PhD advisors derail students weeks before thesis defense

“is there any way to continue my phd experiment or collaboration maybe even i have quit the phd because of the professor ? submitted by /u/THESEFFARA_999 [link] [comments]”

“My PI (a respected, tenured STEM faculty at an R1) will not stop using Grok for everything and I feel like I'm losing my mind. I'm defending in a few weeks and am in the last minute rush to get everything edited, formatted, and submitted to the university for content review. One week before my goal date to send everything to my committee to review, PI emails me a 10 page Grok thread wherein PI shared my last chapter and associated tables/figures and asked it to find errors and suggest re”

“I am supervising a PhD student who is particularly stubborn. This person isn’t stupid, quite far from it. But he treats every small issue as a fatal blocker for his PhD. I asked him to use a certain experimental method to measure something by method A. After a while, before starting the experiment proper he comes to tell me that it’s impossible. After debating it for a long time he manages to get the experiment working with my help and has some data. Later he says he’s uncomfortable with the mea”

“I am increasinglly furious about my PI managing papers. He had asked me to write a paper about a NON related topic to my thesis because he got an invitation. His argument was that free waivers are free waivers and i should relate it a bit to my topic. However, when i asked for some guidance on research design, he adressed none, as guess what, the topic is also outside of his field and “he doesn’t have time”. I managed to do something who i am not proud of. Because deadline is coming, i asked for”

“I’ve recently finished my first draft. My supervisor just emailed me saying I need to add a random professor from another department as the 2nd author :/ I have never met this guy. He didn’t read the paper, didn't touch the data, nothing. My aupervisor says it's for "strategic networking”. If I push back, he will definitely stall my submission. Is this just how academia works? Should I swallow my pride to get the publication, or is this a hill worth dying on? Sorry if it might sound”

“Hi guys, I’m a Master’s student and I’m starting to seriously consider leaving my current lab after my Master’s rather than continuing into a PhD with my PI. I’m not planning on saying anything to my PI yet because I want to have confirmation from another lab/PI first. However, I’m trying to figure out how I should handle the conversation once I know for sure. The main reason I don’t want to continue is that I feel like I’m not getting enough guidance or support on my project. I have very little”

“I already terminated my contract. Would it be rude to ask to hand over the material and lab book to supervisor instead of PI? I would say politely in the mail that "given the impact that the situation has had on me, I would feel comfortable having the meeting arranged with immediate supervisor". Is this okay? submitted by /u/AltKittyKatxoxo [link] [comments]”

“I posted about this situation a few months ago here (I hope the link worked lol). TLDR: my undergrad PI has expressed interest in me returning for a PhD with them. I could be coadvised by a PI at another institute and do a stay with them as a visiting student during the PhD. The grad students I worked with, though, have strongly advised me to go work in another lab because they've had not-so-great experiences with my undergrad PI. The other PI is good - I've worked with them briefly befo”

“TL;DR: Supervisor has zero AI knowledge, told me not to talk to an AI expert on campus about my project, and seems threatened by my interest in AI. Feeling trapped and considering leaving. I am in a bit of a bind and could really use some outside perspective. I am a PhD student in Spain, working at the intersection of AI (specifically LLMs) and hardware design (SystemVerilog/chip verification) in a Computer Architecture lab. The topic was originally sold to me as an AI-driven project because my”

“I started an MSc in chemistry this spring and I’m having issues finalizing my research project. When I joined the group, my PI worked in a few different areas, and I was pretty clear about which areas I was most interested in. Recently, though, he’s been pushing me toward a specific project because it’s easier to approach and it’s something he wants done. The problem is that I genuinely don’t care about the topic. I’ve brought this up before, but he hasn’t really given me an alternative. I hones”

“I started an MSc in chemistry this spring and I’m having issues finalizing my research project. When I joined the group, my PI worked in a few different areas, and I was pretty clear about which areas I was most interested in. Recently, though, he’s been pushing me toward a specific project because it’s easier to approach and it’s something he wants done. The problem is that I genuinely don’t care about the topic. I’ve brought this up before, but he hasn’t really given me an alternative. I hones”

“I am a first year chemistry PhD student at a good university (top 20 in chemistry) and am in the middle of choosing advisors to rotate with. There are 2 rotations and I have to choose one of those 2 to do my PhD with, as long as they accept me. Among my top choices include well-known faculty with numerous awards and a big lab with plenty of funding; I have heard that this lab is quite competitive to get into (someone I know who graduated from this school said it could get 'ugly' - not su”

“They said I'm technically competent, i.e., I can solve things quickly, and that I can work well in a team. However, they said I lack the skills/experience to become a successful PI like mentoring students and doesn't think I can get tenure even if I successfully get on tenure track. This was after me saying I'm looking at postdoc options. I told them that my interest isn't becoming a tenured faculty member but developing a career where I can still work on research and publish, li”

“I entered a US PhD program with two co-advisors who are married to each other. I was committed to getting my PhD and had every intention of finishing. I passed my candidacy exam and made it into my fourth year. The funding was from the husbands’s grant but I was working on the wife’s projects and the wife would tell me to work on her projects and pause working on the husband’s grants until we get preliminary data and this what they agreed on. The husband is hands-off and would not reply to my em”

“I joined my PhD 2 years ago and I am just so frustrated. My PI doesn't seem to have the subject matter knowledge of the very subject that he takes a yearly course on and does research on. Every time a student needs help, he just does a collaboration for that topic and lets other profs handle the situation. Like I don't want 4 different profs. to guide me for 4 different projects. I mean I don't have issues with collaboration but it's very difficult to ask or give time for weekly”

“One of my friends got a news from my supervisor favourite student. Mentioned that my contract as PhD student won’t be renewed as they are not satisfied with my performance. Maybe it is hard for me to catch up with everything on the lab and that student said I have no progress. This October is my second year. I am lost direction. I don’t even know what I feel now, I want to give up or I want to continue. It’s so blurry for me. submitted by /u/rvd08 [link] [comments]”

“I'm a second year US PhD student in STEM. The other day my PI drops the bombshell that he does not plan to take any students from future years again. He's not retiring yet, but is preparing to do so by the time I'm finished. He reassured me that he has funding for me (it may not be the exact project I am interested in, but pretty adjacent -- same technique, different content). The group is already not so big: my subgroup is me plus a graduating student and two postdocs, plus possibly”

“My research PI of three years disappeared this Summer and now wants an extension on my letter of rec. I have another PI I did a summer surf program with at a different school submit one already. I’ve also been told by my scholarship advisor that my Summer PI wrote a really strong letter for a research program last year compared to my long-term PI. However, a lot of my accomplishments (publication, lots of conferences, and most meaningful) were from my long-term research commitment. Is it worth d”

“I have a very supportive PI who speaks highly all of her students. She is very hands off and doesn’t provide much feedback except for labmate 1. It is so clear she invests in labmate 1 the most. Labmate 1 is a 4th year, and labmate 2 and I are 3rd year. I understand that labmate 1 is slower with understanding research, but I find it unfair that my PI would literally spend time to write 50% of the manuscripts for labmate 1 while she barely touches labmate 2 and I’s manuscripts. I recently found o”

“I am currently doing a summer internship that will end at ~150 hrs. My work is great, but my PI is a walking stereotype of a toxic PI. He has affered to write me a letter previously, but he largely talks about people within the frame of their past mistakes (like literally brining up unimportant mistakes people made 5+ years ago when he hears their name). I also suspect that he would refuse to give me the corresponding amount of credit for workign individually when he stuck me on a project he bar”

“Has anyone else been in the same shoes? Have you ever had your PI ask you to manipulate or fabricate data to support their hypothesis? Or maybe they never said it directly, but it felt implied. They only seemed interested in data that matched the hypothesis they already had in mind. If your results didn’t fit, you were told to repeat the experiment over and over until you eventually got the “right” result. Has anyone else experienced something like this? How did you handle it? submitted by”

“I'm looking for some advice from people who decided to master out of their PhD program. I just finished my second year of a my biology PhD program, and for the past year I've been seriously considering leaving with a master's degree instead of continuing to the PhD. I realized that I am not that into research or my project to the point where I don't want to commit my next 2-3 years work on my research. I haven't even started taking my comprehensive exam to be a PhD candidate,”

“I'm in the final stage of my PhD, and honestly I don't know if my supervision situation is normal anymore. I'm getting pretty frustrated with my PI and I'm not sure if I'm overreacting. He replies really slowly, and sometimes I don't see him for one or two months. I sent him a paper around six months ago and he still hasn't properly gone through it. Whenever he does look at it, he raises more questions and wants to push it toward a top journal, so it just keeps gettin”

“I’m an ecology PhD, in what is hopefully the last year of my program. My advisor is far past retirement age and has told me he wants to set me up to take his position after I graduate. While I know this is highly unlikely in this day and age, he has crafted this plan to take me on as a postdoc and make me a co-PI on a fully-funded grant for 5 years of research related to my current dissertation topic. This grant includes 4 years of competitive postdoc salary for me, includes project start-up cos”

“Every time I meet with them I feel so drained. There’s been authorship/credit issues, giving my projects/ideas to other students, and bullying me in front of others etc to the point where I dread meeting them. They assigned me to a collaboration where I’m doing all of the experimental work for others to write up, publish, get first authorship for the purpose of keeping the other team happy and so that they can apply for shared grants. And my main PhD work is something they’re personally interest”

“Hi all, I’m a rising second-year PhD student in life sciences at a top R1 university. My program is direct-admit in all but name, and I’ve been working closely with a PI since arriving last fall whose lab I am now in the process of formally joining. Together we’ve mapped out a first dissertation chapter project that I’m making good progress on and are beginning to explore ideas for future projects in anticipation of my proposal defense next spring. I have pretty broad academic interests and also”

“Hello, I'm a PhD candidate and my advisor recently told me that I probably won't be hired because I'm a white man. She didn't say it angrily or anything. Just said that's how it is and that, from conversations she has had with others, it appears that being a white man is a disqualifying part of an application. I have 7 high-quality publications, two of which are in top general journals. She thinks I have a good chance if I switch to the political science job market, the inter”

“Does anyone know of any organizations or third party group that helps PhD students navigate conflict with faculty/admin? Like Academic Parity Movement or anything that’s helped you. My program has no ombudsman, guidelines, or due process, and trying to understand my options for pursuing fair treatment/non-discrimination. Thanks! Also if you’ve ever been in a similar situation (retaliatory behavior from a faculty member) feel free to share how you handled it 🙃 ETA: US, psychology submitted”

“My primary supervisor is a racist, narcissistic bully. He made my life hell. Evert time I tried to seek external help, he made my life worse. I am and international PhD student on a visa. My funding has stopped and I wanted to submit before after my funding ended so that I can get my award and swit from student visa. I had a very difficult personal life as well, all of this ruined my mental health and I simply want to finish. My supervisor loves free labour and he wants everyone to work till the”

“Been in this one lab for about 2 months now. Pretty small, only recently started. The PI said that in some time, she could possibly give me my own project, but from my understanding that typically doesn’t lead to any tangible results (pubs etc). Not that I’m doing it only for the publication, but can I expect anything out of it? submitted by /u/Choice-Shoulder-8582 [link] [comments]”

“My PhD advisor's intermittent emotional rewards are driving me crazy. Sometimes she's friendly, sometimes she's not, sometimes she answers emails right away and sometimes she waits two to four weeks. It makes me crazy trying to predict her or understand what she's up to. I deeply admire her, and deep down she is a nice person, but I hate that I keep refreshing my email to see if she's responded, especially when she always answers her other PhD student immediately. What can I”

“John* and Mark* are PhD students, contributing to the same project in very different and distinct parts of it. John is brilliant but has lots issues in getting results home (starts 20 sub-projects, finishes none, yet to start writing any of the papers we agreed...). Anyway, John's been productive overall. Mark turned out to have been a terrible hire. Doesn't follow instructions, cannot complete simple tasks even when given detailed instructions. But Mark's career-driven and knows how”

“I had an interesting (and slightly unsettling) conversation with my PI recently, and I'm curious how other PhD students would handle this. We were talking about another lab where a student has finished a project, but the supervisor isn't planning to submit the paper. During that discussion, my PI turned to us and asked something like: «"What do you think you could do if one day I told you we're not going to publish this work?"» He then kept adding more hypothetical scenario”

“I am working under two co PI's one is a lady and other one is a guy. This lady always tries to find a flaw in my work and report it to this guy PI with double drama infront of everyone. And this guy PI is literally like KIM JONG UN... He'll burst out at me. This lady co PI is literally poison. Everyone says biggest enemy of a women is another women. Now i know. If i dress well, put good makeup or we present ourselves in a better way she judge me to the core. Sometimes it feels like inste”

“My friend finally defended this week after a long and difficult PhD of 7 years. I’m so happy for her, and so happy that I got to witness this important milestone. The first advisor she had was extremely controlling and emotionally unstable, often getting mad when she didn’t get the expected results. She couldn’t take it anymore and switched groups. Her second advisor, the one she graduated with, is a lot nicer but also unsupportive. Most of the time there was no funding for her, so she had to do”

“TLDR: after voicing concern about unequal opportunities and potential gender bias, my PI/boss prevented me from reviewing manuscripts and prevents me from receiving authorship on 5 papers, and when he found out that I was "upset" about this and still in contact with some of the project leads/first authors, he sent me a cease-and-desist letter, threatening me with litigation. Names are made up for anonymity. I'll try to run through the background quickly: I (female, 25) just left my”

“I want to set healthy boundaries without ruining my relationship with my PI or sounding lazy. How do you all politely communicate that you are offline during the weekend? Or do I just have to accept that work-life balance doesn't exist in academia? submitted by /u/Appropriate_Bird1981 [link] [comments]”

“Hi everyone, I graduated about two months ago after defending my MS thesis. Right after my defense, my advisor, a PhD student in her lab, and I discussed possibly continuing my thesis research and turning it into a publication. Before moving forward, my advisor suggested redoing some analyses from the original paper that my main dataset came from. She also suggested rerunning our pipeline using another package to compare results and make the work more reproducible. Since I had graduated and the”

“I’m a Master’s student, so I hope it’s okay to post here. I’m reaching out because I feel like many PhD students have probably experienced difficult PI relationships, and I could really use some advice. I still have about a year left before I graduate, and lately my PI has become increasingly toxic toward me. Day by day, I can feel my mental health getting worse. The favoritism and partiality in the lab have become so obvious that it’s hard not to notice. Some people are openly favored even when”

“I don’t know if I’m looking for advice or just trying to get this off my chest. I’m doing my Master’s, and I still have about a year left before I graduate. Lately, my PI has become increasingly toxic toward me, and day by day I can feel my mental health getting worse. The favoritism and partiality in the lab have become so obvious that it’s hard not to notice. People are openly favored even when they make mistakes, while my work feels dismissed no matter how well my experiments are going. What”

“Hello folks, I am now in a slightly awkward position of thinking about changing advisor. For context I am a second year math PHD student in the US. (Will be in my third year in Fall) I initially started working with my current “advisor” (I haven’t formally declared yet) around one year ago. He was very hand off and I have to basically do everything. Lucky enough I was able to leverage some of my older workers into this project and got a descent result.( I did not use his “new” and “revolutionary”

“People who quit their PhDs what did you tell your supervisors if they were toxic? How should I tell him he is toxic? I am worried about going to the admin of my program directly because they might tell on me. What do I phrase it so that I can graduate with a master degree without him being a big hindrance? submitted by /u/carriebradshow [link] [comments]”

“Is it rude to not accept it despite my PI mentioning it more than once? Issue is I don't trust my PI much because of his extreme bias towards certain students. I would need some time to make up my mind so I would just thank him for offering it or not know how to reply because I haven't decided yet at all. submitted by /u/AltKittyKatxoxo [link] [comments]”

“during the spring, my professor was collaborating on a project (this is in ML/agents and not to go into specifics but it was application to another field, and my professor connected me with the graduate student because it was a good project that was going to be in a good journal). However, the phd student I think now doesn't like me. At the start of summer, I texted him and got a 10 minute virtual meeting to talk about what I did, and he said he would give me the code base but never did and”

“during the spring, my professor was collaborating on a project (this is in ML/agents and not to go into specifics but it was application to another field, and my professor connected me with the graduate student because it was a good project that was going to be in a good journal). However, the phd student I think now doesn't like me. At the start of summer, I texted him and got a 10 minute virtual meeting to talk about what I did, and he said he would give me the code base but never did and”

“I’m a final-year PhD student in biomedical research, and something happened today that really shocked me. I have a first-author paper that has taken me years to complete. I generated dozens of stable cell lines, performed the vast majority of the experiments, analyzed the data, and have been handling the revisions. My supervisor even acknowledged during our conversation that this project was essentially my work. Today, at the end of our one-on-one meeting, my PI brought up something that complet”

“I am a master’s student and I chose to do research under a professor’s supervision. Unexpectedly and unfortunately he pursued me and we only dated for 2 months and we broke up because I felt so lost with my own feelings and myself getting smaller in this power dynamic. He’s 20+yrs older than me and it was probably a bit manipulative(I found out this only after I stepped back from this) and I feel being used and abandoned. It was a really hard time for me the month after the breakup, especially s”

“advisor is finally giving me a project i’m very interested in working on after he treated me terribly, took 0 accountability and never apologized, and AFTER i stated that i wanted to get my masters and graduate (which they said they respected my decision btw). feeling super conflicted bc they said they’ll fund me for rest of my phd journey too (super privileged which im well aware of!) but im not sure if the toxicity is worth it for another 4 years :/ for context, our conflicts were revolved aro”

“Basically my PI said he won't write me a letter and I asked why. He immediately started with "Well you told me earlier this year that you have ADHD"...basically he said that he did some research into it and saw a lot of the manifestations of ADHD behavior in me and then ended with saying that he doesn't think I should be responsible for other peoples lives. I'm scared that medical schools will look negatively on this because I have a significant number of hours (>2000) i”

“I am a graduate student in engineering, and I have been working with the same senior professor for almost four years. He has helped me a lot: he supported my transition into my current university, helped with my graduate admissions and PhD application, gave me research opportunities, and we have published multiple papers together. I am genuinely grateful to him and I know I would not be where I am without his support. The issue is that after my first year of my master’s, and especially while app”

“I've been doing research with a professor from my graduate program remotely for 5 months. He introduced me to one of his PhD students and I have been working pretty much exclusively with the PhD student through weekly remote meetings. I just graduated in May, but we intended to continue work after graduation, though he mentioned we would cease weekly meetings and only meet as needed. I gave an update and said I intend to reach out again once I get the code fully working because I am close, a”

“Do your grad students like you as a PI? I am never sure whether I am doing things right, or whether it is partly generational, but my students always seem stressed. Most of them work in the lab from 10 to 4 and rarely come in on weekends, which I neither ask nor expect them to do. The only thing I require is a monthly progress report, which should not be an issue if they are keeping up with what we agreed upon. Lately, the lab has also seemed quite gossipy, and it makes me worry that I am failin”

“I’m a biology master’s student hoping to defend my thesis in early November and graduate in December. Because of the nature of my thesis, data can really only be collected over the summer, so I’m not actually in the lab much during the school year. I’ve finished most of my introduction and started my data analysis. I spent a lot of my first year feeling like I was behind, my I feel now like I’ve found my footing and I’m making good progress. I have a five person thesis committee, but only two ar”

“I’m in a thesis based research program in engineering at a top 5 school in Canada. I worked for 2 years before going to grad school so I’ve seen both sides of it. My supervisor makes us do about 12 courses, 3x the number of courses required and we are required to publish twice to graduate from the MSc. He’s very very well regarded in the field and has been reasonably decent so far. I’m 1.5 years in and he’s been abreast of my work on my topic (which he expanded the scope inspite of it being outs”

“I just finished my second year in my program. My advisor is so incredibly smart, but he is INCREDIBLY annoying. I know he is well connected in the field and that I could have a great start after I graduate, but oh. my. god. He makes insensitive jokes (racist, misogynist, you name it), loves to hear himself talk (a 10 minute meeting can easily become 1+ hr), and occasionally is just a complete asshole to other students, talking badly about former students and my peers to my face. And I can take a”

“Hi frens, Starting my 5th year. I have been wanting to make this for a while but its overwhelming to think about. I'm going to remain vague in the identity of the PI and lab, at least until I find a job and feel secure enough. He won't have any graduate students at his new uni, thank god. Okay...... tldr at end. The background I (30 YOF) was admitted into my Boston area PhD program in molecular biology in 2022, and upon completing my rotations, chose a lab. We had a cohort of 2 people so”

“A PI confirmed that they would be willing to take me on as a grad student and they had also signed the supervisory confirmation form. Then, they stated that they will be asking someone else to co-supervise me. In late April, I was tasked with starting a lit review with very vague instructions and had notified them that since this is a new field, I was reading up on background information. In mid-May, I had reached out to ask if they would be willing to meet with me to discuss this review as I ne”

“Hi everyone, I’ve been clashing a bit with my PI lately because one of my projects is out of her area of expertise and aligns more closely with a committee member’s expertise. That other committee member recently emailed that he will be too busy to be in contact for the next several months, but I work with living subjects and cannot wait that long for my experiment. I have been reading up on this project extensively but everything I am saying to my PI is getting ignored. They keep making decisio”