Is it possible my PhD advisor is setting me up to fail on purpose?
Dear Bewildered and Burnt-Out,
What a frustrating experience. It makes total sense to me that this leads you down the thought paths you’re on, especially your curiosity around your advisor’s intention. Seems perfectly understandable to be wondering that about someone who should want you to succeed (we hope just simply because that’s sort of their job but also because it reflects well on them when you do well) but whose actions aren’t aligned.
However, I don’t want to take up your reading time today speculating on their intentions, as it’s something I can’t ever know for certain. I thought instead we could walk through some options for tangible next steps.
These steps are ones you could take without having a formal direct conversation with your advisor about their behavior and this pattern; these options are self-correcting attempts to rectify the situation. I am choosing this reply for you because there are way too many nuances regarding a conversation that I cannot account for (i.e. race, gender, sexuality, and age can all come into power dynamics that I don’t know anything about for you or your advisor). Just as I don’t know if there is a history with this advisor from past students - if they have previous complaints, if you have reported them to higher ups before, etc. There are way too many variables that could lead me to give you unsafe, unhelpful, or unthoughtful sounding advice to coach you through a conversation via this letter.
Therefore, the suggestions below are within your control and action (except for the first one) and can be adjusted to language or a level of action that feel comfortable, appropriate, and doable for you.
I want to preface the suggestions below with one important area to consider: how you feel about these suggestions. They are mostly in the vein of ‘making your advisor’s life easier’ at the expensive of the heavy lifting you will have to do.
Some people will tell you that’s a part of academia, or hierarchy, or that’s a hack for hearing more ‘yes’s’ than ‘no’s’, but I am not. I want you to really imagine and feel through what the suggestions below mean for your mental health, your wellbeing, your motivation for your PhD, your working relationship with your advisor.
YOU matter in this equation and if the suggestions below make your blood boil or you think it would make it intolerable to work with your advisor or you’re just feeling stubborn or Mercury retrograde is getting in the way of digesting this with open possibilities, you are allowed to disregard all suggestions in this vein and go for another approach. But the emotional reaction you have is important information.
You do not have to choose resentment or infantilization of your advisor’s ability to be responsible or overwork (seeing especially as you wrote this from an already burnt out place). But if any of these seem tolerable, or exciting options, or you’re just open to some experiments, here they are:
Ask for all information to be sent via email (project introduction, deliverables, timelines, draft components, etc.)
I would encourage this one first because it puts the (correct) responsibility on your advisor to communicate all the information at one time, in writing. If we are going with a generous explanation of the pattern, maybe they forget to communicate key pieces and think they’ve told you when they haven’t. (Do I think it’s their responsibility to have checked in with you about that by now? Certainly). If it’s not a memory blip, then prior to the meeting about your progress, you could send a reply to their first email in the style of a check-in; sharing broad updates and then ask if there is any additional relevant information pertaining to the project that would help you better prepare for the scheduled meeting. If they respond with more information, you may be able to incorporate it in time for the meeting. It does not solve your problem if they still choose to not share information, but at the very least you have a paper trail.
Follow-up from a meeting with your own summary of information and ask for confirmation on your understanding and if there is anything else.
Another email based suggestion. If you don’t think your advisor would agree to writing up or sharing the project information by email (or if you ask and they say no), you could write up your own summary after the meeting with all relevant information and ask for (1) confirmation that you understood correctly and (2) to follow-up and ask if there is anything else you missed that would be important for you to know. I understand this puts you in the ‘hot seat’ so to say, as though you are the one unclear or uncertain or may be getting things wrong. Which is why I encouraged you at the beginning to be thoughtful and attuned to your feelings about this. (There have been times, for example, where I let a deadline pass because I didn’t want to put myself in this position of framing the problem as my own misunderstanding. The resentment I imagined feeling far outweighed any potential benefits I saw to meeting this deadline). You may feel the same way as I did, and still decide to do this option, because completing your PhD outweighs the emotions you may feel along the way. In that case, if you have the ability to seek mental health support in the form of a therapist or support group, I would recommend making space for yourself to feel through those feelings. You may find journaling or ripping up a leftover egg carton or calling that scream hotline to be valuable options for moving through any potential feelings you may feel in this option.
Ask if it is okay to record or use a transcription device for the meetings, or the meeting where the original assignment is handed down
Whether type-to-text or just audio recording, having the meetings to return to or creating a transcription may be helpful. Particularly as this can be shared with your advisor as a reminder that this is the only information you have on the project or task. Which may disrupt the pattern.
This, the recording, may make your advisor slightly uncomfortable, as many people have an aversion to meetings being recorded. However, with non-threatening framing, such as the purpose of recording these meetings is to reduce the amount of back and forth on our work together, there is the potential for more openness to it. You can add addendums like deleting them once the project is over if you think it will help their openness. But again, how you feel about the thoughtfulness you will have to put in to ask for this accommodation is really worth considering. Oh, and speaking of accommodation, if you have any support services at your university for disabilities or mental health diagnosis or specific requirements for your learning environment, they may be able to support you in receiving a letter that makes this easier to approach with your advisor.
These are more on the practical side, rather than digging into the frustrations and unfairness of this pattern on you, and I hope these considerations are useful for you. Either because it seems like a good idea or it has sparked a different idea in you.
For one last option, if you have any lab mates / project colleagues / research centre mates, it could be worth a discrete conversation to see if this pattern has happened for others as well and what they did to survive it. Or at the very least, you may be able to carve out a space for you to vent or brainstorm with others.
Wishing you some change and movement in this situation!
Til next Sunday,
Dr. Sydney Conroy
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