By Dr. Noelle Sterne

Q: How much about yourself should you divulge to create a reciprocal relationship?

–Approachable Advisor

A: The benchmark is boundaries. For your poor suffering student, you want to be approachable, supportive, encouraging, and all the other wonderful adjectives of a sterling advisor. BUT—you don’t want to be over-open or fall into a sinkhole of too much sharing.

What’s appropriate for you to share:

How you struggled in graduate school, the nightmare of your defense.

What’s not appropriate for you to share:

Your latest root canal agony, your septic system failure.

What’s appropriate for your student to share:

Struggles with the literature review, sparse data collection.

What’s not appropriate for your student to share:

Worries about partner cheating, pregnancy suspicions.

One longtime dissertation chair admonished faculty not to make their students into personal assistants—he told of an advisor who had a doctoral student routinely pick up his dry cleaning. Another advisor had a student babysit regularly, and without pay. The wise chair also cautioned advisors: Don’t complain about your department head or committee chair. Don’t compliment your students on their clothes. And absolutely do not “friend” them on Facebook.

A little extra-academic sharing is fine:

You—how many children you have and, if you want, ages. But not the latest spat with your partner.

Student—passion for medieval woodworking. But not penchant for S&M.

If the student inappropriately shares, gently steer him/her back to the dissertation.

You are not the student’s father, mother, older sibling, or favorite aunt or uncle. I know it’s tricky, but strive to maintain a balance between professional distance and empathic approachability.

If you tell the student too much, he/she will probably feel uncomfortable. (“Why is my advisor sharing all this?”) Unburden to your mother or best friend.

If the student tells you too much, you will probably feel uncomfortable. (“”What am I—his/her therapist?”) Kindly, suggest the university counseling department or therapy center.

The student is there to gain from your knowledge and experience, to learn from your guidance, and to continue the dissertation trek with your encouragement and confidence in his/her successful completion. Keep these goals in mind and you will nurture a friendly, professional, and satisfying reciprocal relationship with your student.

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Dissertation coach, nurturer, bolsterer, handholder, and editor; scholarly and mainstream writing consultant; author of writing craft, spiritual, and academic articles; and spiritual and motivational counselor, Noelle Sterne has published many pieces in print and online venues, including Author Magazine, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Children’s Book Insider, Graduate Schools Magazine, GradShare, InnerSelf, Inspire Me Today, Transformation Magazine, Unity Magazine, Women in Higher Education, Women on Writing, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. With a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Noelle has for 30 years helped doctoral candidates wrestle their dissertations to completion (finally). Based on her practice, her Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2015) addresses students’ often overlooked or ignored but crucial nonacademic difficulties that can seriously prolong their agony. See the PowerPoint teaser here. In Noelle`s Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books, 2011), she draws examples from her academic consulting and other aspects of life to help readers release regrets and reach lifelong yearnings. Following one of her own, she is currently working on her third novel. Visit Noelle at www.trustyourlifenow.com