Supervision meetings

During your thesis/research project you will meet with your supervisor. Below you find some guidelines to make these meetings useful. 

(Note that all advise is personal, and your own supervisor may disagree)

Intended for: BSc, MSc, PhD

Before the meeting

1. Meet when there is something to discuss

1. • BAD: A first common mistake is that you think it is your job to keep your supervisor busy. You made an appointment, and now you feel you need to fill it. However, you have not really had time to work on the thesis, and you therefore make up some side topics to try to fill the time. Your supervisor obviously notices. 

   • GOOD: You take responsibility for your thesis and the meetings. You reflect on you own progress, and when you need the input of your supervisor. When you need input/feedback, you make sure to get an appointment. When you are still working on something, you indicate to your supervisor that you'd rather postpone the meeting. (Of course, when you feel you are getting stuck in the whole project, then do meet and discuss this. In other words: do not keep on postponing meetings.)

2.  Prepare for the meeting (reflect in advance). 

• • BAD: The biggest mistake is that you do not prepare for the meeting at all. You have been reading some papers / running experiments, but you have no overview or results prepared for the meeting, let alone thought about interpretations or next steps. It takes almost the entire meeting for your supervisor to find out what you have done. 

  • GOOD: You prepare slides for each meeting (see the slide template for supervisor meetings), which only needs to take ~0.5-1 hour. Force yourself to reflect on you current progress and the necessary next steps. This will help you a lot during the meeting. Write down (this will be clear in the slides template):

    • Progress: list what you have done. 

    • Topics/results: list the topics you think need to be discussed. Per topic/result, write down 

      • What you observed, 

      • How you explain/interpret this

      • Possible solutions. 

    • Next steps: list what you think the next step(s) should be (until the next meeting).  

    • Note: The slides don't need to be beautiful: just make them functional. 

3. Send your progress documents to your supervisor before the meeting. 

• A day before the meeting send your supervisor the relevant documents (See Templates): 

  • The meeting slides. 

  • Your project overview & notes. 

  • Your current thesis draft (even if it is almost empty). 

At the meeting

4. Use the time efficiently

• • BAD: You come to the meeting, where you first start to discuss all kinds of thesis logistics that you can actually find out yourself on Brightspace. You postpone the content topics towards the end of the meeting, and hope your supervisor will stay longer to still discuss these with you. 

  • GOOD: You realize your supervisor has a certain timeslot available, and it is your job to make best use of that time. You therefore consider in advance what topics you really need to discuss to make progress, and how much time they deserve. You then start with the most important topics, to make sure you get out of the meeting what you need to continue. 

5. Dare to disagree

• • BAD: Your supervisor makes a remark about a possible next step in you work. You think it will not work (e.g., because you tried something similar before, or because your supervisor misses a certain point), but you do not dare to mention this. Instead, you think you need to test every idea your supervisor has mentioned, wasting a lot of time and getting no results.

  • GOOD: You tell your supervisor you think it will not work, and why. Don't make it personal, simply discuss the content. You can actually disagree in a very polite way. Your supervisor agrees with your argument, and you together brainstorm about other possible solutions. 

  • Note: This is a very common issue. Some students find it really hard to disagree with their supervisor, which has its roots in both personality traits and cultural differences. However, remember:  there is never a reason to agree with something you actually disagree with. Force yourself to speak out when you disagree, your supervisor will actually enjoy it. Be kind on the personal level, but fierce on the content.

6. Have your high-level story ready (2nd supervisor meetings)

• • This especially applies to meetings with your second supervisor(s), who you meet more infrequently.

  • BAD: You come into the meeting, and your supervisor asks you to explain where the project stands. You directly dive into a deep detailed issue, where you discuss for three minutes how a certain detail gives problems. Your (2nd) supervisor is completely lost. 

  • BAD: Your (2nd) supervisor intervenes, and asks you to quickly summarize the high-level story again. You are overwhelmed, since you did not see this question coming. You start explaining about the specific paper you take inspiration from, with a lot of technical terms. Your supervisor is still lost. 

  • GOOD: You briefly explain the high-level picture of your thesis with the reasoning your followed at each step. This was usually an iterative process, in which you discuss:  

    • setting, which has a

    • challenge, for which there are certain 

    • current (state-of-the-art) solutions in literature, with their benefits and problems. You think 

    • your own solution works better/faster because of reason A/B, which would

    • contribute C/D to literature. You propose to test your approach in a certain

    • experimental setting (performance measure, baselines, etc.), where you currently make the following

    • observations. Your (intermediate) 

    • conclusions are W/X, but you are still facing

    • discussion topics Y/Z.  

  • Do not make this story too long! One-two lines per item is enough. Think of it as an elevator pitch about your work, aim for max ~2 minutes.