Hiring and Firing

The first step in taking charge of your PhD is to make sure you are working with the right professor(s) to do the job.

My first supervisor turned out to be a nightmare. He was recommended to me by a former professor. We never met before I started at the EUI. He wasn’t present at my interview, but I was assigned to him nevertheless, something I was pretty happy about it: I looked forward to working with him after the stories I had heard. Unfortunately, that state of bliss didn’t last long, as there was no real resemblance between the supervisor from the stories and my imagination, and the supervisor in real life. We started off ok, but once it became clear that I was a bit lost as to what I wanted to write about, he quickly lost his patience. He turned out not to be the professor who would sit with me and brainstorm about creative ideas, over coffee (Even in Italy professors don’t have time on their hands!). Nor did we bond over solving and discussing the big questions in our field. Well, I probably didn’t live up to his expectations either: in the beginning (first 2 years) my work was either non-existent or all over the place.

The lowest point, and the point I realised I had to find another supervisor, was during a meeting in which all his supervisees were expected to present their research proposal. Let’s just say he didn’t like my proposal. And he was quite vocal in expressing it. At one point he exclaimed that he ‘doubted whether I was capable of producing a single rationally sound argument’. He said what? Yes, that’s what he said. And I was by now reduced to a stuttering mess, in front of my fellow first-year PhD colleagues. Thankfully I was in the position to change supervisors after my first year, but some of my colleagues weren’t so lucky. I thought maybe he was just being mean to me because I was underperforming, but it turns out he was a bully, to everybody. He told one of my colleagues he ‘didn’t think he was suitable for academia’. The guy won a prestigious PhD thesis prize when he finished. That is, once he managed to finish his PhD. Many of this supervisor’s students spent years longer in the PhD programme than anticipated. I wonder whether supervision had anything to do with it??

Enough with the horror stories (though I will share a couple more below). Just know that if you feel your supervisor isn’t right for you, maybe it is time to make a move. Find a second supervisor, or switch supervisors. It may be uncomfortable, or seem impossible, but it’s very important to work with the right person for you.

So, how do you know which supervisor is right for you? What do you need?

To start with, we need a basic level of support to function well. This comes down, simply, to whether you and your supervisor can find common ground. In my experience, this often has more to do with personality than with anything else. What works for someone else might not work for you. I remember having a beer with a fellow PhD student, complaining about the lack of social skills and warmth of my first supervisor. He replied: ‘What is it with women? Why do they always need their hand held?’ Why do women need their hand held?? WTF? Well, he certainly didn’t need his hand held, as he was perfectly happy with a supervisor who announced to all the first-year PhD students that he only welcomed students who would keep their ‘issues’ to themselves. In his welcome lecture he proclaimed: ‘If you have problems, go see a psychiatrist. Just don’t bother me with it’. Welcome to the EUI, everybody. I needed to be able to relate on a personal level with my supervisor. To ‘feel’ a connection was, and is, important to me. If that is the case for you, find a supervisor you like. But that’s not necessary for everyone. I have a friend who does very well in a highly formal, hierarchical work relationships. When she was writing her PhD she didn’t mind that she didn’t like her supervisor. She tells me it made life easier for her – work is work. Find out what you need, and do take this into consideration when you choose who to work with.

Another important factor to take into account is a professor’s commitment to supervision. Many PhDs think they will benefit most from working with the best in their field. That often isn’t the case. The ‘best in their field’ tend to have other things on their mind than supervision, which can make writing a PhD a lonely adventure. Working with a promising associate professor may be a far better, more rewarding, more invigorating and more educational experience. More generally speaking, some professors are simply more motivated to invest time in their supervisees than others. In the last year of my PhD I had the good fortune of working with a professor who had high personal standards for supervision. His feedback has been invaluable for pulling my argument together as a whole for my defence, even though he had relatively little expertise on my exact topic. His critical questions provided a basis for polishing and waterproofing my argument. When I started my PhD I naively thought that all supervisors provided such feedback. I thought it was their job. It is their job, but that doesn’t mean they always do it well. There are so many other conflicting demands on their time. And, sadly but true, it’s often easy for professors to neglect supervision and get away with it.

So how do you make sure you pick a committed supervisor? Supervisors will be likely to invest more time in you, if they are interested in and knowledgeable on your topic. Obvious as it may be, it’s something to seriously reflect on before deciding on a supervisor and a topic. If you’re easier to supervise, and they may learn something valuable to their own research, they are more likely to do a better job. If you have shared research goals: even better. The prospects for a fruitful collaboration will increase dramatically. What’s in it for them, and how easy or difficult will supervision on this topic be for them? Don’t assume that, because they are willing to take you on, and are interested in your topic, they will be able to provide the feedback and supervision you need. Expertise and time commitment were the two major constraints in the supervision relationships that followed the supervision disaster of my first year. Two professors took me on, and both of them were interested in my topic, but the topic wasn’t in their exact field. They were also very busy people. You can see why my thesis wasn’t a top priority: they often couldn’t really help me much without a considerable time investment on their part. And they were overstretched as it was. Also, my research didn’t really help them, and their research. So even though the personality mismatch was solved (that is, until I started to have problems with one of them, but more on that later this week), and they supervised me with the best intentions, the feedback I received was scarce, and not always as helpful as I would have liked.

But even if your supervisor is a genius in your field and fully committed to supporting you, he or she simply cannot provide the best supervision on every aspect of your thesis. Nobody is an expert on everything. If your supervisor is well-connected and willing to put you in touch with other academics who can feature as mentors and colleagues, so much the better. That brings us to my next point: ego. What’s the size of your supervisor’s ego, and how are his professional relationships? Having access to your supervisor’s professional network is incredibly important, not only while you are writing a PhD, but also after you finish. If your supervisor has difficulty being civil or has difficulty separating professional disagreements from personal battles, beware. The feuds that go on in academia…some professors will gladly use you to prove themselves right in a battle between schools of thought. Others have personal disputes you may get sucked into. I’ve witnessed one story of two professors who got into an argument with another set of professors of another university who had allegedly ‘stolen’ their PhD student. I happen to know that PhD student, and she tells me she left of her own free will (she negotiated and got a better deal at the other university). As a result, her previous professors didn’t talk to, or invite her new professors for seminars for years. One of the previous professors also refused to be on her committee over this four years later. So, yes, big ego’s can cause big problems. That said, if the person you consider asking to be your supervisor is highly successful, ego, bad manners and feuds may not matter… I know of a professor who, in a fit of anger over the rejection of one of his papers, tried to run over a journal editor with his car in a parking lot. Everyone wanted to work with him and his students nevertheless, as he was a Nobel Prize winner. So if you want a Nobel Prize professor or other hotshot in the field as your supervisor or on your committee – go for it. But a bit of drama comes with the territory!!

A final consideration with regard to working with a professor is collaboration and publishing. In the publish-or-perish rat race, professors (and departments) take up different positions. Some encourage their PhDs to produce mainly single-authored work. A single-authored paper has the advantage of being taken more seriously as a proof of competence of the beginning academic than multi-authored papers; with multi-authored papers you never know who’s done what. The downside is that, precisely because the professor’s name isn’t on the piece, the professor in question has only a minimal investment in collaboration with, and investment in the PhD student. On the opposite side of the spectrum there are professors who encourage their researchers to write multi-authored papers, including them as a co-author. In the best-case scenario this means the PhD student gets to work on the paper with the professor and the professor will teach him or her the valuable tricks of the trade. Acquiring academic research and writing skills by working with someone senior comes recommended. It’s far better, easier and more challenging (in a good way) than figuring everything out on your own… But in the worst-case scenario, your hard work, done solo, may be used by your supervisor as a token of his success. I have heard too many stories of professors doing none of the work and taking all of the credit.

In the worst case I know of, a PhD student was blackmailed by her professor to include his name on every single one of her papers, even though she had written these papers without any involvement on his side. Even worse, when she finally decided enough was enough, and switched universities, he tried to force her to hand over the copyright of the dataset she had collected. He threatened to ‘make life difficult for her’ if she didn’t hand over her data, and if she wouldn’t promise him to never use these data for future research. She, heroically, didn’t comply. It ruined the PhD for her though…

These horror stories don’t reflect the typical PhD supervision relationship. But these themes do tend to pop up, in less extreme ways, in most supervision relationships. It doesn’t hurt to be aware of what is in your and your PhD’s best interest, and act on it if necessary. I appreciate professors. Some professors I appreciate because they are capable and professional and brilliant and kind. I know them and have worked with them and it’s a pleasure and a privilege. Others I appreciate because they provide some drama and spice up our otherwise mundane and boring existence. I’d just choose not to work with them for too long or at all!! I like a bit of drama, but I can imagine it’s far less enjoyable when you are the one your supervisor is trying to run over in the parking lot.