Postgraduate study - details

What is the role of your tutor? I know undergrads have them but didn't know that postgrads utilized them as well. What types of academic support do you have access to?

Hey treacle,

I know that if you're doing a research degree, you are mostly on your own.  You meet with your grad advisor for somethings, but a tutor is probably a PhD student or possibly an advanced peer that you can meet with on a regular basis to sort through things you need help with.

I had to take Calculus my first semester of grad school for Soil Science and was SO completely lost.  The school made available a tutoring center - you went into a big room and did your work.  If you had a question, a Maths student would come over and help.  I also had to hire a private tutor to prepare for the test.

There was NO way that (1) my grad advisor would have had the time to help me or (2) that I would have admitted my weakness to him anyway!  I wanted him to see the best of me at all times because he was basically signing my paychecks!

Mostly, I think they are for people who are switching fields and don't have the foundation that others have. (Like ME, back then) 

I'm sorry, I forget if you have an undergrad degree in Anthropology?   

  Holly

I'm not sure if this is the case for all postgraduate programs, but my research masters course had a 'course tutor' who was basically in charge of the course and the students on it. He was our first point of contact for anything, basically. He was the guy who interviewed us for the course (if we chose to visit the department in person), he sorted out our offices and computers, he introduced us to the course content and structure etc.

Once we were settled in, he was there to basically advise us, help us find projects and supervisors, help with any issues we had, academic or otherwise, etc. and he also taught one of our classes.

The thing was, he actually ended up being more than just an academic tutor to us. Being fairly young, only a few years older than most of us, we were on first-name terms with him. He invited us round to his house on occasion (we painted his 3-year-old son's bedroom for him ) and we got to know his wife and son. He was always hanging around in our office, joking around and basically doing nothing that resembled research, lol. He would come out drinking with us  and attend birthday meals, and we're all friends with him on Facebook and MSN (he even came to my goodbye party before I left for the US in January)!

All around, a pretty cool guy - apart from the lacking organisational skills (the course involved a month-long field trip to Central America which we ended up organising and booking ourselves because we would never have made it there if we'd left it up to him ).

In contrast, for undergrad courses, the tutor-student relationship is more formal. You have weekly 'tutorials' with the professor in groups of about 4 students, and you discuss questions about your lectures or homework assignments. You can go to them for any other help too (personal/academic), but I don't think many students actually bother to (I had two tutors, both male, both Physicists - one was Bulgarian and the other was Russian - so they weren't that easy to approach about personal issues)!

I'm doing a research degree and just have a supervisory committee. It's made up of my lead supervisor and three other professors who work in the same area. My understanding is that most people don't have such a large group, but because my research is a combination of all their specializations, they decided to have everyone work with me. There's a possibility that, as I go further on in my work, the committee will be smaller.

I don't think there's any kind of tutor for my program. There's a lot of different people at the university that I talk to for different things, both administratively and academically.

As an MA student in the UK I have three 'tutors'...

1) The course tutor, who is essentially the head of the program.

2) A 'personal tutor' who I have met but never really talked to - he is meant to be a point of contact if I have personal problems, complaints, stress, need advice about anything, etc.

3) A dissertation supervisor, who I meet with periodically to discuss my topic. She provides leads for things to read, reviews outlines and drafts, etc.

As an MA student in the UK I have three 'tutors'...

1) The course tutor, who is essentially the head of the program.

2) A 'personal tutor' who I have met but never really talked to - he is meant to be a point of contact if I have personal problems, complaints, stress, need advice about anything, etc.

3) A dissertation supervisor, who I meet with periodically to discuss my topic. She provides leads for things to read, reviews outlines and drafts, etc.

This mirrors my experience as well (except it just so happened that my 'personal tutor' and my dissertation supervisor were the same person, but they were definitely different roles.)