Tips: Meeting Your Supervisor

There were couple of times of having a meeting with my supervisor since I am a new student. A simple tips for myself (especially) to aware during upcoming meetings as following:

• Provide a discussion document: send something to your supervisors a week before the meeting (this can be a progress report, a study plan, a critique of the literature you’ve been reading, an annotated bibliography, data, a draft conference paper – whatever represents what you’re working on). Having something concrete to discuss always helps, and preparing something can be a good way to focus your thinking. Bring copies of the discussion document to the meeting.
• Provide key publications: send copies of papers you consider to be seminal to your supervisors in advance of the meeting, particularly if you wish to discuss them. Make sure the full citation is marked on the copy. Providing papers is a courtesy you can do your supervisor, and having them on hand can facilitate discussion.
• Show up on time: if you’re late, bring sin-offerings, such as chocolate biscuits.
• Write down your objectives: know what you want to get out of the meeting, whether it’s technical, administrative or emotional. Give yourself a prioritized checklist in advance. It helps to have something interesting to discuss when you enter the meeting – if you don’t have ideas, then prepare questions.
• Check the agenda with your supervisors: find out what your supervisors want to get out of the meeting. Agree an agenda.
• Behave well: listen and consider before you speak. Be prepared to give a candid account of your progress. Ask the obvious questions – they may seem stupid to you, but they rarely are. It’s horribly easy to overlook the obvious. Focus on ideas, not emotions. Trust your supervisor and don’t take things personally. Make counter-proposals if you don’t like what your supervisors are advising – this can help expose discrepancies in your thinking and help you understand the rationale for your supervisor’s guidance.
• Take notes.
• Book the next meeting: set a date for your next meeting before you leave. Set a preliminary agenda.
• After the meeting, email an action-item summary: immediately after the meeting, write a list of agreed action items (both yours and your supervisor’s), with deadlines if possible, and email it to all concerned, asking for confirmation that you’ve summarized correctly. Include the date of the next meeting.

These tips were taken from The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research written by Gordon Rugg and Marian Petre (2004), pp.43-44.

*May Allah bless my supervisor and show me the guidance and ease my journey of seeking knowledge. Amin!