Meetings with your supervisor

The central support instrument is meeting with your supervisor. Your supervisor should therefore be available at regular intervals for professional dialogue and advice. If you are employed at your supervisor's department, regular contact will usually occur automatically and you can also clarify minor questions on the fly.
Doctoral programmes often stipulate regular meetings with supervisors. Individual doctoral candidates, on the other hand, usually have to organize opportunities to talk to their supervisors themselves. It is very helpful to record the frequency of such meetings in writing in a supervision agreement.

Regardless of whether you are doing your doctorate internally or externally, in a structured programme or individually, it makes sense to meet at least once a semester for a detailed discussion and to talk in peace about the progress and challenges of the doctoral project. The interim status of the work and the next steps are usually discussed and recorded together. Such supervision sessions should be well prepared, especially on the part of the doctoral candidate.

Transparent agreements between doctoral students and supervisors are important. In this way, misunderstandings can be prevented right from the start. It is best to clarify right at the beginning how often meetings should take place, what expectations are placed on you as a doctoral student, what form the supervisor's feedback will take, etc.