My dissertation advisor is a jerk!

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My possibly Aspie dissertation advisor is a total jerk with me. I am AS myself but soooo different. He seems to care about practical, mundane things and I am more of a visionary and big picture person. He seems to think that I am not too bright and when other professors say good things about me, he discounts them. I have published a book with two other PhD candidates and it outsold his last book. He never said a good word about the success of our book and was against us writing it from the very beginning.

He and I have clashed on several occassions and he is being passive aggressive with me lately. I am about a year away from submitting my PhD thesis and am worried about getting negative letters of recommendation from him when I apply for postdocs or lectureships.

Any advice? Has anyone dealt with a similar situation?

Have you ever read the book "Getting what you came for"? It's about this kind of stuff in graduate school. It scared the crap out of me with stories just like what you're describing. Maybe it has some ideas about how to deal with people like that.

All I can say is, you're this far in, make it work. It doesn't pay to be right in situations like these. I had to file action against my committee chair. I got done, but barely, and it's still all bad blood. Problem is, even once you get your piece of paper, he'll still be in your life for better or for worse, so let him be right and just do whatever it takes to get done. Best of luck to you.

Is arranging a meeting with him an option? Preferably with a neutral party present.

Well, as neutral as possible.

Yeah, that is what I am trying to do.....hopefully it will work out. I hate to think that this guy will be in my life even after I get the PhD, but you are right, he will be in it for a while, at least until I establish myself with some papers and a few other top scholars can vouch for me.

Do you mind me asking you what sort of action you had to file against your committee chair?

He would not step aside from my committee, and while he would not "give me up" he also was being passive aggressive and not allowing me to move forward. After 18 months of him refusing idea after idea after idea, I realized he was running my clock down intentionally. I worked up a great idea (experimental methods and design is my 'talent'), and once I managed some time with him one on one, he bullied me. Fired questions at me while I was mid-sentence answering the last one. I mentioned that he was upsetting me and that I needed to leave, calm down and talk with him in a few hours...he persisted. I filed a human rights claim against him, because he seemed to have issues with his female students (he would make appointments with the men, but made us camp outside his office or chase him down multiple times), and issues with the fact that I am Native American. Once I filed a complaint, and called the Tribal Affairs liaison (from the provost's office) into my discussion with the college, I was offered a new committee on the double, and I finished.

It was and is very ugly. Our research streams are indelibly linked, so no matter what he will be reviewing my papers. There really is no such thing as double-blind reviews. I'm anticipating great trouble from this d-bag for the rest of my career. In fact, I'm so traumatized by it, I'm thinking about leaving my field altogether. I don't want him to have any more control over my life than he has already had.

Please, don't learn this stuff the hard way, the way Aspergirl did. I was adamant about not kissing up to the guy, and really upset that he seemed to need that from me to think me worth his time. In hindsight, I wish I hadn't been so stubborn about being true to my values of justice and fairness, and just given him some lying submissiveness.

Can you change advisors?

This is fairly normal, unfortunately, in some disciplines more than others.

Remember that your supervisor is not going to examine you. Your supervisor has a very strong role in selecting the internal and external examiners, and can influence their opinion very easily. But the candidate is a reflection of the supervisor too, and affects the supervisor's reputation.

If you are having real problems, especially if there is a bullying / harassment issue, then document every event and note the date, witnesses and exact words used. With particularly troublesome verbal incidents, you can confirm them by email, quoting the exact words used and requesting clarification (pretend like Louis Theroux).

Letting the supervisor be right in everything else is probably good advice - one more year and you are rid of this person. The references will make no difference in the long run, especially if you get to know one of the externals enough for a reference.

Oooh, ooh, this is something I know about. Long years in academia with colleagues MOST of whom were jerks in many many ways.

Unless it is a BIG department, forget changing advisers - you risdk being stuck with him on the committee as wicked uninvited fairy godmother - and even if he is NOT on the committee he can make it hard for you.

Talking face to face BEING VERY CAREFUL TO KEEP ALL EMOTION OUT OF IT maybe could help, but is not guaranteed.

And places I have been, taking any kind of legal / administrative action will just cut your throat.

How far are you? Can you adjust your topic and / or approach? This is basically what I had to do - my PhD is NOT what I would have chosen to do, but it got me around the potholes and pitfalls.

And is there someone in the department who GETS you and your work - and is not at odds with your supervisor? Such a person [I have been one for people] can help you avoid saying the worst things.

Last resort - I have seen it done - if you are very lucky, you can finish your dissertation at a time when he is off on sabbatical or whatever and get a replacement chair. I know one student who would NEVER have gotten her degree if her original supervisor had been in the country.

I don't know what to say. Graduate school is hell. I ended up deciding to just stop at a MS rather than go for the Ph. D.

I couldn't deal with the politics and stress. I had a traumatic incident relating to the department chair that drove me to emotional ruin. When I went to disability services and they refused to intervene I had a violent meltdown. The anger and raw emotion is still with me to this day. I pretty much gave up any hope of staying in the department as a Ph. D candidate because of all the BS. The past year I've been struggling to motivate myself to just finish my MS and GTFO.

If you have the mental strength to move forward and do what you have to do than all the power to you. Unfortunately as a graduate student you don't really have much freedom. If your advisor doesn't work out and you can't change, the only course of action is to compromise and just get through your dissertation as fast as possible with the hopes that more rewarding research opportunities will present later on in your career. A lot of professors will tell you, in retrospect, that they think their own Ph. D thesis was trivial rubbish. The vast majority of Ph. D. thesis aren't really ground breaking or visionary, mainly for practical reasons. I can't really motivate myself to work that way though. I can't force myself to do research that my heart isn't in just to please someone else.

It's kind of sad when you know you have the intellectual capacity for something but the emotional capacity simply isn't there.