Baffled.

So I've been slow to take on serious supervision of doctoral students because I wanted to be sure that I knew what I was doing before I started telling someone else what to do. So last year I felt 'ready' to consider a student and there weren't any good doctoral applications in my areas, but there was a masters level student who seemed to be quite qualified. Exciting. I can get my feet wet with a small scale project and if I'm lucky recruit her along to a doctoral candidate (we are desperate for doctoral level personnel in my field). She did an undergraduate thesis so I know she has a sense of the research process. But... (can you see that coming?)

This student seems to have lots of personal issues that interfere with her ability to follow through. She keeps missing meetings. She is unprepared for meetings. She is early or late for meetings. I am baffled. So we had a discussion about respecting my time and being professional. And I thought she was on the right track.

And then at meetings I have to keep verbally pulling her back to the topic at hand and reminding her that there's more than one way to approach the data. And encourage her not to dismiss anything that doesn't conform to her view as non-relevant. I thought this could be over come. More reading, more discussion. It will work. Especially because I think she dismisses things because they are hard and she doesn't want to show that she doesn't understand. Not a great coping strategy, but one that can be worked through.

At the end of the fall term we made an appointment to meet and go over data over the break (because she thought this was the best time for her, less stressful & more suited to scheduling around her personal life issues). Well, she's missed that meeting completely and didn't respond to email about rescheduling. So I went to the trouble of looking up her spring course schedule just to see where we stand (maybe she decided to drop the thesis option and her enrollment will reflect this and she hasn't told me yet?). Well, she's not enrolled at all in anything for the spring. That's quite suspect actually. I don't know whether to be angry or concerned.