Advisor-Advisee Relations, and the Arc of a PhD

In the regular course of a PhD, a PhD advisee is often naturally focused on courses, research, reading and writing papers, TAing, qual exam, etc. Conversely, neither advisor nor advisee may regularly take the time to focus concretely on progress and the big-picture arc of PhD, career, and life.

Where do you want to be at the end of the PhD? 10 years later? What progress are you making toward those goals? It would likely be counterproductive to examine these questions every week, but it's important to consider them periodically, and it's most effective if advisee and advisor are aligned on a common vision. PhD students in Stanford's Physics department developed a worksheet to facilitate annual (or even more frequent) advisor-advisee discussions about progress in scientific development. When I was Director of Graduate Studies for the department, I edited the sheet. It's far from perfect. Suggestions welcome. But it can be a useful starting point.

If you use this worksheet, I'd suggest that both advisor and advisee read it and fill it out, including comments/notes, before coming together to discuss their responses. I see two advantages of taking the time to do this separately in advance:

1. Providing an opportunity for each party to reflect on -- and be ready to share -- what impressive development has occurred and what further development would be important to focus on. How could you and the other party partner on this? It's much more helpful to say you see a need and have ideas for how to work on it together than simply to identify a problem (though you should flag problems even if you have no concrete solutions to offer.)
2. Revealing where advisor and advisee agree on the situation and path -- in my experience, often a large proportion of the answers will match -- and where they differ. Both are important, and if you enter the conversation cold, without having come up with your own answers, one voice might dominate the conversation, and you'll never learn how much you agree on, or where you differ.