[googley]

Background:
Since last week I have been having digestive issues in the morning. I think it is related to my celiac disease. I would go to the doctor, but I'm pretty sure they would tell me that they don't have any better idea than I do to the cause of my problems. So I am trying to make it through going to class in the morning and today having a meeting with my adviser.

Today:
I decided that I could not make it in to my advisers office because my digestive troubles had not settled down. So I decided since I am presenting a poster next week that it would be best to call him and discuss the issues with the poster over the phone rather than not at all. I also had a couple of other issues I needed to discuss with him. We both had a copy of the data results as I had emailed one to him. We were talking for about five minutes (of a 30 minute appointment) when I hear him say..."come in, take a seat." A second after that he says to me, "well, I'm going to have to get off the phone here in a minute." I tell him that the data all have the same set up as what we have gone through. He says "why don't I send you an email about this." This is not the only thing I needed to talk to him about. It is just one of the things. And it isn't that different than me sitting there and looking at my data and him looking at his. There was another very important topic for me to talk to him about.

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is my time. So I'm trying to be a goo student and work around my chronic illness, and seem to get penalized for it. Someone who is there in person, (during my appointment time) gets more of his attention than I do. I guess that shows where I am on the totem pole. I know he doesn't have a problem talking on the phone as I have sat there for 30 minutes before when he has been talking to his wife on the phone (also during my appointment time.)

This makes me soooooo mad! It's not like I was enjoying being on the phone. But I was trying to be the responsible student and not just canceling my appointment, but finding a way to get the work done that needed to be done. Apparently that doesn't matter.

[Perna]

That's really too bad he didn't take enough time for you to get what you felt you needed to get said/done done. I'd see what you can get done with e-mail and then make another appointment when you think you are feeling better to go there in person where you can be a little more assertive about how much time he gives you. Have you ever told him specifically, "I need 30 minutes/45 minutes of your undivided time" and gotten an appointment that way? I think a 30 minute advising phone call would be hard to do, pretty long; too bad you all don't have some sort of computer software so you could work back and forth using the computer instead of in-person or phone.

[googley]

Perna-
The thing is that I have a weekly scheduled appointment with him. Same time every week. He just recently took all of our (his grad students) meeting times and reduced them from an hour to a half hour, and increased our lab meeting to two hours from one hour. So overall he gained a lot of time in his schedule. The other issues that I have to talk to him about will not really work over email.

I know from working that almost anything that needs to be talked about can be done over the phone if it can be done in person (I had a job where half our working group was on one side of the country and one half on the other w/ weekly phone conferences.) So if he wanted to, he could have done this over the phone. Instead he decided that the person in front of him was more important.

[Perna]

I don't know if the person in front was more "important" or not; maybe it was the department chair or something (unless he is :-) It was rude of him to not decide from the outset that it would not be the same for him on the phone as in person and inform you of that; I guess he halfway said as much with his email comment but, not being there, there's not a whole lot you can do to "enforce"/be assertive about your time and how you felt about the things you wanted to talk about. It is bad mentoring/advising of him to do what he did but it isn't the first time you have known him to be a bad advisor for your style and needs? I'd figure out how to write things out and get him to sign/agree to them and work from those plans or how to state what I need in 5 minutes since he doesn't seem to have the care/attention span of a flea where you are concerned. It doesn't sound like he's going to get any better with his behavior so you have to figure out how to work things your way with less of his time?

[Amazonmom]

Academics only do what is convenient for them. Ask him when he can discuss these issues with you without interruption. Being very clear and direct may be the only way your needs get met. Of course i had an adviser that responded well to such direct communication.