Your dissertation committee members. There was a time when they were bigger than life. Now, not so much. You figured you'd always look up to them and respect them? Especially your top advisor. Now, years later....
Q. Do you like them? Do you hate any of them?
A. Don't just tell me you're a little disillusioned. Be honest, dammit. Provide details.
I still drink heavily with my main advisor at conferences, but our relationship is very different now. He still writes for me sometimes, and I throw things his way when the opportunity arises, but we are peers now. I wouldn't say that we are close friends exactly, but we do stay in touch. He has some considerable personal foibles, some of which make me squirm a little, but people in glass houses and whatnot. As a scholar and promoter of his advisees (he's on the cusp of retirement but still training people) he remains the fucking bomb. And isn't that what you want in an advisor? The rest is meaningless.
Of the other two main people, one is long retired and expired, and I would be loathe to speak ill of the dead. He was a highly eccentric person, even by the standards of this profession, and I probably only spoke to him twice after I defended my dissertation, and then only because I bumped into him at a conference. I never used him as a recommender again after defending either. We just never had a relationship beyond grad school, and I certainly don't regret that. If pushed, I would say that despite the fact that he was a class-A weirdo, I remember him fondly because he really put me through the paces as a grad student.
The third main person is pretty close to my own age, and we now have very similar attainments. He's seriously on the "me program" and he always was, but he is fun to have drinks with from time to time. Like number two, he never wrote for me or otherwise did much once I'd defended, but we maintain a relationship mainly because he knows that I can do things for him now. I'd say that the main thing that he does that irks me is that he has used his association with me as a way of promoting his own career as a trainer-of-students, which to my mind seriously overstates his role in my own development. At any rate, I doubt I'd see or hear from him at all if I had not developed my own reputation. All this to say, that outside of the occasional drink, I rarely think of him at all.
I was never really close to my committee members or my advisor. I don't know if my advisor even remembers me ten years later... I vaguely remember him as someone who wore black pants with a brown belt. I feel no animosity toward him (more like apathy), but then I probably felt that way and simply wanted to get the diss. done so I could move on. I am guessing he, too, felt that way. The others on my committee have all retired and I have no idea where they even are.
Top advisor left before school started the second year( with a weeks notice to me) to take a chair at another school.He was one of few experts in area that he had really pushed me to work in.It sucked.He sucked. Still feel the anger.
My advisor and I stay in touch because we still collaborate. I've gotten good at screening out his bullshit. One of my committee members was a good friend in grad school and remains. The others... I forgot who they were.
Most of my dissertation committee left academia. I defended twenty years ago, but they were all younger men then, and not one had hit forty. So now of course they are nearing sixty. We're all getting old.
One drank himself out of his job. Brilliant lecturer. Brilliant, period. He just couldn't stop drinking.
One left and moved into some sort of commune.
The last one went west, back where he came from. to teach here and there.
They were very dear people, all of them, and very interesting men.
Mine, like Jimmu's, were on the revolving-door plan, but I don't hate any of them; at this point I'm mostly aware of how young and naive I was when I began grad school (at 23), and maybe a bit angry, on that 20-something's behalf, that my department didn't have clearer institutional procedures regarding the assigning of advisers in place.
I planned and passed my field exams with the adviser I was assigned when I entered the program, who was quite helpful, and with whom I would happily have continued working, and, in the second year, with a visiting professor, also in my field, whom the department hoped to hire (but who took another position instead, and has gone on to an illustrious career). The department fell apart a few weeks after the end of my field exams, with my main adviser, the chair (with whom I would also have been happy to work), and 2 other people resigning for various reasons. For the crucial 2 years when I was planning the dissertation, I didn't actually have an adviser (and didn't realize quite how serious a problem that was). I eventually ended up working with someone who genuinely wanted to be helpful, and who was quite knowledgeable about the canonical writers of my period, but didn't realize just how little he knew about the noncanonical authors in which I was interested, and the methods used to analyze their work. A few years after that, the department managed to hire a Very Big Name who was quite knowledgeable about my field, and who was polite and supportive in sort of a detached way (commenting mostly on my punctuation), but with whom I never really formed a relationship, though VBN's name is on my completed dissertation. VBN left before I defended (and the first adviser came back, but not in time to resume our relationship). Many years later, the expert in canonical lit and an undergraduate professor of mine who'd moved to my graduate department in the interim (but who worked in another field, and had no place in my graduate advising) were the two professors I actually knew who attended my defense.
At this point, I'm occasionally in touch with the canonical-lit expert (and have a letter from him in my file, which he informs me won't be updated now that he is retired); the Big Name didn't answer my last email asking for an updated recommendation, and I don't think I'll ask again, though I might send occasional updates, since I admire VBN's work, and mine is actually getting closer and closer in (sub)genre, if not in subject. At this point, I realize that I need referees from beyond my grad-school days anyway, but I do occasionally feel mildly jealous of friends with advisers who actually make an effort to network with/for their advisees (then again, the fact that several of those friends still hold full- or part-time contingent positions after years of job searching is a pretty good reminder that even having a supportive adviser with a reputation for getting his/her advisees jobs is no guarantee in this market).
Do I still respect my advisor? To quote Pete Rose on Sparky Anderson, “I would walk through Hell in a gasoline suit for that man.” When my old advisor treated me like crap I switched to another, slightly less prestigious prof in the department. Best thing I could have possibly done. He was patient and a good teacher and is still a good friend. Without him I never would have finished. He’s quite old now and in poor health and when he finally passes away I will probably cry like a baby.
As for the rest of the committee? Well, there was one substitute who was nice enough but I’ve since forgotten his name. The outside reader was OK—but he didn’t have much to say. The second reader, however, was, and remains to this day, a total prick. He refused to shake my hand after my defense and stormed out of the room. I guess he really hated my thesis! When my book, based on my dissertation, came out, my advisor told me he planned on making a point of waving it in that guy’s face.
First, adviser or advisor? Because advisor is always marked as misspelled.
Second, my primary adviser is a bit of a [censored by Gordon Presto]. My secondary adviser, on the other hand, has bought me a million beers, made time at conferences, even spent some days in Vegas. The first has never opened any doors; the second has opened dozens.
My primary advisor is in a federal prison somewhere in the Midwest after pleading guilty to downloading child porn onto his computers at home and work. Once he's done with that, he goes to a state prison in the Northeast to begin serving his term for molesting a teenaged boy.
He is far and away the most brilliant man I've ever met. No, we're not in contact anymore.
i still feel like i'm disappointing my advisor (we had a very dysfunctional relationship). and i despise that a-hole committee member who decided to take out his disdain for my advisor on me. he stated that he would not pass me until i addressed his suggested revisions. he then proceeded to make no suggestions and ask that my advisor decide what was problematic about my thesis. after 3 months of dicking around and trying to get some feedback from him, he finally said "ok, i will pass you". oh yeah, then he slept through my defense and didn't ask a single question, even though i was f-ing prepared for any kind of bullshit he attempted to throw my way. god, that was 15 years ago and i still seriously hate that guy.
I think Kari gets the prize for the wildest story (but I'm inclined to believe it; people who are extreme in one way are sometimes also extreme in another. By comparison, the alcoholic advisors that half of my grad school friends seemed to have were pretty tame; you just had to get hold of them before noon or so.)
And I tend naturally to spell it "advisor," but got tired of the red squiggly lines and changed the last vowel to an "e" above. I don't suppose it's one of those British/American things (my grad school was wannabee-British, in architecture and sometimes also in other ways)?
@Frank: I don't blame you. I once watched a primary advisor savage the advisor's own advisee during a defense. Come to think of it, during that time I didn't have an advisor, I was also trying to avoid ending up with that person. Fun times.
Mine was brilliant and did his best to be helpful, but I was too intimidated and arrogant to talk to him. Years on it is ever clearer to me what an idiot I was. We are still in occasional touch. He's retired now.
I loved my head advisor. I picked him out myself from my program's faculty. He was an individualist, free-spirited type who really loved learning for learning's sake. He encouraged me on both my topic and my approach and made plenty of time to meet with me, even after I moved away to take a VAP position.
I was required to have someone from outside the program due to the topic I selected, so I got an up and coming scholar who was also very good and gave me great suggestions about how to tie in several themes. However, when I ran into him at a conference just a couple of years after I graduated, he didn't even remember who I was.
Then there was The Dud. He was from my program, but the department chair assigned him to my committee as was the practice then. I never had this man for a class, I barely knew him, and he made Calvin Coolidge look like a chatterbox. I had finished the first three chapters when the unthinkable happened. My beloved head advisor had a heart attack and was forced to go out on leave for the rest of the semester. I did not want to replace him, so my program chair appointed The Dud as head of my committee and relegated my first choice to the third slot.
The Dud offered no feedback for months. I had to beg and plead and even ask the program chair to intervene. Finally I got something from him. It made no sense whatsoever given the topic I'd chosen, but I guess he felt he had to put something in there that would mark my work as being influenced by him. So I spent an extra two months researching his concept and trying to figure out how to implement it into my work. I pulled some bullshit out of a hat eventually, and he was satisfied. We never met in person.
Meanwhile, my original advisor had come back to work, albeit half time, so I asked that he be reinstated as the lead, and he was willing to do it. The program chair refused, so I was forced to continue with The Dud. When I walked the stage to get my hood, the program chair had to point out who I was so he'd know when to come up.
Thirteen years out and I still despise him. To misquote Lilith Crane ("Cheers"), "I hate you with the intensity of one thousand white-hot suns."
ReplyDeleteFurther out than Overeductd:
ReplyDeleteI still drink heavily with my main advisor at conferences, but our relationship is very different now. He still writes for me sometimes, and I throw things his way when the opportunity arises, but we are peers now. I wouldn't say that we are close friends exactly, but we do stay in touch. He has some considerable personal foibles, some of which make me squirm a little, but people in glass houses and whatnot. As a scholar and promoter of his advisees (he's on the cusp of retirement but still training people) he remains the fucking bomb. And isn't that what you want in an advisor? The rest is meaningless.
Of the other two main people, one is long retired and expired, and I would be loathe to speak ill of the dead. He was a highly eccentric person, even by the standards of this profession, and I probably only spoke to him twice after I defended my dissertation, and then only because I bumped into him at a conference. I never used him as a recommender again after defending either. We just never had a relationship beyond grad school, and I certainly don't regret that. If pushed, I would say that despite the fact that he was a class-A weirdo, I remember him fondly because he really put me through the paces as a grad student.
The third main person is pretty close to my own age, and we now have very similar attainments. He's seriously on the "me program" and he always was, but he is fun to have drinks with from time to time. Like number two, he never wrote for me or otherwise did much once I'd defended, but we maintain a relationship mainly because he knows that I can do things for him now. I'd say that the main thing that he does that irks me is that he has used his association with me as a way of promoting his own career as a trainer-of-students, which to my mind seriously overstates his role in my own development. At any rate, I doubt I'd see or hear from him at all if I had not developed my own reputation. All this to say, that outside of the occasional drink, I rarely think of him at all.
I was never really close to my committee members or my advisor. I don't know if my advisor even remembers me ten years later... I vaguely remember him as someone who wore black pants with a brown belt. I feel no animosity toward him (more like apathy), but then I probably felt that way and simply wanted to get the diss. done so I could move on. I am guessing he, too, felt that way. The others on my committee have all retired and I have no idea where they even are.
ReplyDeleteTop advisor left before school started the second year( with a weeks notice to me) to take a chair at another school.He was one of few experts in area that he had really pushed me to work in.It sucked.He sucked. Still feel the anger.
ReplyDeleteMine's still a hotshot, but not as callow a youth now, and so more bearable. Still, I keep some distance, as my scars tingle in proximity.
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteMy advisor and I stay in touch because we still collaborate. I've gotten good at screening out his bullshit. One of my committee members was a good friend in grad school and remains. The others... I forgot who they were.
ReplyDeleteMost of my dissertation committee left academia. I defended twenty years ago, but they were all younger men then, and not one had hit forty. So now of course they are nearing sixty. We're all getting old.
ReplyDeleteOne drank himself out of his job. Brilliant lecturer. Brilliant, period. He just couldn't stop drinking.
One left and moved into some sort of commune.
The last one went west, back where he came from. to teach here and there.
They were very dear people, all of them, and very interesting men.
Mine, like Jimmu's, were on the revolving-door plan, but I don't hate any of them; at this point I'm mostly aware of how young and naive I was when I began grad school (at 23), and maybe a bit angry, on that 20-something's behalf, that my department didn't have clearer institutional procedures regarding the assigning of advisers in place.
ReplyDeleteI planned and passed my field exams with the adviser I was assigned when I entered the program, who was quite helpful, and with whom I would happily have continued working, and, in the second year, with a visiting professor, also in my field, whom the department hoped to hire (but who took another position instead, and has gone on to an illustrious career). The department fell apart a few weeks after the end of my field exams, with my main adviser, the chair (with whom I would also have been happy to work), and 2 other people resigning for various reasons. For the crucial 2 years when I was planning the dissertation, I didn't actually have an adviser (and didn't realize quite how serious a problem that was). I eventually ended up working with someone who genuinely wanted to be helpful, and who was quite knowledgeable about the canonical writers of my period, but didn't realize just how little he knew about the noncanonical authors in which I was interested, and the methods used to analyze their work. A few years after that, the department managed to hire a Very Big Name who was quite knowledgeable about my field, and who was polite and supportive in sort of a detached way (commenting mostly on my punctuation), but with whom I never really formed a relationship, though VBN's name is on my completed dissertation. VBN left before I defended (and the first adviser came back, but not in time to resume our relationship). Many years later, the expert in canonical lit and an undergraduate professor of mine who'd moved to my graduate department in the interim (but who worked in another field, and had no place in my graduate advising) were the two professors I actually knew who attended my defense.
At this point, I'm occasionally in touch with the canonical-lit expert (and have a letter from him in my file, which he informs me won't be updated now that he is retired); the Big Name didn't answer my last email asking for an updated recommendation, and I don't think I'll ask again, though I might send occasional updates, since I admire VBN's work, and mine is actually getting closer and closer in (sub)genre, if not in subject. At this point, I realize that I need referees from beyond my grad-school days anyway, but I do occasionally feel mildly jealous of friends with advisers who actually make an effort to network with/for their advisees (then again, the fact that several of those friends still hold full- or part-time contingent positions after years of job searching is a pretty good reminder that even having a supportive adviser with a reputation for getting his/her advisees jobs is no guarantee in this market).
Do I still respect my advisor? To quote Pete Rose on Sparky Anderson, “I would walk through Hell in a gasoline suit for that man.” When my old advisor treated me like crap I switched to another, slightly less prestigious prof in the department. Best thing I could have possibly done. He was patient and a good teacher and is still a good friend. Without him I never would have finished. He’s quite old now and in poor health and when he finally passes away I will probably cry like a baby.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest of the committee? Well, there was one substitute who was nice enough but I’ve since forgotten his name. The outside reader was OK—but he didn’t have much to say. The second reader, however, was, and remains to this day, a total prick. He refused to shake my hand after my defense and stormed out of the room. I guess he really hated my thesis! When my book, based on my dissertation, came out, my advisor told me he planned on making a point of waving it in that guy’s face.
First, adviser or advisor? Because advisor is always marked as misspelled.
ReplyDeleteSecond, my primary adviser is a bit of a [censored by Gordon Presto]. My secondary adviser, on the other hand, has bought me a million beers, made time at conferences, even spent some days in Vegas. The first has never opened any doors; the second has opened dozens.
My primary advisor is in a federal prison somewhere in the Midwest after pleading guilty to downloading child porn onto his computers at home and work. Once he's done with that, he goes to a state prison in the Northeast to begin serving his term for molesting a teenaged boy.
ReplyDeleteHe is far and away the most brilliant man I've ever met. No, we're not in contact anymore.
i still feel like i'm disappointing my advisor (we had a very dysfunctional relationship). and i despise that a-hole committee member who decided to take out his disdain for my advisor on me. he stated that he would not pass me until i addressed his suggested revisions. he then proceeded to make no suggestions and ask that my advisor decide what was problematic about my thesis. after 3 months of dicking around and trying to get some feedback from him, he finally said "ok, i will pass you". oh yeah, then he slept through my defense and didn't ask a single question, even though i was f-ing prepared for any kind of bullshit he attempted to throw my way. god, that was 15 years ago and i still seriously hate that guy.
ReplyDeleteI think Kari gets the prize for the wildest story (but I'm inclined to believe it; people who are extreme in one way are sometimes also extreme in another. By comparison, the alcoholic advisors that half of my grad school friends seemed to have were pretty tame; you just had to get hold of them before noon or so.)
ReplyDeleteAnd I tend naturally to spell it "advisor," but got tired of the red squiggly lines and changed the last vowel to an "e" above. I don't suppose it's one of those British/American things (my grad school was wannabee-British, in architecture and sometimes also in other ways)?
@Frank: I don't blame you. I once watched a primary advisor savage the advisor's own advisee during a defense. Come to think of it, during that time I didn't have an advisor, I was also trying to avoid ending up with that person. Fun times.
ReplyDeleteMine was brilliant and did his best to be helpful, but I was too intimidated and arrogant to talk to him. Years on it is ever clearer to me what an idiot I was. We are still in occasional touch. He's retired now.
ReplyDeleteI loved my head advisor. I picked him out myself from my program's faculty. He was an individualist, free-spirited type who really loved learning for learning's sake. He encouraged me on both my topic and my approach and made plenty of time to meet with me, even after I moved away to take a VAP position.
ReplyDeleteI was required to have someone from outside the program due to the topic I selected, so I got an up and coming scholar who was also very good and gave me great suggestions about how to tie in several themes. However, when I ran into him at a conference just a couple of years after I graduated, he didn't even remember who I was.
Then there was The Dud. He was from my program, but the department chair assigned him to my committee as was the practice then. I never had this man for a class, I barely knew him, and he made Calvin Coolidge look like a chatterbox. I had finished the first three chapters when the unthinkable happened. My beloved head advisor had a heart attack and was forced to go out on leave for the rest of the semester. I did not want to replace him, so my program chair appointed The Dud as head of my committee and relegated my first choice to the third slot.
The Dud offered no feedback for months. I had to beg and plead and even ask the program chair to intervene. Finally I got something from him. It made no sense whatsoever given the topic I'd chosen, but I guess he felt he had to put something in there that would mark my work as being influenced by him. So I spent an extra two months researching his concept and trying to figure out how to implement it into my work. I pulled some bullshit out of a hat eventually, and he was satisfied. We never met in person.
Meanwhile, my original advisor had come back to work, albeit half time, so I asked that he be reinstated as the lead, and he was willing to do it. The program chair refused, so I was forced to continue with The Dud. When I walked the stage to get my hood, the program chair had to point out who I was so he'd know when to come up.