When an orchestra misses its harmony (or how I learnt to work with my supervisors)

Abstract

The last note of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto Op. 64 flew in the air, I dropped to the world of reality. After being indulged by this beautiful orchestral work, I recognised that my PhD life was a sonata in which the harmony element was mostly missing. I am not talking about the structure of my thesis or my theoretical contributions. I am reflecting on the experience of working with my three supervisors.Let's imagine research students are the composers of theory who are still learning to compose. We get exposed to different materials and try out various instruments. We experiment with a wide range of styles and then identify our périodique and area. While we could learn from so many people, supervisors invariably have predominant roles as our conductors. They are instructors and influencers of our research interest, direction, and methodology. They can be our role models, collaborators, and co-authors. In order to learn how to fit into the academic community, we need their guidance, support and advice. Having great supervisors for our theses is similar to having all the orchestral sections from which to enrich our composition. Welcoming more brains to the team is as wonderful as having a palette of sounds from strings, woodwinds, percussions, and brass sections to explore various opportunities and get closer to the sense of virtuoso. When we all work in harmony, masterpieces are the potential outputs. However, if one section is out of tune, the whole piece falls flat.My doctoral journey at a UK University did fall flat a couple of times, usually right before or right after a peak (an achievement or an important milestone). However, rhythmic shifts are part of an orchestral piece, aren't they? Through this chapter, you are welcome to a student-supervisor sonata with three movements: "Lost in communication", "Crashes of voices", and "Harmonious counterpoints." THE FIRST MOVEMENT: LOST IN COMMUNICATIONThe first movement of a sonata usually has a gentle start, or introduction before moving to its exposition, development, re-exposition and coda. This best represents how my first year as a doctoral student was, except the fact that I had a few reexpositions before reaching such a dramatic coda. Initially, I had difficulty in understanding what my supervisors expected of me, knowing what standard of work was required, how to respond to their feedback, and also the expected way to communicate with them both by email and in meetings. This cumulated when one of them, from my perspective, was critical of my research in my first ever presentation. Needless to say, my confidence as a researcher collapsed.After my research proposal was accepted, I was allocated two supervisors to work with, both of whom specialised in quantitative methods. I had planned to conduct a mixed method study so I had hoped that one would have quantitative and one had qualitative expertise. However, my lead supervisor considered this would not be a problem as the second supervisor role was less important. Accordingly,