I completely agree with you that the strength of a dissertation advisor has a great deal to do with the success of a student. I myself had issues with my master's adviser that I had to work through. But, where did you get the idea that you and your adviser "pair up" to do anything?Not returning your stuff in a timely manner is a problem, to be sure, but there are a few little clues that suggest you might have made it difficult for your adviser to help you. The first is not using an editor. Although it's true that we proffies really, really love it when WE get to be your copy editor, if you had to work 10-hour days just to fix grammatical issues, that indicates that you have a serious problem with expressing yourself clearly. It's just common sense that when the reader has to get so bogged down in the details of decent writing, sometimes it is difficult to even discern what the major ideas are.
The second is the method of communication you used with your advisor, which seems to be "I work really hard for a long time on my own, and then hand off chapters and wait. Then I send e-mail and I wait. Then, I get angry."
A much better approach is to involve your "pair" more as you go along. Since you expressed your great understanding of the difficulties of our busy, brutal, all-important professional and social lives, you should understand that we tend to prioritize based on immediate needs. So, respectfully, try to be an immediate need more often. Make an appointment for coffee once in a while. Show you respect our time by giving us a list of what you want to meet about and sticking to that list. Discuss what you are thinking about, before you commit it to paper. You'll save a surprising amount of time that way, and, just maybe, we'll get to know you and have something nice to say in a recommendation other than "Chaz sure sends a lot of e-mails and doesn't seem to have mastered all the basics of the English language."
I know you don't have much power in this situation, which stinks, but you need to figure out how your advisor works. On my dissertation, one of my committee members was the never-available type, but, if you came in at night, he was often up at the office working, and would be very helpful. Especially if you brought cookies. Is this petty? You betcha! Did it work? Just call me Dr.
Perhaps you have a chance to start fresh with new advisor, although you may already have a scarlet "S" from going over the old guy's head (if he's a known problem, you may escape this, but why did you choose a known problem as an advisor?)
So fire up the oven and the coffee pot and see if you can get yourself a copy editor. I traded babysitting for editing when I was in school, I am reading a manuscript for a colleague who will do the same for me - it doesn't have to be expensive.
[+]
When this kind of shit happens, it is because there is a DEPARTMENTAL culture that allows it. And you are so far along that it is probably impossible to persuade any potential decent faculty to take you on, in part because they won't want to piss off your asshole(s) of a chair.
The good thing is that it doesn't matter if you piss them off, because they aren't writing you letters anyway, much less good ones. So this is how to proceed:
Take the narrative you wrote for RYS, clean it up, put it into a timeline with bullet points, attach any e-mail evidence (sounds like you have plenty) and make an appointment with the Dean who oversees your department. Keep in mind that he/she knows perfectly well that the department is full of lazy shits. Then threaten to sue and tell the student newspaper your story. Chances are very high that the dean will come up with a way to just have you turn in your draft and get it signed off on without a defense (this is what happened to a friend of mine at an Ivy about fifteen years ago). The dean won't want you to sue, while at the same time he/she won't want to call faculty on the carpet, so Bingo! You have a degree.
Your other objective is to get good letters, and this is how you do it: You tell the dean that you expect them forthwith in your placement file, and that you are fully aware of the trick to getting copies of your letters, which is to have them sent to a friend teaching at another school under the pretense of a job opening there. This means the letters saying you are done need to go into your placement file before you file the dissertation, but that's the breaks for them. The letters need to go in first, because you'll lose your ammunition once you file (as in they will have provided a remedy). Most likely you can get a letter from the chair, and maybe even one from the dean. Just hope that any jobs you apply for don't call your references (smaller schools tend not to do this).
The only grad/flake issue here is the question of why you did not perform due diligence before getting a flaming turd for a chair. You cannot have been the first student screwed by this guy. Students are transitory, but colleagues aren't, which is why those of us who put in the work with our students tend to back off when it comes to the lazy jerk in the office next door. Our survival strategy is to stay off committees that they chair, which makes me suspect that your other committee members are idiots as well for even being on your committee with the chair you selected.
[+]
Holy crap. When I read Chicago Charlie's post, I started to have scary flashbacks (how appropriate for Halloween). I decided never to go beyond my Masters degree after a similar experience.
When I was in graduate school, there were only 2 full-time professors who dealt with my specialty. I worked with one of them on my proposed Masters thesis. Mind you, this was a small private university, and while I was sympathetic to how much work this guy had, there really were very few students in the program. We talked in his office for an hour. He had no understanding of the topic I wanted to write about, but gave me some suggestions for how he thought I should proceed. I came back the VERY NEXT DAY to ask some further questions. I was also a student in one of his seminars, by the way. He looked at me and said, "Now, who are you again?"
Seeing this as a red flag, I decided to talk to the other professor. Lo and behold, she not only understood my topic, but gave me some very good ideas to think about for research. She agreed to be my advisor, and I figured I was set. I laugh now at how terribly naive I was.
I worked on my thesis for 9 months. I turned in chapters to her every month. We would arrange meetings to discuss my work, but she would either cancel at the last minute, claim ignorance of having ever scheduled a meeting, or would be interrupted 100 times by her "fans" among the students (she was a very popular teacher). She kept losing my drafts and continually asked me to send her new ones. When I would finally pin her down, she would say, "Your draft looks great--you're on the right track. Keep writing." I finished my thesis in February, and handed in the final drafts, with her assurances that she would give me her final comments. The deadline for finishing the thesis and scheduling the oral defense was April 5.
April 1--my advisor calls me at home, at 9:30 in the evening, and makes the following statement: "I've just been looking over your thesis--it's not right. You're going to have to start all over again." I thought it was a sick April Fool's joke. It wasn't. I am a pretty strong person, but that was one moment in my life that I nearly had a nervous breakdown. If the woman had been within firing distance at that time, I can't guarantee that she would have lived. I reminded her that the deadline was April 5, and I would be damned if I was spending any more money for another semester--my money had run out, and I had to finish by May, come hell or high water. Her response was, "Oh, I'll call the graduate office, to get you some more time." She called back Monday to say that she'd gotten me another week. Oh, whoop-de-do.
I finally called the graduate office myself and talked to the secretary. I asked her how much time I REALLY had to get this done. I also asked her what my advisor had said.
"She said your thesis needed a little tweaking, and could you have an extra week."
"Did she tell you that she never bothered to read it until Thursday and wants me to start over?"
"Uh, no, she didn't mention that. Since you mention it, you have until May 15." She then added--"If you become a professor one day, please remember this. Every single one of the professors here do this to the students all the time, and all it does is screw everybody up."
The rest of the story? I rewrote the thesis her way, 3 different times over the next 4 weeks. Thank God it was just the thesis and not a PhD dissertation--it would have been impossible. I'm also lucky that I had a job that would let me take time off without penalty to finish. I now have a thesis that is a good piece of writing, but not the thesis I wanted to write--not even close. I'm not even sure that half of it is my words--the conclusion certainly isn't one I would have reached. I am traumatized every time I see the cover. When I thought of what the secretary said, all I could think was, "Fuck the PhD. I don't need this crap for several more years." I went into another profession and now adjunct as a "hobby" as a result.
As a postscript, I later found out that this professor finally left the university to go elsewhere. I ran into one of her doctoral advisees, who confessed she was just short of making a voodoo doll of the woman and sticking pins in it. Apparently when she left, she never bothered to tell any of her advisees, most of whom had been working on their dissertations for several years, and were left in the lurch.
I'm sure it's no consolation to Charlie, but he's not alone in dealing with a dickheaded department.
