Hello wonderful humans and welcome back to my channel, my name is Lucy and I’m a PhD
student at the University of Birmingham and today I want to talk to you all about how to
prepare for your first ever supervisor meeting. Let's get on with the video.
So I imagine the first supervisor meeting is quite scary, I remember being super nervous
last year when I was getting ready for my supervisor meeting. I didn't really know
what to expect. I didn't know really what the format would take because even though I’d had
supervisor meetings for my masters that felt very different because often it was just one or
two and it was for a very short period of time. Obviously, the PhD you know going into it that
this is someone you're going to be working with, communicating with for like three-four years. So
it's a lot longer relationship that you need to build up and you want to start that on the
best foot possible. So what I’m going to do in this video is I’m going to quickly run through
some of the advice I kind of wish I’d known before my first supervisor meeting, sort of give you
an idea of what to expect and what typically was covered in a first supervisor meeting and
hopefully just allay some fears and make you feel a lot calmer about the whole process. Okay so my
first absolute piece of advice I think everyone should do, I didn't do this, I should have
done this is re-read your PhD proposal. Now the reason I say this is because I applied for my PhD
in January, I started in September, I didn't really properly sit down and reread my proposal
during that time. I thought about it, I thought about my PhD obviously. I thought about my
proposal, I thought about my topic but I didn't really read what I’d actually sent my supervisor.
So I went into the meeting thinking ‘oh yeah this is what I’m doing, this is what I want’
and some of it didn't align with what they had last been told because I hadn't updated them
on how my PhD had changed in my head of how I was going to approach it and what I wanted to focus on
from what they had seen, which was my PhD proposal back in January.
And it wasn't a huge issue but I think in retrospect it would have been worthwhile
me reading my PhD proposal noting okay well I’ve changed that or I don't really want to do that
approach now or like oh yeah okay I’ve expanded on that idea a bit just note to yourself any changes
any developments anything that now you're like oh no I’m doing a completely different approach
especially if you've had that longer gap between applying and your first supervisor meeting because
then you can go into that meeting, and this leads quite nicely into kind of point number two, you
can go into that meeting and you can discuss your research proposal in quite an in-depth informed
way. Rather than doing what I did which is a bit off the hoof. Wasn’t completely off the hoof,
it was just a little bit off the hoof and there was a little bit of like ‘oh okay well we'll just
change that’ or you know and instead you can go in and quite confidently say ‘oh well I really like
this aspect of my PhD and I still want to use that methodology but I’ve changed the text I’m going
to be looking at’ or ‘I’ve changed the area I’m going to be studying’ or whatever your PhD is on,
whatever aspect you've changed you can kind of show how it's changed and why you've changed
it and I think that will put you in a really good stead when you're having, which is quite a crucial
part of the first meeting that kind of discussion with your supervisors or supervisor. I have two,
most people I know have two. You can discuss quite confidently with them how
your PhD has changed. You can discuss quite confidently like the parameters of your PhD,
what you actually want to set out to achieve and that will set you up really well for that first
meeting to make sure you're all on the same page. The other thing at this point I would like to
iterate is your PhD is going to change, develop, evolve throughout your PhD process. Your project
will not stay the same as it did when you first applied, as it necessarily even did during your
first year. Part of a PhD project is that evolution, it's that as you discover more
you change your approach or you change your focus and that is completely normal but I think just
for that first meeting if there has been any changes it's really important to outline what
they have been, what's the impact and how it might affect your first few months of the PhD.
Okay so this brings me on to the next point, which I think is equally important and something that me
and my supervisors definitely did in that first meeting is set expectations for how you work.
Do you require lots of micromanagement? Do you expect regular check-ins? Do you actually prefer
just to be let loose and have very vague aims for each month? Do you prefer email communication?
Telephone? Video? face-to-face? Do you like a more formal relationship? Do you want it more informal?
Do you envision you needing any additional training in certain areas? When I started my
PhD I had never been formally taught romance scholarship, I was a passionate romance fan
my master's dissertation at the University of Edinburgh was on the topic of romances - I
looked at female heterosexuality in romance novels of the 1990s - and obviously for that,
for my master's dissertation I’ve done a lot of research but I’ve never had a
class. I’d never had a lecture taught to me about romance in an in-depth way. So one of
the first things I did was, my supervisors said ‘okay well we've got two courses at
University of Birmingham that look at romance maybe it'd be worthwhile you sign up for them?
One of them is our masters, one of them is an undergrad but you might find them valuable.
We can sign you up so that you go to the classes but you don't have to do any of the assignments.
Is that something you'd be interested in?’ And I said ‘Yes, I think that'd be really useful because
it would give me hopefully a good background and give me some of the scholarship and just make sure
I’ve got all the scholarship I have and it's not patchy again’. A lot of it,
and the scholarship I kind of had already covered, but it also opened my eyes to some new aspects and
it was a really good way I think of introducing me back into PhD life, back into academic life.
So those are the kind of things it's good to bring up I think in your first meeting.
I also set the expectations of you know I like really clear guidelines, I tend to work better
to goal-orientated tasks that are measurable, so smart tasks basically, tasks where you
can say okay I’m going to write 500 words on this and then you know okay I’ve written 450
etc rather than I’m going to read around the topic of the queer death drive. For me there's
no outcome to that so I would do it but I would be like I don't know now what to do. I- I’ve read,
do I need to read more? Have I not read enough? Have I read too much, should I start writing?
so these are the kind of things you can discuss with your supervisor straight away
basically what's your working style, what's your communication style,
what are maybe gaps that are in your current knowledge bank that you could shore up quite
quickly and easily either by doing courses or reading certain critics and things like that
and I think that kind of all becomes encapsulated - like what do you want to get out of the PhD?
What is your PhD experience and how can your supervisors help facilitate that?
And that's why setting expectations are so important right at that first meeting because
the sooner you do it the sooner you're going to be having the PhD experience you want to have.
So my third point and this might be quite scary for some of you is one of the things I discussed
with my supervisors straight away in the first meeting and I think it's pretty common they ask
me the question of what do you want to do after the PhD? What do you envision your future in
four years or three and a half years being and I responded as I think most PhD people do is
well ideally I’d love to be in academia and they respond and said okay obviously that's quite
competitive we need to make you as marketable as possible; we need to make sure that your PhD
is going to give you as many options to apply for. Romance scholarship is still quite new,
there are jobs in it but they said you might be more likely to get a job as a queer theorist so it
was about by having that conversation, as scary as it was, it actually is good because then you can
start working towards that. It's not the focus but you've got it in the back of all of your mind and
it means that you aren't going to end the three years and suddenly be like oh my god I completely
can't get a job in what I want to do or I can't do that because I haven't done this and I should
have done this like two years ago and now it's too late. I think also during that time period,
I think I did say as, well I know academia's really competitive so then you know I might
not go into it but currently that's the goal. I think that's fair enough to say and if your
answer is I don't know, that's also fine. Not everybody is going to know what they want to do
after the PhD and honestly it's really normal for it to change as well, so if your supervisors do
ask that question and you don't have an answer that's totally fine. What I would recommend is
potentially reaching out to the career services, the earlier you reach out to them and kind of get
an idea of what your options could be post PhD the better because then you can start doing things
that will add to your CV in a meaningful way to help you get where you want to go.
So step number four: prepare to do admin in your first meeting. So my first supervisor
meeting was about an hour long and I think probably the first half an hour was all admin
based. It was things like making sure I’d been registered correctly, making sure my PhD title
was entered correctly into the system. I think my supervisors had to do some admin on their end,
kind of, to make sure I was officially signed up as a supervisee person. Just a lot of admin stuff,
which is boring. It's- there's no other way to say it's just going to involve potentially like typing
away on laptops asking some questions like ‘oh is this your date of birth? Is this your student
number? is this blah blah blah.’ You've got to do it, be prepared to do it, it's totally normal.
You don't need to prepare anything for it just make sure you have your ID card so you know your
student number. I’d say that was the main thing that maybe could have caused a few issues, so yeah
you're going to do admin in your first meeting. it might take up a bulk of the meeting, it might not
depends how quick depending on your university depending, how quick your supervisor is at that
kind of stuff, depending how quick you are at that kind of stuff but just be prepared for that.
I didn't really expect that going in but it's completely normal.
And then the final thing I would say and actually I offer this as a piece of advice for kind of
all meetings going forward is take notes every time you have a supervisor meeting. Take notes,
I tend to have notes for all my supervisor meetings dated by
when they when they happen and then I have kind of questions before I go in
I make notes of the meetings and then right at the end I put action points for the next month.
And the final point I would say, which you should do in every meeting
is while you're in that meeting and you and your supervisor all together book the next
meeting because your supervisor's schedules are probably going to get busier than yours.
Yours might also get busy; I have two part-time jobs sometimes that means I can't be as flexible
as other PhD students who don't have two part-time jobs. So book your meeting for next month in that
current meeting because then you've all got it in your calendar it'll be a month in advance so
hopefully you won't be that busy and it just means you don't have to be fretting like two
weeks before your next supervisor meeting ‘oh god we haven't booked a meeting, um I’ll email them’.
And actually what I did in my first supervisor meeting is we booked the meetings for that first
term and that's something you could recommend to your supervisors just so that you get into
that good regular pattern of meeting every month and that's pretty much it.
I think ultimately your first supervisor meeting is you're going to be nervous, you're going to
be a little scared that's completely normal but you'll it'll be fine is what I’m trying to say.
It'll be completely fine. Supervisor meetings will become really normal to you really quickly
and hopefully with these little bits of advice or tips whatever you want to call them you will go in
feeling more confident and feeling more capable and knowing what to expect. So yeah, hopefully
this was useful! As always you can find me on Instagram and if you want to ask me any questions
just DM me it's @PhDLifeWithLucy. You can also ask questions down below and I will answer them,
and yeah if you like this kind of content subscribe and I will see you next Sunday!
Byeee!