Quote Originally Posted by Scrap View Post
Shalaa get a cheap fishing net.
Right yes i remember - I couldn't find a cane fishing net last time I looked but I'll try again or try to find the equivalent. Thanks Scrap!

Quote Originally Posted by hitmandonny View Post
Is there a board that monitors your supervisors, that you could complain to or make suggestions to in order to improve. It has to be frustrating dealing with people like that. I find they sound a bit arrogant and condescending from you description.
I know you wouldn't like reporting them, but at the end of the day, they're there for you. Their only function is to help your learning not frustrate or hold you back.

As for the language barrier....oh dear....we were in college in our second year. We prepared a project in a group and the lecturer randomnly selected the spesker to present the report in front of the entirter class, our marks would be awarded on this presentation. Randomnly the lectureer assigned a guy with a terrible stutter to be our speaker.
It was entirely up to him whether to sp3eak or not. None of the rest of the group wanted to say "I thinbk we should do it," and he never stepped back from the challenge. I worked especially hard on the report, putting together I would say 80% of the entire project and I knew it was good stuff.

On the day he stood on front of the class and nerves made his stutter worse and worse, making it appear as if the report ahd a million and one holes in it......Disaster....came out with 20%.
I hate being held back by thrid parties.
Yeah Donny I'm flattered you think I'm the type to be patient enough not to have complained - but really I'm an impatient cow! I did probably take a little longer to bring up certain issues than I should have - almost a year but I have brought it up well and truly now.

I submitted a supervision report to the head CEO. I spoke to a university councellor about it who told me how to go about documenting things. I made collaborations with interstate scientists in my field so that they could back me up on the problems which formed the basis of my project which my supervisor didn't want to face up to.

I don't know if it had anything to do with all of my hissy fits or just the general vibe from all the PhD students but the university launched an enquiry into the way PhD students were managed in our centre. We were all interviewed by an impartial scientist brought in from overseas and he had to submit a report.

Now they have set in place things like if you have a non-native english speaking supervisor you also need to have another one who is a native english speaker. They even have to have other people in the field who are not supervisors but monitor the projects to make sure that they are realistic and doable in the time we have.

They also have a PhD students committee so we can ask for help with supervisor and project issues. All this has only just come into place in the last couple of months and I'm meant to be finishing soonish. It's too late to help me but hopefully some of the more difficult supervisors will have to think about whether or not they really want a student or just a technition.

The problem with the Russian guy supervising my friend is all his technitions quit but his students are locked in for 3 years. He has always chosen mild mannered men (total of 2) or female (many) people to be his students and technitions. People who don't yell back or in the case of my friend just don't bother yelling back anymore because he's louder.

He's getting to the bottom of the pool of people who will work with him now though. His next supervisor is going to be another adult experienced Russian male and I'm actually really looking forward to the fireworks in a twisted sick kinda way!

Too bad to hear about what happened with your report. Especially being so busy with all your other responsibilities it must be so frustrating to put effort into something not have it shown properly.

At least you know it will be a different story when you present your individual work. I don't know about you but having ring time in front of small crowds makes public speaking relatively easy for me in comparison.