I understand what your are saying; however, it really is a PhD advisor’s job to give you both accurate negative and positive feedback. There is this website “100 reasons not to go to grad school”…I could argue with most of the reasons, or say that they are not applicable to engineers. A couple are relevant though…
- Advisors can be tyrants: http://100rsns.blogspot.com/2011/01/44-advisers-can-be-tyrants.html
- Nice advisors can be worse: http://100rsns.blogspot.com/2011/02/45-nice-advisers-can-be-worse.html
You don’t want your adviser to be too “nice”. An adivsor must give you negative feedback.
When I say I don’t want school to “nurture” me, this is what I mean. It relates to the role of a university…similar to the role of a PhD advisor. I wanted an advisor/college/gradschool/university/etc to “advise” me. For the most part, I did not want them to “guide” me. This is fundamentally because I saw the education as “my” education. I met the minimum requirements to graduate and used the time and opportunity as I saw fit. Too often I think education looks as a student as fitting the “mold” or not fitting the “mold”. For example, some profs may think “If he does not fit the mold, he is not worth my time”. The students lose ownership of their education when that happens. The point is if you want education to “nurture” you, that’s fine. I think if you expect education to guide you rather than just educate you or give you solid professional advice, you are begging to be disappointed, burned out, and led to make bad career and educational decisions. Every university, professor, and university staff member has their own agenda. This is fine, but you must go into school with your own agenda too.