You must always treat your committee members with the “utmost” respect (they deserve it) but there is a little room to get some concessions or perhaps to steer things in your chosen direction. Remember most of the time your committee will be right and you should move in their direction even if you do not see at the present time where they are going. They really are smart and talented people. 

Occasionally some committees can be a bit over bearing and a very few even a bit over the top. In those settings how do you get them to at least look at your ideas or to agree with your time line?  First you always remain respectful and polite. Under pressure some doctoral students do not realize how rude, arrogant and disrespectful they can be to the committee members. When alone ask your committee chair how you come across in terms of voice tone, posture or eye contact. If you do not ask you may be totally blind to how you are treating others when you are stressed. Get some feedback on this and look for small clues from those you are talking to. 

I have debriefed past doctoral students years after they graduated or failed to graduate. Most are fine but some folks had aggressive, angry and disrespectful voice tones while talking to me about their dissertation process. This made me wonder how they came across back when they were under the actual pressure of the degree process. Picture me discussing this with a fellow flyer on a jetliner and trying to get off the topic as he/she slowly winds up and is completely unaware how he/she is coming off to other passengers. How would this person have been when given feedback to by his/her committee? So do not try this question process if you are a person who comes across harsh or demanding. 

Once you have a good relationship with your committee then you might try this technique.   

When I was in sales I would call potential clients and they would attempt to get me off the phone and I would attempt to keep them on the phone until I hit a hot button and the conversation opened up. People hate cold callers yet we had many successes, how does that happen? Better yet can this work with doctoral committee members? 

Each day before cold calling we would sit in a group and the sales manager would say “Ring Ring” and point to someone and that salesperson acted as if they had just called a potential client. The sales manager would give out excuses to cut the conversation short, attack the caller or try to put the marketer in his/her place. We practiced for hours each week and learned the secret that the person asking the last question controls the conversation. So no matter what the potential customer said we had two or three simple questions memorized for every possible thing they might say. We kept asking questions and they kept answering and the conversation drew out. 

An angry response might be met with a question about being upset due to their economic situation with a follow up question about wanting to change this? The last person who asks a question controls the conversation and can direct the conversation as it moves on. Yet many doctoral students when meeting with their committee ask few questions. They do not steer any part of the conversation nor do they dig into areas that they are confused about. Many have this idea they should look confident and cool and very intelligent. Asking a question to many doctoral students in this situation they think makes them look weak, unsure and not knowledgeable in front of their committee. 

Think about it for a moment, you are in a small meeting with three of the most educated experts in the world and they can answer questions, guide you and send you to the right resources and you do not say anything! These are busy important folks and you make little attempt to dig for direction, answers and resources. Do you ask your committee if they know anyone who can help you find answers in a particular area? Do you engage them and dig for information or do you sit passively while they try to guess the direction you want to go.

 Many times past doctoral students complained their committees did not listen to them. When I asked if they took a list of written questions with them to ask, they reported no, they just listened but the committee should have known what they wanted. Many admitted they were so nervous they failed to ask much and simply listened to the feedback. Very few doctoral students ever took written questions to ask nor attempted to push for a particular approach or direction. Most admitted they were terrified when they had a meeting and just wanted it to end quickly. Yet everyone in that meeting had great potential to solve problems for that doctoral student. 

Brilliant as your committee members are this is your research and they see it in tiny pieces and do not see the expected results or direction. You use questions to steer them in the direction that you want and to dig for suggestions, resources and ideas from them.  If you are wrong, they will steer you away from where you are heading. But at least you try to go where you want and that is the beauty of the process. They guide you but this becomes a crazy process if you do not do your part. You guide them as much as possible (with polite questions) and ask questions to dig out as much help as you can get. The questions help you to find out quickly if you are going in the wrong direction. Listen to what your committee says and if they take you a different direction then go with them. Learn from their experience and knowledge of your field. 

Questions do not make you look bad. Write them down before the meeting and as the meeting moves on some you will ask and some you will not. You will learn a lot if you ask and you can perhaps steer things a way that you want. The questions you ask indicate a direction for your committee and give them something to work with. Enjoy this process and these wonderful experts that you are able to work with.

Attend to your goals, no one else will. 

Dr. Randy Parker
National Doctoral Students Association

Do not fall into this very seductive trap that has snared a number of doctoral students. Some students have learned to look busy but get nothing done. Could that be you? These misguided folks really are  busy but they are doing the wrong things, so in the end it falls apart. How could that happen to you?

Several doc students talked about all the work they did and then they did not graduate. They were bitter and felt they had a right to be angry. Perhaps, but in the end they failed and these were hard working folks with a track record of achieving. A pattern of statements about all the work they did yet still dropping out interested me and I dug deeper. 

You see each felt the mountain of work they had done should have paid off and yet it did not. You must make sure that you do not fall into the same trap. That trap is research greed and it gives you the illusion that you are moving forward because you are working so hard. Like a little squirrel running around gathering up nuts for the winter the doc student grabs every article, spends hours and hours in the library and storing articles. Every article seems to cry out that it will fit into the dissertation!

Some doctoral students have the belief that hours spent on the dissertation translates into moving forward. Computers, databases, journals, and huge libraries provide a large pile of research. Each article leads to other articles and the doctoral student piles these up. It feels safe and you feel smart. But you are not actually moving closer to graduation. 

Such a doctoral student can be fooled into thinking how far forward they have moved. In fact, they have added so much junk and confusion that they can easily get off track. I hear these students talking about all the places they could go with this mountain of research. It is seductive and powerful. The work makes the doc student feel like they are moving forward. But there is no plan and it is only mindless work that is not tied to a step by step series of goals. It does look impressive to have all the notes on paper, copies of articles and space saved on the computer. 

You can wallow in all this research and have all sorts of insight but it is just research greed if little of it will apply to your degree. The doctoral student has one goal and that is to graduate with his/her degree in hand. Then you search out the job you want with the salary that provides for you and your family and pays off your debts. You can fool yourself that all this extra research will make you smarter but if it does not tie directly into your graduation it is worthless. Once you have your degree someone will hire you to fix a problem and that is when all the extra research is useful. Do the extra research when you are getting paid to do it. 

Every time you start a doctoral task, ask yourself three questions. How will this help me to graduate? What am I doing right now? Do these two things match? You need a laser like focus on what your doctoral committee actually wants and that is what you do, no more. You are not trying to impress them or show them up. Yes they may change directions a dozen times and you change too keeping a good record of each change. But your focus is on what they want. Somehow like a drunken sailor finding his way back to his ship, the doctoral committee stumbles around and finally makes it to the place they want you to be to graduate. You get there by making the journey with them and not sitting in the library greedily building up a small mountain of research articles. 

I still have a couple of boxes of research I thought would lead to ideas that would revolutionize my field. Yeah well not so much, as nothing ever came from it. No one really wanted those solutions and when I look at the articles now, I wonder what the heck I was thinking about when I copied them? I spent a heck of a lot of time during late night hours at the university library finding and copying these articles. Late nights that I could have been home sleeping, spending time with my family or relaxing.
Don’t get pulled into the trap of research greed. Have a plan and stick to it. Follow the plan of your doctoral committee. 
Mind your goals,

Dr. Parker
National Doctoral Students Association

PS  I am going down to the basement and throwing out both boxes. OK I guess all four boxes. Why did I ever gather all of this stuff?

Several successful docs talked about almost being derailed from the doctoral program due to intense anger. Seeing even the name of a doctoral committee member would bring up intense bouts of intense anger. Sometimes it was a place, an assignment or a setting that unleashed the outpouring.

Each later figured it was actually fear that caused the anger. That was a hard call because anger takes center stage and covers up much else that is going on at the time. Each just wanted to burn with (inward self-justified) rage at the professors, the dissertation tasks or the time it took to do the tasks. 

There is a feeling of power and justification that comes with anger. It all seems so right to you at the time. This is all an illusion and it could cost you your future if you do not control it. Not everyone rages on the outside. Most of the anger from what I have heard takes place inside of your head and your body.

 In my case a lot of it came out of my mouth with a bit of swearing and ranting at home whenever things did not go my way, the task was too hard or I was tired. I was surprised to find out after graduating that my family felt like they were walking on eggshells whenever I was around. That had not been the case before the doctoral degree years and I have finally built back the bridges I burned during my degree years. The class taking years were not that bad, most of it was the dissertation time. Other doc students who graduated have mentioned this also. 

You can pull up all sorts of data on anger and how it screws up your body, destroys your hormone balance (over time) and leads to all sorts of negative things. Those people in anger now will deny all of this and talk about how it motivates them and makes their thinking sharper. They cling to the thing harming them and their family relationships like a life preserver after a shipwreck at night. This is all an illusion and it could cost you your future if you do not control it.

Sometimes the anger comes out overtly and other times it comes out in a passive aggressive way. The passive aggressive person always thinks they are being clever and no one else can pick up on their behavior and feelings. Other people are smart and perceptive and that defines most doctoral committee members so it does get noticed and it can drive a wedge between you and the very people you need to graduate. Anger also makes you think you are smarter than others so you do things like post bad comments on Facebook or other media thinking the targeted person will never see it. But someone always wants to stir things up and will send the negative comments to the person you are belittling.

You really do not want to publicly make fun of the Dean, Department Head, doctoral committee members, department secretary or other professors. When angry it seems so right to do it because you are so much in the right (or so you think). Most of these maligned folks will never talk to you about this since that is not the college way. They just step back a bit and help a lot less. Maybe they will add all sorts of extra work to your dissertation and then drop the extra material later. What can be better than 50 extra hours of useless research caused by the joy of running off your angry mouth?  

Most of this post is to make you more aware of what may be driving you. Just that awareness may cool you down a bit or maybe even get you to see how angry you may actually be. When you get angry then figure out first why you are mad. Go deeper than simply saying that Professor such and such is an a**hole. That really does not help the situation. Worse your anger will show up in your voice tone, emails and body language. Remember most doctoral students are extra work for the professor so do not drive off the people who can help you.

When you get angry figure out where you are, who you are with or what memories you are replaying in your mind. Work on these variables and figure out what is setting you off. Do you get angry when other folks disagree with you? Does this professor remind you of another teacher or adult who wronged you in the past? Figure out who and what is affecting you and work to change the stimuli into something non-threatening. Look up behavioral desensitization procedures to make stressful things stop being stressful. Have a friend or family member read your email to this person before you send it etc. You are smart so have fun with this and solve it. The same procedures will work with difficult bosses later on.

 Later we will look at specific procedures to help you with anger but awareness is the first step. Admit if you are angry and become aware of it and all of angers tricks. Realize your strength does not come from the anger. It comes from your motivation and your intellect. The anger is simply a big sugar rush reaction that can play over and over in your mind. Do not let it run your life.

Mind your goals,

Dr. Randy Parker
National Doctoral Students Association

After working quite a while with a supportive doctoral committee chair the unthinkable happened. The chairperson was suddenly no longer there. A new chairperson was appointed and proceeded to tell the doctoral student that it was unclear how much of the dissertation work was done by the student versus the former chairperson. So, the doctoral student was told to start over.

This is a true story I heard second hand awhile back. I asked the person (a family member) who described it to me to have that doctoral student contact me. I never did hear from the doctoral student who was probably in shock and anger. So I scrubbed away any identifiers (and the bizarre explanations made by the new chairperson) waited a good while and then decided to bring this up in a post. In fact, I have heard a variance on this same situation twice before. So use the number game and protect yourself. Without that data, you are at the mercy of others. Most professors and chairpersons are not difficult but you only have to have one as your chairperson and life gets bad fast.

So what do you do if this happens to you? Well first of all realize that you are the outsider. I have heard a number of stories where doctoral students had crazy, rude or power mad doctoral committee chairs. Many more had very nice and supportive chairpersons. But the unlucky ones realized at some point that they would never graduate unless they asked for another chairperson. So what happens when you go to the department head and ask for a new advisor?

First, they try to talk you out of it and if that does not work then you may find yourself cast as the village idiot. The new chairperson is not happy to see you and still has to work with the professor that you dumped. The dumped professor wants everyone to know that you are the reason it did not work. You did not listen, were not smart enough and you are hard to work with. Again play the numbers game and have your data available. Share this with the new professor and use it to get the Department Head to place you somewhere else. Having data also means the Department Head will more than likely put you with someone who is good since you seem to record important data. Your data might look good to a jury if you sue for your money back (this is not legal advice). Things like your 455 emails asking for help or clarification sent to your Chairperson and her 11 responses over 3 years might carry some weight. That is only part of the numbers game and you start playing it the day you start writing your dissertation. 

So why do people change chairpersons? A chair person may have a stroke, die, start chemo or just stop answering your calls and emails. Some become power mad (really) and some are crazy and you do not know it until you have to work closely with them. Some start hot and then fade out for no good reason. Others like booze or drugs too much. I saw one once who was going senile and it was a slow process. He was such a nice man but he was lost for any sort of step by step work. He still was a warm charmer of a person but vacant. Remember most professors are really good people who will help you and guide you well. This article is about the ones who are bad for you and they are in the minority. 

Power mad professors are interesting. Drinking late one night with an amazing professor, he explained how he stopped over to married housing to help one of his doctoral students finish a chapter of his dissertation. As they sat there the night before Easter, he ate all of the chocolate out of the Easter baskets for the doctoral student’s two young kids. He said he was aware of the angry stares the student’s wife was giving him but he craved the chocolate and there was nothing the student could do or say since his whole career depended on this professor. This particular professor was a brilliant writer selling many text books and had quite a following. 

He was brilliant and we had used him for a number of research grants and he was a leader in the field. He was a nice man but when he was in the student chairperson relationship he had an assumed power relationship. It changed him but to be fair, he went out of his way to make sure his students graduated and that they had a solid understanding in the field. I use this example to point to how this relationship can get out of hand. Extrapolate it out to professors who are not as kind and supportive as this man was. 

So use the numbers game I described in earlier posts. Prepare in case you get the wrong type of professor. 

Look to your goals,

Dr. Parker

Note to the editors-OK I changed my descriptions of the harmful professors and eliminated the term fools and other non professional terms and descriptors. These folks can cause a lot of pain. We will have to discuss that at some point. Still thanks for all the feedback.

You must always treat your committee members with the “utmost” respect (they deserve it) but there is a little room to get some concessions or perhaps to steer things in your chosen direction. Remember most of the time your committee will be right and you should move in their direction even if you do not see at the present time where they are going. They really are smart and talented people. 

Occasionally some committees can be a bit over bearing and a very few even a bit over the top. In those settings how do you get them to at least look at your ideas or to agree with your time line?  First you always remain respectful and polite. Under pressure some doctoral students do not realize how rude, arrogant and disrespectful they can be to the committee members. When alone ask your committee chair how you come across in terms of voice tone, posture or eye contact. If you do not ask you may be totally blind to how you are treating others when you are stressed. Get some feedback on this and look for small clues from those you are talking to. 

I have debriefed past doctoral students years after they graduated or failed to graduate. Most are fine but some folks had aggressive, angry and disrespectful voice tones while talking to me about their dissertation process. This made me wonder how they came across back when they were under the actual pressure of the degree process. Picture me discussing this with a fellow flyer on a jetliner and trying to get off the topic as he/she slowly winds up and is completely unaware how he/she is coming off to other passengers. How would this person have been when given feedback to by his/her committee? So do not try this question process if you are a person who comes across harsh or demanding. 

Once you have a good relationship with your committee then you might try this technique.   

When I was in sales I would call potential clients and they would attempt to get me off the phone and I would attempt to keep them on the phone until I hit a hot button and the conversation opened up. People hate cold callers yet we had many successes, how does that happen? Better yet can this work with doctoral committee members? 

Each day before cold calling we would sit in a group and the sales manager would say “Ring Ring” and point to someone and that salesperson acted as if they had just called a potential client. The sales manager would give out excuses to cut the conversation short, attack the caller or try to put the marketer in his/her place. We practiced for hours each week and learned the secret that the person asking the last question controls the conversation. So no matter what the potential customer said we had two or three simple questions memorized for every possible thing they might say. We kept asking questions and they kept answering and the conversation drew out. 

An angry response might be met with a question about being upset due to their economic situation with a follow up question about wanting to change this? The last person who asks a question controls the conversation and can direct the conversation as it moves on. Yet many doctoral students when meeting with their committee ask few questions. They do not steer any part of the conversation nor do they dig into areas that they are confused about. Many have this idea they should look confident and cool and very intelligent. Asking a question to many doctoral students in this situation they think makes them look weak, unsure and not knowledgeable in front of their committee. 

Think about it for a moment, you are in a small meeting with three of the most educated experts in the world and they can answer questions, guide you and send you to the right resources and you do not say anything! These are busy important folks and you make little attempt to dig for direction, answers and resources. Do you ask your committee if they know anyone who can help you find answers in a particular area? Do you engage them and dig for information or do you sit passively while they try to guess the direction you want to go.

 Many times past doctoral students complained their committees did not listen to them. When I asked if they took a list of written questions with them to ask, they reported no, they just listened but the committee should have known what they wanted. Many admitted they were so nervous they failed to ask much and simply listened to the feedback. Very few doctoral students ever took written questions to ask nor attempted to push for a particular approach or direction. Most admitted they were terrified when they had a meeting and just wanted it to end quickly. Yet everyone in that meeting had great potential to solve problems for that doctoral student. 

Brilliant as your committee members are this is your research and they see it in tiny pieces and do not see the expected results or direction. You use questions to steer them in the direction that you want and to dig for suggestions, resources and ideas from them.  If you are wrong, they will steer you away from where you are heading. But at least you try to go where you want and that is the beauty of the process. They guide you but this becomes a crazy process if you do not do your part. You guide them as much as possible (with polite questions) and ask questions to dig out as much help as you can get. The questions help you to find out quickly if you are going in the wrong direction. Listen to what your committee says and if they take you a different direction then go with them. Learn from their experience and knowledge of your field. 

Questions do not make you look bad. Write them down before the meeting and as the meeting moves on some you will ask and some you will not. You will learn a lot if you ask and you can perhaps steer things a way that you want. The questions you ask indicate a direction for your committee and give them something to work with. Enjoy this process and these wonderful experts that you are able to work with.
Attend to your goals, no one else will. 

Dr. Parker
National Doctoral Students Association

This question is asked a lot by doctoral students who meet with their committee and then go home and sit there staring at the returned chapter. What am I supposed to do next is another common question. It all seemed so clear when the student sat there and received the feedback on the chapter along with instructions to fix it and return it. Now, sitting here, it seems like a confusing mess. 

First, do not take a recording device to the meeting as most professors do not like that. Several stories were told about only showing up with a digital recorder and being told to put it away. These students did not think to bring along a pad and paper, so they remembered little of the feedback given for the next 15 minutes. Some captured a little of it on their phone but captured little of the feedback using their thumbs on the tiny screen. Later they sat looking at the returned chapter wondering what was said and what to do next. 

So take a pen and pad of paper unless you have a laptop and can type really fast. Still the pad and pen will help in drawing diagrams and connecting thoughts that may be fired at you high speed by one to three committee members. While your chapter is the center of your life, it is a small part of a very busy professor’s life and they tend to give you feedback quickly and from several folks at once. Sometimes the responses are confusing or contradictory and the brief meeting seems to move at the speed of light.

As soon as you get home or can find a quiet place then rewrite your notes while the comments are fresh in your mind. Many of us reported sitting down in an empty classroom near the professor’s office and expanding our scribbling into full sentences that would make sense later when we sat down to rewrite the chapter. Expect contradictions and confusion in the feedback along with insights. Expect often to be told to redo something that they had you change the last time the chapter was written and handed in. Listen to the committee and realize this is like creating a statue out of a huge chunk of marble. A nice finished product is in there but lots of changes will be made. The process can be chaotic but the folks leading you are experts in their field. 

The next decision of what to do is to decide what to rewrite from the confusing feedback. Let’s use an exaggerated but often seen example of the differences in verbal behavior and observable behavior. In life, these are the two forms of behavior that get people in trouble when they confuse them. In one case the man says to the woman that I love you and want to do things for you. He then never has a job, lives at her apartment, constantly borrows money and uses her car. In another case the man says to the woman I love you and I want to do things for you. He has a nice home he is paying for, is saving money, drives his own car and spends money on her to impress and win her over. He is emitting actual behavior and not just talking. 

I used this over the top example to save time and get to the heart of your understanding. Some behavior from your committee is verbal only and words are all that ever will manifest. Some behavior is actual or observable and it will have an impact on the environment. This is what the committee really wants you to do. Pay attention to your committee and figure out what is verbal and what is actionable. Your professors are brilliant and they are paid for their speaking ability and that comes out when they are giving you feedback. In many cases, if you respond to everything that you are told you will be all over the place. You have only so much time and energy so listen carefully and decide what is real and what is just talk, arguing, posturing or actual useful feedback that you can use to rewrite your chapter.

If two of your committee members are in conflict, write down both suggestions then later contact your committee chair by email and in a light and respectful manner ask which direction you should go. Downplay the conflict and focus on the positive. I have heard from a few folks who due to their stress or personality challenged their committees for providing poor guidance and feedback. This is not a good idea. Each admitted that if they had not been under stress from the degree, they would not have made the statements that they did. Many times this type of event takes place near the end of the process after a year or two of work on the dissertation. It can sort of erupt and it can really damage the relationships. Each student admits spending too much time chasing verbal behavior from committee members only to find the committee members not remembering the suggestions later when they meet for the next review of a chapter. Anger towards the committee is not productive. It is best to listen and discern what are simply verbal behavior suggestions and what are real suggestions. 

If the committee is nice enough to write down their comments and return it to you that is wonderful. Stick with what is written (actual behavior) and not what they spend the next 20 minutes saying to you in the feedback meeting (verbal behavior). Most of what they suggest that is not written down they will not remember the next time that you meet. My committee wrote their corrections and sometimes I received two separate ones that did not match but I worked it out. Sometimes they flipped and had me change back something that they had me change the last review. But chunks of that marble block fell away over time and the result was a very nice piece of work. It was far better than I could have done on my own. I will be forever grateful to those three professors. 

Some students told me about committees that did not give written feedback. These students had a much harder time judging what was just verbal behavior versus real actions that were needed to fix the chapter.  In these cases you must work even closer with your committee members. Listen closely when they give you feedback and try to distinguish what is real feedback and what is extra. While you may not use those extra ideas and comments now, they are nuggets of gold that may be used for later papers or research ideas. As you work with your committee you are sitting there with three highly educated and experienced guides. Few people will ever get to tap into such a group. Enjoy where you are and what you are doing and the people you get to learn from. 

Look to you goals,

Dr. Parker
National Doctoral Students Association