Why your supervisor never gives you a straight answer - and why that’s probably a good thing
In this blogpost you'll discover:
Why supervisors stop giving direct answers as your PhD progresses.
Why this isn't necessarily a sign they're being unhelpful.
What this tells you about becoming an independent qualitative researcher.
Why it's one of the most important parts of the Hidden Curriculum.
Why does supervision suddenly feel so different?
Has your relationship with your supervisor kind of...shifted recently?
Maybe you sent them a draft, made all the changes they suggested, then the next round of comments somehow steered you back towards your original version.
Or perhaps they seem to contradict advice they gave you six months ago.
Every question you ask is answered with... another question.
What’s happened here?
Has your supervisor been replaced with an evil clone?
Or are they playing a game, where they know the right answer and simply aren’t telling you, in a tough-love style effort to get you to “work it out for yourself”?
Imagine your PhD as an unexplored island
Here's what I eventually realised in my PhD.
The problem was that many of the questions I was asking didn't have one objectively correct answer rather than my supervisor knowing the right answer and not telling me.
Imagine your PhD as a map of an island.
Early on, everyone can see the general shape of it and major details of the terrain.
But the further into your PhD you go, the more you zoom in on the map.
Eventually you're studying a tiny corner of the island that nobody else knows as well as you do - not even your supervisor.
The closer you get to your own study, the less anyone else can simply tell you what to do – because they aren’t you.
Your supervisor isn't the Oracle of your PhD
Your supervisor has explored lots of research islands before. Yours is simply the latest.
They can't tell you what's behind every tree or over every hill.
What they can teach you is how experienced researchers explore unfamiliar places.
That involves making judgements, testing your reasoning, exposing assumptions, considering alternatives, thinking through consequences, and defending decisions.
Their job is to help you become someone who can defend what you think - not to tell you what to think.
When the PhD researchers I work with understand this, they stop expecting their supervisors to be the Oracle of their PhD and start treating supervision as a space to refine their thinking.
Recently, I’ve been writing about the Hidden Curriculum. This is one of its biggest lessons.
Nobody tells you that, little by little, responsibility shifts. At the beginning, your supervisor makes most of the judgements, but by the end, they expect you to make them.
