My dissertation supervisor is ignoring me!
Dissertations are difficult enough without your dissertation supervisor or thesis advisor ghosting you, right?
What can you do if your emails are going unanswered or if your supervisor is taking an unreasonable amount of time to get back to you? What can you do to make sure you get a response, but also maintain a functioning professional relationship with your supervisor?
In this blogpost, I’ll share two top tips to help you get the support you need with your dissertation: the polite chaser email and switching mediums.
The polite chaser email
Send one polite chaser email to your dissertation supervisor.
You’re going to keep it short and to the point.
Take the last email you sent them, and forward it to them. In this email, you’re going to say something like…
Dear Dr / Professor ______,
I wanted to follow up on my previous email to see if you had the chance to look at / consider _____.
I’m really keen to hear your views on this to move forward with my project. I look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards _____.
There are three things I really like about this email.
Firstly, you’re getting the tone spot on. You’re not being aggressive or confrontational. You’re not accusing them of ignoring you. You’re not ranting at them. You’re being professional and asserting your expectations clearly.
Secondly, you’re acknowledging that they’re likely very busy – but without saying so. If you say, “I know you’re really busy. You must be so busy…”, you sound a little bit whiny and annoying. You come across like you’re asking them to do you a favour. You don’t want to sound whiny and annoying because this is an adult to adult relationship, not a child to parent one. This is the same kind of email that they would receive from a colleague of theirs, or even their boss, so you are immediately putting yourself on that level, you are being professional, and they’re likely to go, ooh yep, need to respond to that. You’re not asking them to do you a favour, they should be responding to your emails, so don’t come across like you think you’re being annoying. You’re not.
Thirdly, when you say, “I’m really keen to hear your views on this to move forward with my project…”, you convey that their opinion matters to you, their feedback and guidance matters to you. Having grabbed their attention with the first couple of lines of the email that essentially say, “Hey! Over here, stop ignoring me”, you are massaging their ego with this line. You are essentially saying, “I can’t really do much more without you checking over this, because you’re the expert, I value your input”.
There is your polite chaser email. Send it, send it today!
Switch mediums
These days, most communication with your lecturers, professors, dissertation supervisors tend to take place over email.
It’s likely that your message to your supervisor has got lost somewhere in that inbox.
Academics receive a lot of email traffic, their inboxes are never empty, there’s a constant stream of email traffic all day long, every day.
Is that an excuse for not replying to you? Absolutely not. But is that a reality of life in colleges and universities? Absolutely yes.
At this point, I would like to draw upon this overused, but still useful quote. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
If your supervisor does not reply to that nice, polite, professional chaser email, do you think they will respond to another one? Maybe not. Maybe they’re in email denial, and they’ve just kind of switched off from their inbox. That happens more than you might realise!
You need to mix things up and grab their attention in other ways, whilst remaining nice and polite and professional. Pick up the phone and make a phone call.
Most academics still have a phone number they can be reached on. Check out your college or university’s staff directory and find that number. Give them a call. They might answer. In that case, you can say something along the lines of …
Hello Dr / Professor ______. It’s ______ calling. How are you? …. I wanted to give you a quick call to follow up on the email I sent. I’m really keen to get your views on ______.
If they don’t answer, leave them a voicemail saying the same thing, and letting them know a number that they can contact you on.
If you can’t find a number for them or you can’t leave a voicemail, call the general administrators office of the faculty, school or department your supervisor belongs to. You will be able to find this on their staff profile page on your college or university website.
Talk to one of the administrators and say …
I’m one of Dr / Professor ______’s dissertation students and I’m having trouble getting hold of them. I sent a couple of emails and I’ve tried calling but I haven’t been able to reach them. Would you be able to pass on a message please?
This one tends to be pretty effective because when your supervisor receives a message from an administrator saying, “This student is trying to reach you”, something shifts. Now, it’s not just you and your supervisor that know they’re a bit rubbish at communicating. Someone else knows – the administrator. When your supervisor hears from the administrator, that can give them a bit of a kick up the proverbial. I actually used this tactic when I was a student and it worked, every time! Give it a go.
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