Advisers and advising

There has been some interesting posts recently. First I read on YFS qualities that make a good graduate student (entry Failure). She was inspired by a post on FSP on the same subject. These posts were generally about how to know if an individual will make it as a graduate student. The conclusion is that I don't think you can, one just makes a best guess. So, I thought it very timely that I read this post on "I Love Science, Really," which is about a 5th year student in her lab (but maybe a different department) who is being kicked out by her adviser. WOW.

So my question becomes when should one do this. I mean, don't you think this women's adviser should have known before her 5th year that she wasn't going to make it. And did the adviser not know because zie* wasn't advising very well, or did zie feel like I think FSP sometimes does, and just didn't know what to do about a non productive graduate student. Maybe the student had been busy with teaching and course work, and then when research finally came around she had a really difficult project or one that required a lot of method development.

I'd like to hear a discussion about what is expected from an adviser-advisee relationship. I know sometimes it's unclear to me. My adviser has always been good about meeting. We've had weekly meetings since I started graduate school in 2002 and we had group meetings when we had a big enough group. These would just be students (and sometimes adviser) taking turns giving either practice talks for some conference or just general talks about their research or research questions. I liked group meetings. But as time progressed I've felt that weekly meetings aren't very important, if I have a question I would just go to adviser's office or send an e-mail and I really wished the hour or so we meet a week zie would spend reading my papers instead. Never the less, although I complain about my adviser's turn around time in reading my manuscripts I think zie is a good adviser and I think I've been a good advisee, and that I speak my mind to zie about "when the hell are you going to read my paper" and I finally have the courage to say "we shouldn't include that in the paper" although I usually don't win that second argument. I sometimes feel like I can never be correct over my adviser since zie has been working in science for the last 50 or so years.

On the other hand my adviser actually kicked out one of my good friends from his group. I wish I knew at that point that she could have said NO, like the lab mate of I love Science. Instead she frantically ran around our dept. and another dept. looking for a semester project just so she could get research credit and think about what to do for her master's and/or PhD. No one would take her. Our adviser was one of the first when the dept. was created in the late 60's or early 70's. Did he sway peoples opinion? In retrospect I don't think she would have wanted to stay in his lab. I don't agree with the way my adviser "dumped" her, but I can't completely blame him for doing it. It was obvious for a while that they didn't see science or grad school in the same way, and that he didn't specialize in the direction she wanted the project to head. Should my friend have noticed this soon enough and got out herself? Maybe, but I don't think students feel they can do this anymore than professors feel they can dump students. So she ended up spending two semesters finishing course work and writing a report to get a non thesis masters, during which she had no funding and had to pay for her credits.

One more point on adviser relationships. I also have a friend, who in her 4th or 5th year is having to be a TA again, due to lack of funding. This isn't so bad as some funding is better than none, but what is bad is that another student in her lab who is a 2nd/3rd year, Asian and male does not have to TA but is being funded by a group the adviser works with. Their projects are not that different yet when my friend asked to be funded by said group her adviser said her research wasn't in the scope of the groups funding. Hm, suspicious. So, is she a TA now because she speaks better English, is female, is somehow less worthy?
So what should she do. It's too late now as she signed the TA contract. But we decided the fair thing for her adviser to do would have been for his two students to share the TA ship and only TA one semester each, giving both more time for research. Although I really think her senority should have been the trump card. Don't make her TA so she can finish and you won't have to fund her anymore.

So I'm curious, how much can a student be honest with an adviser when they don't want to ruin their relationships since they 1) need the advisers help graduating and 2) will want good letters of recommendation.

*zie is my attempt at a gender neutral pronoun