chris martensa common pattern — and arguably failure mode — of research advising meetings is that they become essentially “status reports,” with the student trying to do everything independently between meetings, then telling their advisor what they did and their advisor giving them some kind of appraisal of that work (“good, keep going” vs “no, try something else”)
what i wish someone had told me in grad school, and what i now try to tell my students, is that you can instead view it as a “working meeting” where you (the student) get to set the agenda. have your first meeting goal be to answer the question “what are we working on today?”, not “what have you done since we last met”
Trisha Lynn 🇵🇭 🇺🇸 🇨🇦@chrisamaphone Perhaps it's different for Master's students and/or my program is different because it's an online one, but every meeting I've ever had with my supervisor has been because I've asked for it. Most of the time, I ask for in-person/video conference meetings only when I don't understand his emailed feedback or responses to my questions. Is that not typically how it should go?
@trishalynn there’s no single right way for it to work — if you and your advisor both prefer most of your communication by email instead of meetings, that’s totally fine! a lot of faculty (including me) are so overwhelmed by email though that having a blocked-off time for each student is the only way to make sure i actually interact regularly with them
@trishalynn but I do think it’s worth knowing that there are other models, and you have (or should have) some agency in choosing it. if you feel like you’d benefit from a weekly meeting, for example, you can ask for that.
profs don’t know your needs or preferences unless you tell us, and our default ways of doing things are not always the best way for you
@chrisamaphone I'm pretty happy with the system we devised. I would prefer that our meetings have a different duration because they regularly end up being my preferred duration, but I understand that shorter meeting times can be aspirational. :D