Ph.D. Students Survey: Are You Interested In Taking Part ?

[pipeline]

Hi

My name is Andy and I am a post-doc in bioinformatics at Adelaide University. I am interested in the attitudes of students to their supervisor(s) and how well you feel that you are being supervised. For example, is your supervisor interested in your project ? Do you get on with your supervisor ? What does your supervisor do well / poorly with regards to your supervision ?

OK, so what, why should I help you. Well, I would like to include this survey as part of the written requirements for my university's Ph.D. supervision course. Also, I hope that your responses will help both myself and other Ph.D. supervisors become better supervisors.

Here are some more specific questions:

1. Do you meet regularly with your supervisor(s) to discuss your progress ?

2. Does your supervisor treat you as a colleague or is it more of a "master-apprentice" relationship ?

3. Do you understand your supervisor's expectations of you ?

4. Has your supervisor suggested that you attend any training courses e.g. thesis writing ?

I would really appreciate hearing your own ideas and suggestions.

If you are not convinced, then that's fine and I wish you every success with your future studies. If you are interested, then please let me know. If I can drum-up enough interest, then I will be design a questionnaire and post it on surveymonkey.com (or somewhere else if you know of a better place).

Please note that I will not be collecting any personal information during the survey. Also, please could you let me know if you would be prepared to submit a brief case study (this could be anonymised but should not be fictitious).

Thanks

Andy Timmins
Research Fellow
ACPFG
Adelaide University

[Sergioo]

I was surprised to see this post here (maybe not the right place) but would have been more than happy to see comments from Ph.D students.
Roughly, Ph.D is tough for many and on my own experience, I have met with very few people who described it as an enjoyable moment.
You can look at some posts here (including mine), there are sometimes questions that can be quickly discussed with a senior (either postdoc or supervisor) and get through immediately. The fact that students (I guess some are Ph.D candidates) prefer to post them here, is meaningful.