How to explain to my supervisor that her style of input is hindering my progress? I am in the fourth year of a part-time PhD. I have at least another couple of years left, the next two years are for writing up and this year was supposed to be for data collection.
I hit problems with research and data collection because of COVID, a lot of us did. But one of the things that has come to my realisation is that it is my supervisor who chiefly hindered my progress.
I cannot blame her for this, she is just doing her job and she is very respected in her field. I do like her. The main problems came in November 2020. I had a tutorial and I said, &quot;I want to do X this way&quot;, she came back with &quot;why don't you do it this other way?&quot; I initially agreed but then, a few hours after the tutorial, I felt like the wind had been taken out of my sails. I didn't know it at the time, or understand it, but she had totally killed my enthusiasm, not only for the piece I was working on, but for the project. This has been going on since November and I have found it very hard to produce anything. In fact I haven't written anything since November apart from one piece.
The crunch time came a few days ago. I wrote a paper plan for her, something that I was interested and intrigued to get on with. The same thing happened again, she wrote back and said, &quot;this is too broad, remove this [very interesting] part and focus on this [not so interesting but practical] part&quot;. Try as I might I could not muster the enthusiasm to continue and the paper has been shelved.
I had a discussion with her yesterday and we have agreed for me to take three months off. It occurred to me after our talk yesterday that the problem is that I am not given enough freedom to do my work how I want. YES she is the supervisor, and I am here to learn, I understand that, but this is not working for me this way. I now have three months 'off' but I am thinking of not not doing any work but doing things how I want to do them: I have enthusiasm again for the PhD and am starting to get filled with ideas. I have a research blog which I haven't updated for months because she wanted to vet anything I put on there, but, I asked her yesterday if I can put things up there ANYWAY in the next few months regardless of her input and she said yes.
I am worried that, after these three months, I will have put entries on the blog - much of the content/themes of which I want to put in the final thesis - but we will just go back to doing things the old way and she will say a lot of the stuff I wrote isn't that relevant and she will want me to focus on authors I am not interested in and for me to remove ideas I had.
How do I explain I need more freedom and her management style/suggestions are not working for me? Or should I not say that at all? I respect her and want to put this point across in the best way. Or do I just do three months of work my way and then, when she sees how effective a more hands-off approach is, she will agree to do things that way?
There are several intertwined issues here, and it is going to be difficult to sort them out:

Your supervisor is an expert.  She likely knows things you don't.  So if you suggest one way and she suggests another, it may be because she has seen that way tried before and knows that it doesn't lead anywhere.

Your supervisor doesn't seem to be great at leading, or doesn't recognize that you are not her colleague yet.  If two people at the same level are trading ideas, shooting them down or poking holes to patch can be a very useful exercise.  As a new researcher, you aren't at this level yet, but she may be treating you as though you are.

What you consider interesting and what she considers interesting may not overlap

What you consider interesting and what is actually publishable within the scope of a single paper or blog post may not overlap.


Let's treat these individually.

I have seen many grad students (and I have been one myself) who don't fully grasp the field.  I've read papers, thought &quot;Oh, I can fix that problem&quot;, then gone on to work for a week and then find the paper written 20 years prior that solves it.  She has a much broader understanding of the field than you do, and she knows what's been done.  Take her suggestions helpfully: &quot;I want to do X, but my supervisor suggested Y instead.  I'm going to compare and contrast the two methods in a literature review and see which is best&quot;.  That's your job as a PhD student anyway.

This is time for an awkward conversation.  Depending on your personality, I personally suggest being a bit blunt but polite.  Tell her what you told us: &quot;When I suggest something and you change it, it takes my enthusiasm away.  Can we work together to make sure that my ideas are fully explored, even if they aren't the best?&quot;

This is up to you two to figure out.  This is more fun.  Ask her what she thinks the big problems of the field are, why she's in the field, what interests her about new research etc.

My supervisor was phenomenally good at writing.  I am not.  He was also very good at focusing a paper onto the key relevant points.  I was not.  We fought over papers a lot, to be honest, and to be equally honest it was a mutual problem.  Both of us had reasonable ideas, but he was better at it and knew what it took to get published.  I did not.


If your supervisor thinks that you are proposing something too broad, that's a very, very good indicator that you are.  Think of those broad ideas as your research program, and the individual smaller ideas as your research projects.  Projects lead to papers, programs lead to careers.  Don't take it as &quot;this is a useless idea&quot;, but more as &quot;this is not suitable for publication because you haven't actually solved the big problem.  You have, however, solved a smaller problem that moves us towards the bigger solution.  Let's publish that and keep making progress&quot;