I'm currently half-way through my graduate research program. I have two advisors, one that was supposed to be my main advisor (who admitted me into the program) and a co-advisor. Over the past few months, I feel that my main advisor has all but abandoned my efforts.
We're supposed to have weekly meetings but the main advisor will skip them every other week or so for various reasons. For instance, they skipped meeting with me recently to continue to help another graduate student with making edits for a final submission of a paper. I, however, had the same final submission deadline and also needed assistance with making edits from reviewer comments.
Initially, I thought that the main advisor may have just been unusually busy for the year. However, I learned that they will email the other two MSc students sometimes 3-4 times in a single day with correspondence about ideas to try. That is, it seems that they are actively engaged in the other students' projects. Further, their meetings with the other 2 MSc students sometimes go for 3-4 hours or even late into the night. Conversely, my meetings, if they take place, are ended at the hour.
The co-advisor still meets with me regularly but they have their own graduate students and so I'm not sure that they prioritize my project. I feel this way because I almost always have to remind them what my project is about at the start of meetings.
I have some questions:
- Should I communicate my concerns with them? If so, how do I communicate this without offending them about their supervisory capabilities?
- Maybe I'm being overly sensitive about being de-prioritized and this is a relatively normal situation? Does that seem to be the case?
I would like to work on a PhD so I want to get the most I can from this degree.