must withdraw the paper. What should I do to reconcile with my supervisor and convince him to allow me to graduate.

Quote The conference I submitted the paper to turned out to be a fake conference and have refused to withdraw and remove my paper from the publications online despite my numerous appeals to them. Every time I get a chance to meet my supervisor, he would only quarrel me that I must withdraw the paper. What should I do to reconcile with my supervisor and convince him to allow me to graduate.


Hi there Mchina, have you explained to your supervisor that you are trying to withdraw this but are not able to (at the moment). He might be annoyed but you have not committed a crime, just made a mistake and are now trying to fix this up. Perhaps your supervisor might be able to help you find a way to have this removed.

Once you have made a mistake, acknowledged this, apologised and fixed it up (or tried to if you can) that is all you can do. People do have to move on, although this can take time and you have to accept that you have lost some of their trust perhaps (for a little while anyway).

49524