My supervisor is making me work on something that is not my PhD project. What should I do?

Question

My PhD project is a very little part of a big study that my supervisor is currently running. I am already four months into my PhD and I just have a 3 years position to finish my thesis. So far I haven’t worked in my PhD topic because I’m helping her with other aspects of this big study. She says doing that is working on my project, however she asks me to write and do research in things that are not really going to be on my thesis. And during all our meetings so far, we haven’t really discussed my topic, the chapters of my thesis, my research questions, the literature I should be looking at, or the instruments I need for answering my research questions What should I do??

Answer 1

And during all our meetings so far, we haven’t really discussed my topic, the chapters of my thesis, my research questions, the literature I should be looking at, or the instruments I need for answering my research questions

So, that seems to suggest a natural course of action. Let her know that at your next meeting, you want to focus on making concrete plans about your thesis. Then do it. Come with a list of questions and make notes. Be sure to bring up the topic of how the big study will tie in to your thesis work, and how she expects you to balance the time spent on both of them.

It sounds like maybe you've been pretty passive so far in your interactions with her. Clearly it's not working, so time to try being more assertive.

If she won't have that discussion, or won't stay on topic, then you probably ought to start looking for a new supervisor.

Answer 2

There's quite a lot of missing information and context in your question. The best I would recommend is to approach this assertively, but non-aggressively. The reason is this: it could be the case that you are missing the point of your current work -- perhaps it hasn't been made clear or it was assumed that you understood -- and that your current tasks are honing your skills so that you can apply them to your own PhD.

There's a scene in the movie Karate Kid that exemplifies this well. The protagonist is asked to wax vintage cars by his teacher. After a long time of repetitively applying and removing wax, the student asks what this all has to do with learning karate. The demonstration that he was, in fact, learning karate all this time led to an epiphany.

The question for you is this: is your work so divorced from your thesis that you are, in fact, learning nothing of relevance?

Good luck to you.

Answer 3

Both existing answers provide useful perspectives, but one aspect that I feel is missing is: how are you funded?

Option 1: If your PhD is being paid from funds of the "larger project", you will invariably need to do work that comes up in the scope of this project, even if not all of it will directly contribute to your PhD. Raising the issue with your supervisor that you only want to do stuff that directly relates to your thesis is unlikely to go over well. Of course, both, you and your supervisor, need to ensure that your work can ultimately be framed in a thesis, but you need to see this as a discussion of "how can we turn what I am doing in the project in a thesis?" rather than "I will stop doing work on the project and work on my thesis instead".

Option 2: If you are not funded, or through a stipend that comes from an external source (e.g., a stipend from your home country, rather than a project acquired by your supervisor), using your workforce to contribute to this project becomes a bit more dubious. Even in these cases, it still often happens on a tit-for-tat kind of basis - you help your supervisor in their project and get something else in return. However, the parameters of this exchange should be much less of an automatism, and there should be more an open discussion between supervisor and student. If your supervisor continues to see you as free labor for the project, it may indeed be time to move on.

Option 3: If you are funded by your supervisor, but through a different project, things tend to get a bit muddy. In theory you should work on the other project which funds you, and not on the "large project", but in reality borders between projects of the same supervisor tend to be blurry, and (again) refusing to work on a specific task may not go over all that well. In practice I would recommend threading this the same as Option 1 (make the best of it, and ensure that your work culminates in a PhD), but if you end up doing the work for multiple projects you may need to raise the issue friendly with your supervisor.

For all variants, it cannot be overemphasized how important it is that you are (1) proactive (as Nate correctly observes) and (2) transparent with your supervisor. You and your supervisor typically share the goal that both of you want you to finish in time, but for you the stakes are much higher than for your supervisor. This makes it imperative that you communicate what challenges you see actively and openly, and don't just expect that your supervisor will make things right for you.

Answer 4

Thesis structures can be rather fluid for at least the first year of a PhD.

An anecdote to hopefully encourage you: The main topic I started on looked like a dead-end for over a year, starting about 6 months in. While that was making no progress my supervisor got me working on a loosely-related system, which turned into a first-author paper and a results chapter. Then we found a way to get results on the original topic as well, but the digression actually provided a nice introduction to the problem we were trying to solve.

Answer 5

There's not really a need to have a "why am I doing other peoples' work?" conversation.

Flip the issue, and manage it in a positive way by managing your own project's time aspects. Instead of worrying about whether this is a side trip, I suggest working out a careful schedule with which to complete your studies within your time limit. A Gantt or PERT chart would be a preferred vehicle.

Now, once you have that, sit down and discuss it with your mentor. See if she sees any time issues you may not have anticipated, or has any other suggestions to offer.

After you've both agreed that this is a reasonable schedule, I suggest meeting with your mentor just to go over the status, and handle the inevitable changes that will come up. I think every two months will be a good starting point, unless higher frequency becomes necessary.

Answer 6

I won't tell you what to do specifically, but I will suggest an approach for making this decision.

The conundrum you present goes to the heart of the question of what is a PhD candidate, really?:

• Are you a student who's getting financial assistance to focus on your studies?
• Are you a hire of your funding entity (e.g. the supervisor's research funds), working towards fulfilling its needs in an "academized" settings, with a degree on the side?
• Are you an employee of your university as a whole - with it being an institute which does research and you being one of the people who carry out that research - who is a sort of a junior version of a Professor?

I suggest you have a look at these two questions here on Academia.SX:

Education or employment: What is a post-doc? What is a PhD student?

Why do universities fund Ph.D. students in the sciences?

(and specifically in my answers... but not just them.)

So I see your dilemma as an incompatibility of expectations: Your supervisor treats you as an being in the second category I described, while you yourself perceive your status, or intended status, to be more in line with the first and/or third categories. Also, the 3-year restriction on funding ^* make for a harsh conflict of interests in the allocation of your time, and forces at a decision, albeit a temporary one, regarding your effective status.

As for concrete advice: If I were in your position, I would try to:

• Get my Graduate/Junior Researchers' Union to to give me advice and possibly to either intercede on my behalf or to back me in demanding that non-thesis-related work be contingent upon either additional compensation or extension of the funding period.
• If such a union does not exist, become active in forming one.
• Read up on all relevant regulations, for students and academic staff, to determine what rights and privileges are specifically afforded to you and to your supervisor, so that you at least know whether your supervisor has formal justification for requiring this work.

but that's not to say that non-thesis-related work is a bad thing, or is not useful to you, in itself.

_{* - Speaking from the experience of most people I know and most universities and countries I know about - You are unlikely to conclude your PhD in 3 years. Either you get more funding somehow, or finish the rest while unfunded, or start doing work elsewhere while concluding the latter parts of it.}

Answer 7

You have not provided a basis for whether you are required to do course work in your PhD Program of Study. When no courses are needed, four months in to a three year project is ... awfully short. In some respects, this is a "let me stick my toe in this water" period. When the three years includes perhaps a year or more of course work too, you are still well beyond the point here to worry. Allow that you will explore the topics that are presented by your advisor and find your strengths. After all, by the end of the dissertation, YOU should be advising your faculty advisor what is and is not appropriate to do because YOU will be the expert in your study. Also, a PhD should be based on YOUR choice of a topic, not on a choice handed to you by your advisor.

In any case, at some point, you should recognize the need to establish a Dissertation Committee and defend a Dissertation Proposal.

A Dissertation Committee helps the faculty mentor to guide the student to success. Our Dissertation Committees consist of four other faculty besides the advisor, with one outside the home department.

A Dissertation Proposal provides a foundation for both the mentor and the student to establish a common ground for the work. While it may include preliminary results, the proposal is NOT about work that has been completed. I believe the proposal should be more than just a "white paper". It should be written somewhat in the format of what is required by a national funding agency to solicit for research support. In the sciences in the USA, the template might be an NSF or NIH proposal. In engineering, the template might be a DoE proposal. I defer to other countries and disciplines to substitute their appropriate funding agencies and templates.

Our program asks the graduate student to defend a Dissertation Proposal in this way. First, the proposal is submitted to the Dissertation Committee. The Committee reviews the proposal over two weeks. The Committee can submit questions in writing to the student over this period. The student has one week to review the questions and reply in writing. The student then gives an oral presentation to defend the proposal and the answers to the questions. The Committee passes or fails the student to continue the research work.