Problems with PhD supervisor

OpenToSuggestions

OpenToSuggestions

OpenToSuggestions

Soldato
Joined
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Derbyshire
Hey all.
This isn't my first thread on issues with my supervisor for my PhD. I am in the office 9-5 Mon-Fri, as agreed before I started it.
I am also a Sub Warden in an undergraduate hall and so have duties approximately 1/3 of the the time and when I am 'on duty' I have a mobile phone and keep an eye on the fire panel from 6pm-8am weekdays and 24 hours at weekends.

When I started my PhD my supervisor was a bit iffy about my being a Sub Warden. Once or twice in a year I have had a meeting and have left work early, but I have made up the hours and any training day courses (i.e. 3 days for first aid) I took out my own holiday allowance and today he was moaning about it.

Today my supervisor was telling me I need to leave the Sub Warden position soon as I should be focussing more on my PhD. Now I disagree. I am not the most social of people and spend a lot of time on my own, not out partying. I turned down a decent £25500 graduate job and there is no way my PhD stipend of £13000 per year would let me live the life I want, so I would have a part-time job on top. The Sub Warden position gives me free accomodation and so is worth a lot each month. Other people in my office have babies and/or young children and so can no longer stay much past 5pm. My supervisor is always late with his meetings and if he is coming over to the office at midday (he has two offices) then it will be more like 1.30pm and he will not have had lunch yet. Today he expected me to have another meeting with him at the end of the day. At 5.30pm he was in a meeting and had someone else to see (would be around 1 hour for this person) before me.

Am I well within my rights to tell him that I am doing the Sub Warden job and he needs to just accept it?
Am I being unreasonable?
 
He can't really do anything about your other job, one of the PhD students that started the same time as I did had a similar job and it was never an issue.

I had my fair share of late night meetings too but my supervisor was ridiculously busy so it's something I tolerated since it was part of being in a good lab.
 
Are you having any problems coping with the work involved in your PhD? If you are then your supervisor may have a point, if you aren't then presumably you can demonstrate to them that you have kept up with all necessary deadlines?

Is there any sort of contractual commitment regarding your hours or anything to forbid you having a second job? That would presumably overrule any other considerations.
 
I can't comment first hand, as I've never done any further than my BSc but know a lot of people currently doing their PhD/post doctoral and the story you tell is the same as theirs. They all do 60-70 hours a week (at least), take very few holidays and basically get worked to death by their supervisor.

I'm not trying to tar every PhD supervisor/professor with the same brush, but it seems an increasing trend to see this kind of behaviour.

To answer your question...can you continue to devote enough time to complete your PhD to the best standard you can if you keep your sub warden job? If so, tell him that!
 
My contract says I am not allowed to do more than (iirc) 10 hours per week work on top.
The thing is that this job is voluntary and requires around 6 hours per week I would say - Made up of meetings and calls out during the night when on duty. When on duty I would be in my flat and would be doing the same as I would anyway! A whole weekend on shift could get no call-outs at all.

As I am a first year PhD I do my 9-5 and would say I average 2 hours extra per week. I will put more work in when I have something of my own that I want to develop. I personally feel that if I choose to work in my own time that is my choice not his. When other PhD students have had children during their PhD I don't think he can say a lot about me needing to leave by 5:45 most days. Saying this job will interupt my progress is a bit of BS right now.
 
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If I was you I would start keeping a diary of everything, hours you work, if you leave early and when the hours were made up, times when the supervisor is late etc.

If it does escalate to anything at least you'll have a written history of everything.

As long as it's not having a negative effect on your work, then it sounds like the supervisor has an irrational problem with it. Perhaps they've had a negative experience with someone else doing it.

If you have a chat about it say that even if you stopped it you would be forced to get another job and then there would be no staying late and it would effect your work.
 
AHarvey said:
Perhaps they've had a negative experience with someone else.
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He has had one Sub Warden PhD student before. They could have been amazing or completely useless but I have never met him so I don't really know!

I just feel what I do in my own time is my own business. I have a cooking lesson on a Monday evening that I go to most weeks and I do the Sub Warden job on top. I am not in any clubs and don't have many 'drinking' friends at University as I like to keep to myself.

Whilst my supervisor is being a pain on this issue, I refuse to break the number one rule of a PhD - Falling out with your supervisor.
 
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OpenToSuggestions said:
Hey all.
This isn't my first thread on issues with my supervisor for my PhD. I am in the office 9-5 Mon-Fri, as agreed before I started it.
I am also a Sub Warden in an undergraduate hall and so have duties approximately 1/3 of the the time and when I am 'on duty' I have a mobile phone and keep an eye on the fire panel from 6pm-8am weekdays and 24 hours at weekends.

When I started my PhD my supervisor was a bit iffy about my being a Sub Warden. Once or twice in a year I have had a meeting and have left work early, but I have made up the hours and any training day courses (i.e. 3 days for first aid) I took out my own holiday allowance and today he was moaning about it.

Today my supervisor was telling me I need to leave the Sub Warden position soon as I should be focussing more on my PhD. Now I disagree. I am not the most social of people and spend a lot of time on my own, not out partying. I turned down a decent £25500 graduate job and there is no way my PhD stipend of £13000 per year would let me live the life I want, so I would have a part-time job on top. The Sub Warden position gives me free accomodation and so is worth a lot each month. Other people in my office have babies and/or young children and so can no longer stay much past 5pm. My supervisor is always late with his meetings and if he is coming over to the office at midday (he has two offices) then it will be more like 1.30pm and he will not have had lunch yet. Today he expected me to have another meeting with him at the end of the day. At 5.30pm he was in a meeting and had someone else to see (would be around 1 hour for this person) before me.

Am I well within my rights to tell him that I am doing the Sub Warden job and he needs to just accept it?
Am I being unreasonable?
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We have discussed things before and it is clear that many people doing a PhD in the UK have a relatively easy time compared to the rest of the world so you can take my advice with a pinch of salt, but here is my opinion.

There is no way on God's earth you can have any kind of part time side job and do a PhD within the standard 4-6 years, and the 3-4 years stipends in the UK means you are going to have to even more insane hours into things.

You are well in your rights to say you want to keep this warden job, and he is well in his rights to dismiss you if you don't comply.

The same goes with meetings, it is fine to say that you wont be around at a certain time on occasion (doctor appointment etc.), but a Phd is not a 9-5 job like you are trying to make it out to be. It is a 24-7 job, you should be living and breathing your PhD. There is no real set working hours, or weekends as rest days. A weekend is a period of time that one frequently has to do as much work as you can without student distractions ( taking weekends as breaks is vital but don't feel that is your right to never work weekends).
Likewise, your supervisor can commonly enforce a 9-6pm face time to improve collaboration and facilitate visitors or ad-hoc meetings etc. But that isn't the limit of your work time in such cases. It is very common to have to meet with your professor at odd times. Meeting at 8-10pm is pretty common in my experience, as is meeting at the weekend. In fact, many professors will meet their doctoral student on a sunday for example when they know they wont be distracted by other work and interruptions. The more well known your professor the more ad-hoc meetings will be. One can go 6-9 months without ever seeing your prof and then at the last minute invite you to a meeting late at night or on a Sunday. I've even known people to fly to a different country on invitation of a busy professor to have a catch up meeting.

My prof was a morning person so 7am meetings were common. My flat mate's prof worked through the night and he would often come home at 2am after a meeting with his supervisor.

Of course you don't have to turn up to meeting when he calls you at 10pm Saturday expecting to get a meeting at his place. Of course, if it has been 6 months since you last met with him and your expectation for your next meeting wont be for another 3-6 months then it may be very costly to you not to meet with him at odd hours.



A PhD is not an alternative to a graduate job. this is the second time you have brought this up and mentioned salaries compared to a prior job offer. you seem to have some expectation that you can do regular office hours or less and in some sense be compensated for the lack of salary. I think you are doing a PhD for the wrong reasons if this is the case. A PhD is a dedication and a commitment. It is a life style change. It is not an alternative to a graduate job. it is extremely difficult, time consuming, stressful and has a high drop out rate.


I suggest you do as your prof says or quit and look for an office job.
the last thing you want is to make enemies with your professor. Even if you don't get kicked out he will just ignore you and when your stipend runs out and you ask about submitting a thesis he will just tell you to take a hike. At the best he will provide zero support, and when an external examiner is breaking your balls in the viva and your are on the cusp of passing or failing if you have made an enemy of your professor then he will sit and watch you burn.


So even if you ignore everything I have said I can guarantee you you need to maintain a good relationship with your prof even if he is the most evil person in existence. Else you need to quit and try elsewhere.
 
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D.P. said:
and when an external examiner is breaking your balls in the viva and your are on the cusp of passing or failing if you have made an enemy of your professor then he will sit and watch you burn.
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His supervisor couldn't intervene whether he wanted to or not.
 
I was doing exactly the same during my phd, but I was lucky that my supervisor was quite laid back and let me do it. I lived and worked on the same campus, so my argument always was that the time lost doing the job was gained commuting to my phd office.

If you have moved past your first year probationary phase that most places have, there isn't much your supervisor can do.

Supervisors can be a pain in the backside though. My gfs supervisor is suddenly getting very stressed and expecting her to come in more than 9-5. Some people enjoy this, but I always felt it important to have a life too. At the end of the day, those in on weekends have not gotten anymore out of it than I did, if anything a lot less.

As long as you get the work done and make up for any lost time, I don't see the problem.
 
Morgoth said:
He can't really do anything about your other job, one of the PhD students that started the same time as I did had a similar job and it was never an issue.

I had my fair share of late night meetings too but my supervisor was ridiculously busy so it's something I tolerated since it was part of being in a good lab.
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That depends a lot on how he receives his stipend. At my university was legally enforced not to do any additional work that received any kind of financial benefits, this is very common. Furthermore, many bursary, scholarships and such financed phd positions also prevent you form working and earning money outside of the PhD. This is often common if some organization is paying for research and has contracted X full time PhD students then those stipends can not be supplemented with other stipends or salaries.
 
Hmm I feel lucky, my supervisor let's me do whatever I want and my time is my own. As long as the work is finished, the end justifies the means! :D

I do 2pm - 6:30 every day. Always off on holiday or visiting places as well. I could easily do another one after!
 
D.P. said:
That depends a lot on how he receives his stipend. At my university was legally enforced not to do any additional work that received any kind of financial benefits, this is very common. Furthermore, many bursary, scholarships and such financed phd positions also prevent you form working and earning money outside of the PhD. This is often common if some organization is paying for research and has contracted X full time PhD students then those stipends can not be supplemented with other stipends or salaries.
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Warden type positions don't count as work hours though since it is a volunteering type position.

I guess I got lucky with my phd - not only was I a warden, but also taught undergrads for 4 out of 5 of the week days for a lot of the year...good money :p
 
gobbo said:
I can't comment first hand, as I've never done any further than my BSc but know a lot of people currently doing their PhD/post doctoral and the story you tell is the same as theirs. They all do 60-70 hours a week (at least), take very few holidays and basically get worked to death by their supervisor.

I'm not trying to tar every PhD supervisor/professor with the same brush, but it seems an increasing trend to see this kind of behaviour.

To answer your question...can you continue to devote enough time to complete your PhD to the best standard you can if you keep your sub warden job? If so, tell him that!
Click to expand...



You are very right, I have not known anyone to successful get a PhD who were not putting in 6--70 hour weeks, working odd times, working regularly on weekends.

Of course some people will shout me down saying that is not how it is in the UK where you can get a PhD for drinking in the pub and working in Tescos.


We have a new person join our company today, just finished his PhD in physics. We got chatting and he said he was looking forward to working 40-50 hour weeks and not 60-70 hour weeks, and I told him I agree 100%
 
Morgoth said:
No he can't, at least not at Edinburgh.
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My supervisor interrupted my viva after 4 hours of questioning- we were all dam hungry :D and it was clear that i could answer every question.

Supervisors have a lot of power. Not least they dictate whether you are even allowed to submit a thesis. In general they can defend or attack you in a viva at will. Not least, many questions have political backgrounds and your supervisor is best to explain such political questions. You are their to defend the scientific integrity of your work.
 
Interesting thread as I'm starting to pull together proposals for a PhD/EngD.

6 hours a week for free accommodation sounds like a very good deal to me, that's worth fighting for. You're spending that much time doing a relatively useful thing for the university when you could easily burn that much time reading **** on the internet.

OpenToSuggestions & D.P., what are/were your subjects? Even better if you can say the specific topic of research.

Cheers

edit: For that matter, PhD students lecturing / running labs each week is hardly unusual even in the more respected Universities.
 
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