By Arturo Meza
Is not always easy to create an effective relationship with your advisor and sometimes is less easy to maintain that effective relationship and this might be due to some common reasons. In this article I will share with you some tips on how to not only create that relation but also maintain it through the time of your degree and who knows, sometimes even for longer times.
One of the main reasons sometimes an effective relationship is difficult to achieve is because of a lack of communication between the student and the advisor.
An advisor’s role is to guide a student through the pursuit of a project or a degree but is not always the only task an advisor has. Professors are usually involved in multiple projects funded by different agencies that, demand a report on how those funds are being used and any progress and results, the sum of all these allows them to provide only a short part of their time to their students in most of the cases, however, professors do offer that time to their students since their goal is to advise and guide students.
In most of the cases that short time they have left, they usually dedicate it to their students but of course, they want to invest that time efficiently. This is where a student has some degree of control on what and how to communicate with an advisor and is expected to communicate it efficiently, which could be difficult sometimes.
Here as some tips that you could use to make this effective:
- Prepare in advance for a meeting. Write down your ideas, list them on a note pad or in your computer/tablet. The ideas can be organized as bullet points which are the most relevant item of a topic that shall be discussed, this is always helpful.
- Be there on time. If you are asked to meet in a location at a specific time you should try to be there at least 5-10 minutes earlier, this helps because you will not be under stress of being late, also if you walked, ran, biked or drove there, you may need to take a break and organize your ideas before the meeting starts. This is crucial and highly recommended since you do not want to waste that valuable time that is being offered to you and you do not want to waste your time either.
- Listen carefully and speak clear your ideas. During meetings different ideas may show up in your thoughts as the meeting goes, be patient and communicate it when there is a chance, if you need more time is okay to ask for more time and if that is not possible another meeting to discuss further.
Additionally, is important to state that if you wish to discuss personal topics you can always ask, this is part of the role of an advisor since they want you to be healthy, happy, and focused on your work.
One other way to keep effective communication is via email. Most of the advisors are responsive through mail for whatever the topic is. This is easier than meeting in person sometimes since they can multi-task if they are communicating through email.
Lastly, you should try to always be yourself in the way you communicate and should try to not feel intimidated by the position or role of your advisor, they are there to help, to guide you through paths that they have gone through, and they understand. Of course, as a student, this is always a professional relationship in a professional environment, but there is always time to be friendly and talk about other things not related to work, sometimes school social events, research group social events, or even in conferences social events. You will find that this is also helpful to maintain an effective relationship with your advisor.