My professor is making me really nervous

[alarimer]

The deadline for submission of my thesis is FRIDAY. Not only has she not returned it with her corrections yet, she hasn't even responded to my emails about it. I can only hope that she is currently working on it but I am very nervous that I won't get it in on time. If I don't I won't get to graduate in August. My parents are making reservations right now to come down. This is driving me nuts. I am checking my email every five minutes but still nothing.

[Pierre.Suave]

1. Call her

or go to her office in person!!!!

[alarimer]

2. I can't go to her office

I can call though. I am in Corpus Christi and she is in College Station, about 250 miles from here. But I think I will call.

[jobycom]

3. Mine wouldn't give me info like that over email. Only in person.

Maybe she's trying to call and can't get through.

[Lionel Mandrake]

4. Some professors treat students like dirt.

I hope your prof isn't one of those.

There may be a perfectly innocent explanation for her apparent unresponsiveness. E-mail sometimes doesn't get through, for a variety of reasons. Or she may have some sort of personal crisis that takes priority over everything else.

On the other hand, ...

[Fredda Weinberg]

5. Well, my graduation was late, but then again ... my 1st advisor

sounds just like yours. I know now what he really wanted, but at the time ...

The graduate deputy dean wound up taking over. Everything ended well, but it was touch and go for a while.

Good luck.

[GermanDem]

6. As a student advisor, my tip would be:

Call the main office of her department, tell them the circumstances, and ask them if you can have her private phone number/cell phone number. The secretary usually has these numbers. If she doesn't want to give out those numbers, ask her if she could call her for you.

[alarimer]

10. I called her office and they said she is working from home today.

So hopefully she is reading my thesis and I will get it later on today. I sure hope so anyway. But no reply yet to my email. That seems strange and makes me nervous.

[JVS]

7. Go talk to her.

Are you in grad school or undergrad?

[Dora]

8. I guess now is not a good time to make Aggie jokes,eh?

I hope you hear from your thesis advisor soon, and that she has no corrections.

[gkhouston]

9. Contact your department.

If there's another professor in your department that you have a good relationship with, you might start with them. If not, contact the department secretary. Make it clear that Friday is an important deadline for you and that you haven't received any response to multiple emails, not even a "working on it" message.

If your advisor is on sabbatical or doing summer research at another university, contact the "home" department first -- she will be more known by and accountable to the people she usually works with/for than a place she may only be visiting for the summer and it's the requirements of the home institution that need to be met.

If you get no response whatsover from your department, go to the dean for your school/college or the grad/undergrad dean (whichever you are).

[GermanDem]

11. Good advice!

[alarimer]

12. I have emailed my other co-chair but haven't heard from him either.

An hour or two ago.

[gkhouston]

13. Have you checked your current draft against any university formatting

regulations? No, I'm not kidding. You don't want to go screeching over there at the last minute on Friday and have them bounce the thesis because the font's the wrong size or the margins aren't right. Double-check that tonight. Tomorrow, work on talking to somebody voice-to-voice. You don't have enough time left, IMO, to wait until Thursday for your advisor to answer email.

[alarimer]

14. Yes I have checked that.

But I will double-check that stuff. Friday is the deadline to submit it. There is another deadline in July for submitting after corrections they have found. I have done the margins already and the page numbering. I have also added all the additional pages they wanted. And I have double-checked my citations against the journal model. SO I think I am mostly good.

[gkhouston]

15. It could be that since you have a July deadline for "submission after corrections"

that your advisor isn't sweating the Friday deadline the same way you are. Makes you crazy, doesn't it? :hug: