PhD Supervisor problems - never ending revisions!

One of the biggest PhD supervisor problems is the never ending draft situation!

Here’s how it goes:

You send a draft chapter or section to your supervisor and get it back with a huge list of revisions. You make those changes, send it back to your supervisor, and then your supervisor comes back with new things they want you to change. Some stuff they'd never even mentioned before! Like, seriously!

It feels like the finish line keeps moving further away. The goal posts keep changing. The whole thing just feels like pushing water up a hill.

How are you ever expected to finish your PhD if your supervisor keeps coming up with lists of new things to change?!

This whole, “They keep giving me new things to change"!” situation can be so frustrating. However, there are ways you can manage it. In this blogpost, we'll look at why this happens and what you can do about it.

Why they keep giving you new things to change

What's this all about? Why do they keep giving you new stuff to change?

As you dive deeper into your PhD topic, it's not just you who's learning more about it. Your supervisor is as well.

As your research develops, new ideas emerge. Your supervisor is expanding their knowledge of your specific topic at the same time as you are. As they learn more they’ll notice gaps, they'll see things they hadn't been aware of before.

It's like putting together a puzzle. Sometimes the pieces start to fall into place in a way they didn't expect, which leads to new suggestions they hadn’t thought about earlier.

This is why you get new feedback with every round of revisions you make.

As your research grows, your supervisor's understanding of it grows as well. They're not stockpiling changes behind the scenes just for fun, randomly choosing new ones to chuck your way when they feel like it.

You might suspect they're being a bit mischievous, a bit evil. Even though it might feel that way, they're really not!

The things they're picking up on now are the things your examiner will pick up on if you don't make these changes. The new amendments with every round are really frustrating in the moment, but they'll help make your work stronger and give your examiner less things to pick over in the end!

Whilst it's tempting to roll your eyes when you see that feedback email, take a deep breath and remember - these revisions will make your thesis better.

Get clear on “progress”

One thing that can be really helpful is to get clear with your supervisor about what progress looks like - and track it.

Each round of revisions is bringing your work closer to where it needs to be but it's easy to start doubting yourself and thinking,

Is this ever going to be good enough?

Will I ever get to the stage where I've sent my supervisor the draft and they’ve said, “That's fine, it's ready!”.

You might feel your supervisor's expectations are way too high.

You might feel you're not cut out for this.

But remember, your thesis doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be good enough, okay?

So, together with your supervisor, get really clear on where your draft is now, where it needs to get to, and how you're going to get there.

Identify the things that don't need to change for now.

What's okay not to change?

What's okay to just leave alone until a later round of revisions?

Get clear on what changes are the important ones that you need to attend to now, and which ones are less important that can just wait until later on.

You might want to develop some kind of revision checklist.

Create a list of feedback points and go through it with your supervisor. Which ones are high priority, medium priority, low priority? Tick them off as you go. This will give you a visual representation of your progress.

This is also helpful for your supervisor too because it assists them in separating the necessary from the nice to have. With a revision checklist, you’re both going off the same sheet and it can feel a little bit more objective. It can take some of the emotion out of it!

Pushing back against your supervisor’s suggestions

Sometimes you're going to have to push back. If you feel your supervisor's being a bit unreasonable, or if you feel like the changes they're asking you to make are too much all in one go, you need to stand up for yourself.

Sometimes the supervisors with less experience are the ones who can get a bit pedantic with revisions. Why? They're still learning the ropes as a supervisor. They're still trying to prove themselves. They might feel unsure and they might not be confident to say, “Yes, this literature review looks fine!”. They want to make sure that nothing is missed and every base is covered. They're trying to be thorough, but sometimes they can go a little bit overboard.

In other words, it's not you, it's them. Awkward!

How do you manage this?

If you feel things are getting out of hand, it's okay to gently push back. Now, I know a lot of you are nervous about doing this because you don't want to fall out with your supervisor. But you don't have to, because you can say things like this:

I think I understand what you want to address here. But can we talk about which of these revisions are most important to focus on first? I'd like to make sure I'm addressing the critical changes that are going to have the biggest impact.

I've already made significant revisions to this chapter based on your previous feedback, and I think we're getting closer to completion. Would it be alright if we focus on the larger issues and leave the smaller changes for the final round?

If you don't understand why they want you to make a particular change, ask them. Here are some ways of doing that:

I'm unsure how this revision links into the overall structure. Could you provide some more context?

This is really helpful feedback, but I'm not sure how to integrate this change effectively into the section. Could we discuss it further?

I know it's easy for me to say, but don't take it personally! Having these conversations is part of developing your independence as a researcher. You're not being difficult. You're being a proactive doctoral student who knows how to manage your workload and isn't frightened of having challenging conversations around your research.

Preventing revision burnout

After you've worked on each round of revisions, you've got to take a break. Step away from your work for a bit. This allows you to recharge your brain and approach the next round of revisions with a fresh set perspective. You'll be able to see your work more clearly and it will make the revisions process feel a lot less daunting.

Taking breaks can also help you maintain your motivation and avoid burning out. This is particularly true if you're in the final stages of your PhD and the feedback that you're getting is feedback on your entire thesis. Deal with one chapter at a time, or one section of a chapter at a time. It is really easy to get overwhelmed.

Another thing to do is to alternate the kind of revisions that you're working on. On Monday, you might want to focus on the typos and the grammatical errors. On Tuesday, you might want to work on the harder theoretical stuff. On Wednesday, you might want to lighten back up a bit and occupy yourself with checking references. Vary it, it makes a huge difference.

If you found this blogpost helpful, there's another one linked here you might like. It's another one about supervisor feedback, and this one focuses on when you get feedback that is super critical, like makes you want to cry kind of feedback! Go, check it out. I'll see you in there!