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“ I really abused my supervisor in a mean way because he must have read between 50 and 100 drafts. They were not full drafts of the dissertation, but I’d write something, have him read it, and the next morning, the piece of paper would be waiting for me on my desk all red. The world’s best supervisor. I really abused his kindness. He is the benchmark for me. He’s the model I try to go after.” (Timo Korkeamäki)

— Timo Korkeamäki

“If we read their thoughts with a sense of interest, we will find some areas where he or she has done well, and we will find some areas where he or she can improve. So, we can give directive comments—not in the sense of giving instruction, but in the sense of developmental feedback. During my research, I analysed comments provided by supervisors. In numerous instances, these comments identify what’s wrong with the student’s writing. But they fail to suggest avenues for improvement—what can the student do?” ((Madhu Neupane Bastola)

— Madhu Neupane Bastola

“You don’t know what ideas will be the most effective to use until you start writing. And you may find after you’ve written a few pages: “this sort of line of logic that, I thought, was going to work is not right.” I hit a dead end—this doesn’t work. “I guess I wasn’t thinking it through all the way.” Our minds are very limited in what they envision in one go. Most people cannot envision a fully fleshed out argument. Just start to write it. It can break you free of that writing anxiety that I think we often get.” (Matt Farmer)

— Matt Farmer

“I would come back to social supports. Social supports, and also whatever it is that research students need to do to make themselves feel good and cutting themselves a break. A thesis means months worth of work—but actually this is a part of the process. And interestingly, you’re not expected to get it right. In fact, that’s what the journey is about. It’s about getting it wrong, learning from your mistakes, and being able to go on from there. So again, that’s a growth mindset. But actually the mindset itself is a way of processing and getting through that experience or whatever negative experience that happens to be; hence why I think it’s so important for an environment to foster that and build that person up to be able to have and take the perspective that actually it’s okay for them to make mistakes. They are expected to do that. This is a journey in which mistakes make the greatest learning.” (Kim Beasy)

— Kim Beasy

“Some people have unusual approaches to supervising. Some people may say: go to the mountains and come back when you have a finished thesis and I will look at it. Based on my experience—the first time someone works on a research project, they really don’t know what to do. Especially what to do when they hit the wall. About the language of the field, from data to methods to actually putting it on paper writing—you need a lot of help. Obviously, you can get done with your thesis by figuring it out on your own, but this is where supervisors can give giant value added by holding their hand and providing feedback.” (Timo Korkeamäki)

— Timo Korkeamäki

“Sometimes you get these jumps forward, and occasionally, you just don’t move at all. It can be quite difficult if you’re in quicksand anyway, and you feel the pressure from society, from family, from peers if you are ever going to get done. What has worked for me was working on multiple fronts at the same time. You hit the wall somewhere, you let that mull and take on one of your other battles. At least psychologically, it is good for you, since you get a sense of moving forward. Maybe not on all things, possibly not even on the most important things, but at least you are moving forward. It is so important for you that you stay mentally healthy through the process. A big part of this mental health is the feeling that you are moving forward. So, you have to feed that.” (Timo Korkeamäki)

— Timo Korkeamäki

“I think it is helpful to divide the work into chunks, especially PhD thesis work. Concretely, structuring the thesis as individual papers, where each is a journey in its own right. This is helpful. With BA/MA thesis work, you don’t have that luxury. However, a MA thesis should be structured as a paper. As a supervisor, you can provide that structure.” (Ansgar Richter)

— Ansgar Richter

“As far as approaching the paper more generally, I’ve benefited from not starting with the introduction, but rather starting with writing out whatever arguments you’re going to make—your storyline. For me, it has always been helpful to just start writing. Writing is so hard, you have all these ideas, especially if you have a decent idea of what you’re going to write. Are you reading a lot of literature instead of trying to create a perfect outline of everything you’re going to do? It can be helpful to just start writing about the topic, just getting your ideas on the page because often-times you don’t know what arguments are going to work.” (Matt Farmer)

— Matt Farmer

“It is very difficult—even for us more established and experienced writers—when we need to write something new. We know it will be difficult. We don’t know where to start. If we just have a kind of example or a structure we can go through, we can understand and learn from that how to develop such a document, ourselves. Therefore, we can help our students to follow that process and try to adopt key characteristics of the writing. I still remember, while I was doing my Master’s thesis at the University of Sydney, I handed in my draft, and my supervisor said: “This kind of methodology isn’t good enough, and the project is not going well—I was expecting more from you! Please read my paper.” So, he sent me a paper that was somewhat related to my research. When I went through his methodology section, I realized how much detail I needed to include in mine. I realized that I had missed out a lot of information—e.g. details about participants, details about instruments that I was using, information about how I constructed instruments—so many things. Then I realized the value of good guidelines. That’s how examples can reveal their value.” (Madhu Neupane Bastola)

— Madhu Neupane Bastola

“I really like the tactic of reverse-outlining: getting your ideas out first and then see which of these work, which don’t, and then make an outline from there. Once you’ve written out some core arguments or ideas that you want to make, not even in any order necessarily. I think this has just always been difficult for me. And I’ve noticed that other people can find it difficult to do an outline without having written anything. You just don’t necessarily know what a good logical order for the ideas would be. You don’t always know from the start which points you want to make. For example, when you’re writing a literature review, you don’t need to cite every single study or paper that’s ever been done on the topic. You just need to cite the ones that are most relevant to what you’re writing about. And that can be difficult to know until you’ve written some reviews out and see.” (Matt Farmer)

— Matt Farmer

“One of the best pieces of advice that I’ve ever got when it comes to writer’s block is to sit down with the sole intention to write a single paragraph. That is my current goal. If I sit down, and then I write the paragraph and I feel like writing more, that is bonus writing that you are getting. But if you sit down, and you write that paragraph, and you decide that you don’t want to, you can walk away. And nine times out of 10, when I sit down and write the first paragraph, I would rather not stop. It doesn’t even have to be the first paragraph.” (Matt Farmer)

— Matt Farmer

“A person undertaking research needs to cradle themselves in things that make them feel good. They need to be able to step away and recognize that leaving their project for a couple of days actually does make the world a better place. I think it takes quite a while for that to sink in. I think I’m still learning to do that. Research can be an isolating journey, especially to novice researchers. It takes a helpful social context, a friendly environment that nudges student researchers to recognize that taking breaks is indispensable. That this text might take three hours to write at night and will take 30 minutes to write after a good night’s sleep on the next morning. The institutions at which we learn and teach should take a more proactive role in fostering these environments that instruct students to be mindful and smart about how they invest their energy and solve challenges. Otherwise, research can turn out to be just not very healthy. Students should not be facing the possibly most challenging project of their academic careers and face down every individual problem, challenge, and nuisance in perfect isolation. That’s not what we have educational institutions for.” (Kim Beasy)

— Kim Beasy

“It is good to take distance for a while, days, or weeks or months, I don’t know. If I let it be for a while, it gets significantly better. When you are finally through finishing your study, taking all the bureaucratic steps, and everything is off your desk, it’s a bit of relief for many of us. Especially for a paper. I have sometimes returned to my own work and thought—Who wrote this? This is really good! That happens almost universally. I’ve had some experiences that every other day, it looks great, and every other day I am ready to throw it into the rubbish can. When we get so involved with our own work, it becomes difficult to look at it objectively. That gets better with time. I’ve seen this happen to my students, too. When they go back to the earlier work, it starts to look much better.” (Timo Korkeamäki)

— Timo Korkeamäki

“I was talking about my research to a supervisee, and it made me remember the time while I was writing my own thesis. If we as supervisors go back and remember how difficult it was for us, we can be sympathetic to the students. We need to see thesis writing from the students’ perspective, not from our perspective.” (Madhu Neupane Bastola)

— Madhu Neupane Bastola

“I encourage the supervisor to provide suggestions for topics, but not be too descriptive about them. It’s not so helpful, if it becomes too descriptive and utilitarian. Rather, it is good to say that these are examples of topics. The student, then, can come up with his own ideas and suggestions and I help him to refine this. This is a more enriching experience. It may need more flexibility on the part of the supervisor, but it is less utilitarian and at the end of the day, the better approach for both.” (Ansgar Richter)

— Ansgar Richter

“I think we have to acknowledge that supervisors are often the only touchpoint for somebody doing a thesis at that institution. That means that whatever that person is saying is magnified 10 times, and it just becomes so much more significant in the student’s world. The power but also the importance of this person in the context is really significant. On the flip-side, supervisors are having to take on more and more research students. Mentoring half a dozen students is simply a gigantic workload. It’s just a lot of reading and countless meetings and a lot of time that you have to spend on top of all the other commitments that you have. So, the traditional student–supervisor model seems broken. Universities are no longer navel-gazing institutions. And yet, we’re still using the same models of research practice that we were using 50 years ago. Something needs to give. Providing that student with more mechanisms of support than what is currently available would be valuable. We know this from social work: the more social supports people have, the more likely they are to be resilient and get through any kind of mental health issues that they have. So, you know, there’s a whole body of research that kind of supports this notion from another angle, which we really should be tapping into in a research space.” (Kim Beasy)

— Kim Beasy

“I think the people most subject to the problem of not finding the end point of their thesis, of overdoing, are those who think that the thesis is their life’s work, that it must be perfect. They tend to be the most committed, intelligent students. The key then is to recognize that this is not your life’s work. This is a particular project, a particular goal. You don’t need to give your whole life over to it. You need to work on it, but to keep it within the boundaries of the bigger picture. That is made much simpler by focusing in on what you’re trying to actually accomplish with your project. In my own PhD program, I witnessed a student who was probably the brightest person in the group. He never finished. His book got thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker, but he did not give up. He was convinced that he hadn’t made a contribution and that he had to keep pushing. He drove himself and everybody else crazy. Including his chair.” (Steven Floyd)

— Steven Floyd

“There is a point where you have to let your baby go. This happens with journal articles, too. You polish, and polish, and polish, and polish and there comes a time when you just have to say: I am done. Every so often an experienced supervisor can be a great help with that. They can tell you if and when you are done.” (Timo Korkeamäki)

— Timo Korkeamäki