I'm unclear about what my supervisor expects from me
Have one honest conversation about how you'll work together, write down what you agreed, and revisit it every year.
In short
Start here, today. Write down your current guesses about six things: how often you meet, how fast your supervisor replies, how they want drafts, how much you decide alone, how authorship works, and when each of you takes holidays. Mark each one “agreed”, “assumed” or “no idea”. This takes about 15 minutes.
After that, work through these steps. Choose one to jump to it.
Step by step
Tick each step as you finish it. Open a step for the how.
0 of 6 steps done
Ask for the conversation directly
Request a meeting just for this, separate from your usual research update. Saying it's about “how we work together” signals a normal professional conversation, not a complaint. If you're past your first year, you can frame it as a check-in for the new stage of the project.
Cover the practical basics
Agree how often you meet, for how long, and who books it. Ask how quickly they usually reply to email, what counts as urgent, and whether they expect you in the lab or office at set times. Ask how they like drafts: sections or whole chapters, which file format, tracked changes or comments, and how much notice they need before reading something long.
Talk about independence
Ask which decisions they expect you to make alone and which they want to be consulted on. Ask how that should change as the project moves from proposal to writing, because many supervisors expect more independence over time without ever saying when. If you come from an academic culture where students wait to be told, say so. It helps them read your behaviour correctly.
Raise authorship and holidays early
Ask how authorship usually works for papers from your thesis, including the order of names and who is corresponding author. Norms differ a lot between disciplines: in some fields the supervisor is almost always a co-author, in others rarely. Ask how much notice they'd like before you take time off, and when they'll be away themselves, including sabbaticals and long field seasons. Check your funding terms for any rules on leave.
Write it up and send it
Within a day or two, send a short email summarising what you agreed. Keep it to one page. If your university has a supervision agreement form, fill it in together or attach your summary to it, and log the main points in the Decision Log so you can find them later.
Revisit it once a year
What suits a first-year student rarely suits someone writing up. Put a reminder in your calendar to revisit the agreement before your annual progress review. Revisit it sooner if something big changes, such as a new co-supervisor, a move to part-time study, a period of leave or your supervisor going on sabbatical.
Words you can use
Is this you? Signs to look for
- You don't know whether to email between meetings or wait until you're asked.
- You send a draft with no idea whether comments will come back in three days or three months.
- You're not sure how much you're meant to decide on your own, so you either check everything or check nothing.
- A small surprise, such as a comment about your hours or a draft they expected weeks ago, showed you were working to different assumptions.
- Other students in your department describe arrangements with their supervisors that sound nothing like yours.
Why this happens
Many supervisors have had little or no training in supervision. They tend to repeat what their own supervisor did, or deliberately do the opposite, and they rarely say their assumptions out loud because to them those assumptions feel obvious. One expects a short update every week without being asked. Another assumes that silence means things are going well. Neither thinks to mention it.
Students fill the silence with guesses. If you studied in a system where the professor set every task, or where questioning a senior academic would be rude, you may be waiting for instructions while your supervisor waits for you to take the lead. The gap usually shows up at a bad moment, such as a draft needed before a deadline or a disagreement over a paper.
An expectations conversation makes the unwritten rules visible. Some universities provide a form or checklist for this, sometimes called a supervision agreement or memorandum of understanding. Check your graduate school website or program handbook to see whether yours does.
Worth a look (3)
- How to Get a PhD, by Estelle Phillips and Derek PughHas a useful chapter on how to manage your supervisor, written from the student's side.
- CRediT contributor roles taxonomyA shared vocabulary for who did what on a paper. Handy when you talk about authorship.
- The Thesis WhispererInger Mewburn's blog includes many posts on supervision relationships.
When to bring someone in
If your supervisor won't engage with the conversation, or what they expect seems to conflict with your program's rules on hours, holidays or authorship, ask your graduate coordinator what the department's norms are. They may have a supervision agreement template or a written policy on the responsibilities of supervisors and students. Senior students in the same group are also a good informal source of how things actually work.
Find the right person, or talk to Ify