“Academic Advisor” is the person who will help and work with you throughout your whole graduate academic life. Your academic advisor will exercise a lot of influence over your graduate experience. It’s important to understand the nature of the relationship: the advisor-student relationship is a symbiosis. The most important key to having a good relationship with your advisor is to be completely honest and transparent about your work with him/her.
Another major key is to start early, perhaps even before the beginning of your program:
Email the professor with questions about his/her research. If you are really interested in working with him/her, start by asking questions about their recent publications or conference presentations. Don’t use these emails straight away to ask about working in their labs or asking about working with them as an assistant. Emailing them about their research work is helpful for you too in order to understand if their research orientation resonates with yours.
Write a good introduction email. Read about their research and take notes before writing your email, and then read over them one more time to make sure that you didn’t break any of the “rules” of cold emailing a professor. Make sure to highlight how your undergraduate/master’s research work is aligned with their research projects or your factors of motivation in case you want to start something different. Don’t try to oversell or undersell yourself.
After you’re enrolled in the program, you should:
Go to your advisor-advisee meetings prepared. Make sure to complete any requirements that they had asked you to do before this meeting. If you didn’t complete them, be honest with your professor.
Cancel a meeting at least 24 hours in advance. Emergencies happen. If you’re feeling ill or have a feeling that you won’t have everything completed by the time of your meeting, ask for postponement well in advance so that your professor can devote that time on other work.
If there’s a problem, tell your professor immediately. Misunderstanding is very common in research environment. If you don’t understand your professor’s directions, are having trouble in your research, or if some health/personal issue is preventing you from meeting certain requirements, notify your professor immediately. This will prevent your advisor from thinking that you are purposefully ignoring or disrespecting them, avoiding your work, etc.
Listen to your Advisor’s advice. When they tell you to do or not do something, they are probably speaking from experience and have your best interests in mind. Remember, they are where they are for a reason. If you think that something is unreasonable or unrealistic, speak (respectfully and tactfully) to your advisor about why they gave you those requirements and why you think you may have difficulty meeting them. Don’t be afraid of presenting your opinions, but be respectful.
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Jawad FayazHome Country: IndiaThe Henry Samueli School of Engineering
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