How to Survive a Distant PhD Supervisor

Описание: 00:00 – Not sure if this is a full episode / a supervision thought
00:00:09 – Why I’m making it: I’ve talked about good supervision, not the distant stuff
00:00:49 – Context: six supervisors across the PhD timeline
00:01:16 – Main supervisors vs the more distant ones
00:01:38 – Two cases: a distant linguistic supervisor and a clinical supervisor who stepped away

00:01:44 – Is this “bad supervision”? I didn’t experience it that way
00:01:57 – Hearing other PhDs say “my supervisor didn’t help”
00:02:31 – Side issue: self-funded, niche research and the pressure of not being cited

00:02:54 – What distant supervision actually looked like for me
00:02:59 – The other linguistic supervisor: supportive, but not closely involved
00:03:14 – Why he drifted: my project moved away from his core expertise
00:03:52 – Important point: when I asked for time, he always made it
00:04:00 – The one proper meeting and the advice about burnout
00:04:15 – A late Zoom meeting that felt tense at the time
00:04:31 – How I later reinterpreted that interaction
00:05:39 – I noticed the drift and chose not to fight it
00:05:48 – Why: the supervision I had was enough and the project was progressing
00:06:16 – Why I don’t label this as bad supervision

00:06:25 – Practical consequences: authorship decisions
00:06:38 – My early rule: all supervisors as co-authors
00:07:11 – Crucial agreement: I was always first author
00:07:36 – How authorship norms differ by discipline
00:08:21 – No pressure from supervisors to publish

00:08:40 – A real supervision gap I had to solve myself
00:08:44 – Designing a psycholinguistic experiment on sensory metaphors
00:08:59 – No supervisor had direct experience in this area
00:09:17 – Working in a space supervisors couldn’t fully validate
00:09:33 – My solution: write a methods paper and send it to peer review
00:10:05 – Getting it published gave me confidence in the design
00:10:21 – Lesson: PhD students have to be entrepreneurial
00:11:17 – Peer review as a form of supervision

00:11:38 – The clinical supervisor who stepped away
00:11:47 – Why I don’t see that as bad supervision
00:11:56 – What he modelled: personal life comes first
00:12:15 – How that taught me boundaries and problem-solving
00:12:56 – Example: taking time off when my daughter was born

00:13:21 – Acknowledging that genuinely toxic supervision does exist
00:13:46 – When it threatens completion, leaving can be the right choice

00:14:21 – Another trap: supervisor advice criticised by reviewers
00:14:39 – Avoid blaming supervisors automatically
00:14:59 – Pressure pushes fast thinking; slow thinking is safer
00:15:22 – Stepping back to ask what’s really going on
00:15:40 – Final thoughts on distant versus bad supervision