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Yo professors, do you ever get annoyed at students that visit you every day during your office hours? Taking my discrete math class this semeseter, easily the hardest class ive ever taken. im a junior im literally visiting my professor every day (he says if his office door is open, hes open to meet). Am i annoying him by visiting him every day? I need a C+ in this class and this class is FUCKING HARD. so do yall get annoyed at students that meet every single day? he did tell me im the only student that visits /meets him on teams via online during office hours..

I would always rather a student come to office hours and get the support they need to succeed in the class than struggle and not come to office hours. I can guarantee you that every professor would also rather have a student come to office hours and get the passing grade they need rather than never come to office hours and send an email at the end of the semester saying, "I really need a C+ in the class, can you bump me up?" You want a certain grade in a difficult class, and you are putting in the work to get it. You are doing the right things. (It does sound like this professor has an open-door policy, and you're using that, as stated. If he has specific office hours, too, you might try to make an effort to stop by at those times, if you're available, rather than at other times on those days. But I wouldn't feel bad about using his policy as advertised.)

I don’t understand how I’m supposed to make a PhD work financially. Even the most generous fully funded packages are like low 30k range in the USA even if that I am barely scraping by as it is, thinking about doing a PhD because it’ll open up a lot of opportunities in my field. But, 4-6 more years of making barely anything, not being able to save a dime, eating rice and beans mostly, damn this is going to be hard if I do it. I’ll be turning 30 this year, doing science because I’m passionate about it and also good at it. But they sure have made it hard to do.

You more or less have to maintain a "student" lifestyle. I mostly had roommates and kept costs down with my two main hobbies being cooking and brewing. I was getting $19,000-$20,000 plus tuition from 2005-2011, and remained essentially cash flow neutral.

What's your unpopular opinion about your field? Title.

I am in some mashup of drug discovery, computational chemistry, and computational physics. Honestly, methods papers don't get the love they deserve, and more people need to run replicates to ensure that their simulations haven't gone into weird phase space. Also, a lot of experimentalists have no clue what a simulation can and cannot show.

Authorship denied because of sudden quitting My gf has been working as a graduate research assistant for about a year now. Her PI tasked her with a paper and much more work. In the end the work was bearing too much on her and she decided to quit abruptly. The problem is there is a paper that is practically finished but the PI is threatening to deny her authorship and may only put her in the acknowledgements even though she did all the data collection and wrote the majority of the paper. This seems highly unprofessional to me but I am not in the field of acadamia. I would like to know others opinion on this.

That is unethical, as others observed, and can be reported to the campus Research Integrity Officer as a case of plagiarism. The PI cannot remove an author simply because they quit.

Fired? Hi All. Sorry for the long text in advance, but I reaaaaally need help. I need help understanding what's happening because I am completely lost. Here is what has happened. I started my PhD in another country about a month and a half ago. My two supervisors got a grant and I was able to get the position after the interviews. An important thing to know is that they work in different universities and is a multidisciplinary project, so the science they do is completely different and I was told I would have to go from one place to the other regularly. My first month was completely in my first supervisor university and everything went super well. We really got along, I was getting super positive feedback, I really connected with my coworkers, ... This supervisor measures our performance with a KPI thing on an excel and he told me he was super happy and that he was really surprised with how well I was doing. After that meeting, I was told I had to go 5 days to the lab of my other supervisor. This is when things started to get weird. I arrived there and I was getting a weird vibe from my supervisor but it was the first time we met in real life so I didn't think too much about it. She starts to show me the place and tells me that she wants to show me some IT stuff. I told her that I didn't bring my work laptop from the other place but that I had brought my personal laptop (I know this is my bad, I just assume she was going to give me one, but again completely my bad). She told me something like "don't worry, I will send you the manuals and you can let me know if you have an issue when you go back". After that, we started doing some work that day and everything was ok. The next day, we had to prepare to do some experiments with animals to extract their organs while there were still alive. Just to be clear during the interviews I was only told "you will have to work with organs and biological samples". So during that experiment, I felt pretty bad, told her that I was going out for a while and then came back and told her that I was sorry that I felt very uncomfortable with that. She told me to go home and to contact my other supervisor because she thought that he should know. I did that and went to sleep. The next day, I was able to that experiments but I was starting to receive a lot of random negative comments from this woman like "I feel you are absolutely not interested in this project" out of nowhere. She also told me things like "you are not taking notes" that at the time she told me that I was not taking notes but at other moments I was taking notes, she also said things like "you can use your time to read papers" that is something that I was also doing but not exactly at the moment she told me that. Days went by and, honestly, our relationship kind of went to this place of not really talking that much. Now I know it was a super stupid move from me. I did everything that she told me to do but I recognise that I didn't do more than what she told me to. The last day I was there she told me to meet her at her office. There she started saying things to me like "I don't think you are a good student", "I don't think you will be able to find collaborators", "This PhD is going to get harder and harder", ... To those things, I didn't really answer a lot of things other than "sorry, the next time I come here I will try to improve". The next day I had a holiday but the "nice supervisor" called me to go to his office. So I went and he was there waiting for me with the other supervisor on zoom. I go in and he tells me "For legal reasons we have to record this" (I knew things were not going well at that point). They started to accuse me of multiple things. Some things were true, for example, the fact that I left that day at the experiment. Other things were half-trues, for example, that I didn't take my work laptop (which is true but she didn't tell me it was a problem). Some things were lies, for example, the "nice supervisor" told me that he received very negative feedback from my coworkers. I later checked with them and they promised me that they gave very positive feedback in fact. And some things were absolute bullsh\*t, for instance, they were questioning why I was living in a town and not in the city. After that, they told me that I was fired. They told me that if I resigned they would write me a "somewhat good" recommendation letter for another place but that if they had to fire me they would not do that. After a couple of minutes of discussion, I told them to give me a couple of weeks to prove to them that I can work better. They talked about it and that I had a week and a half to do it. They told me that they were going to write a list of things they want me to do, but that they were not going to give that list, I had to figure it out. After that, I talked with my coworkers and they presented a letter to the "nice" supervisor telling them that they don't agree with that decision and that they never gave negative feedback and that this letter is there to prove that they want to give positive feedback about me. Something else that I discovered while talking with my colleagues is that this supervisor started to ask them HR questions (like "do you think he is reliable?) the day after I left the experiment with the animals. The next day (today), my supervisor told me to go to his office. We sat down and gave a list of very general and broad stuff like "don´t assume, ask first", "think before you act", "recognise your mistakes", ... He also told me that I should try to focus on impressing the other supervisor not him. I thanked him for that list (even though it was not the list they wrote the day before and it was more like "tips"). I also told him that I don't know what I am going to be able to do in just one week and a half, he agreed to that. He also told me that he thinks that their decision to fire me was not the best way to handle it, but that if they don't fire me now they cannot fire me for the next 9 months. He told me that he thought I had a chance of doing it. This supervisor has money for hiring more students without the other supervisor. I asked him if he saw changing me to another project as an option (so basically me not working with the other supervisor). He told me that he does not see it as an option because "that is too easy and you have to learn to work with different kind of people", which is kind of true (i guess). I have been doing my work, reading papers and sending very nice emails to show that I care. I am going to go next week to the other university to show that I care (I cannot go more because of COVID). I have apologized to both of them for not being able to prove how much I like this position. But, honestly, there are not that many things one can achieve (at least in my field) in a week and a half. I am very worried. I came from another country, I have contracts here now for two years (apartment, phone, health insurance, ...), I really like the project that I am doing, the coworkers are really nice, .... I would like to know your opinion. Do you think I have options of keeping the position? Do you think they just gave me this week and a half to "show that they tried to let me improve but I didn't"? Thank you so much for reading my story. Please don't hesitate to comment!! I really can use all the help and tips I can get!! PS: I know I have not given a lot of specific details, but I would also like to stay as anonymous as possible just to avoid potential problems. But if you think that there is something important that could be missing please let me know! Thanks again

Just saw in this thread somewhere that this is in France. I'm from France and in academia, so here are some tips. I won't speak about who's right or wrong here, but only the exact next legal steps you could take. No need to waste time on a lawyer in France. They have the full right to fire you for any reason (which could also be that they're just generally not satisfied) as long as you're still in the probation period. If you can still survive in the lab beyond the probation period, then you're set and stable for this year at least. Now let's speak of the case where you either resign or they fire you. You must have come through the 'Visa Talent Chercheur'. If it is already validated, you can stay from 3 months to 1 year in France without issues even if you're fired. Beyond that, if you do not have another position, you have to go back (or become irregular, and I don't advise that). Now, in that time, you could first do student jobs (you're considered a student while in a PhD in France). Be sure to have on you certificates that you're a student before you get fired, so that you can still get those jobs even if fired. Those jobs will keep you fed at least. At the same time, look for a new PhD. I would advise in this part to resign and get the recommendation from them, as it's extremely important in France to have a French recommendation for a PhD, and expect that if you don't have it, your new PhD PIs would definitely ask your old PIs about why you didn't continue with them, so expect trouble there. That's why again, OP, you should definitely get a letter of recommendation before leaving. Another option is getting a job in industry. Kind of tough as the company recruiting you would need to get a work permit for you, but still an avenue of possibility. EDIT: added my country

Pregnant during PhD program Hi everyone! I just found out that I’m pregnant. My husband and I are over the moon, but the anxiety is starting to creep up on me. I am finishing up my second year of my PhD program in biology and the baby will be due in the beginning/middle of my third year. Quals are at the end of the third year. I am really lucky and I have a really supportive PI who cares about his students, but I’m still scared about how he is going to handle it. I’m also scared about how I will handle being a mom and a grad student. I guess I’m just asking anyone who has gone through something like this for advice. What can I expect? And a bit of reassurance that you all made it through. Thanks!

Congratulations! I actually think that on the whole, academia's trajectory is the very best time to have a baby. You have a degree of flexibility around your work that is unlike most other jobs. The only downside is the money -- it can be hard to afford childcare and an extra bedroom. Some wise words from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which I wholeheartedly agree with: >*"Work-life balance was a term not yet coined in the years my children were young; it is aptly descriptive of the time distribution I experienced. My success in law school, I have no doubt, was in large measure because of baby Jane. I attended classes and studied diligently until 4 in the afternoon; the next hours were Jane's time, spent at the park, playing silly games or singing funny songs, reading picture books and A.A. Milne poems, and bathing and feeding her. After Jane's bedtime, I returned to the law books with renewed will. Each part of my life provided respite from the other and gave me a sense of proportion that classmates trained only on law studies lacked."*

Really embarrassed after being denied an extension... Don't know how to stay on my professor's good graces? Hi everyone, I hope I am following all Sub rules. I just got denied an extension on a major assignment that was due today and I kind of just wanted to hear some advice on how other students/academics manage feelings of embarrassment associated with failure or disappointing others. I'd also like to hear from profs who might have heard from students like me and responded in similar ways to mine. You can all be as honest as possible - please feel free to chastise me if you feel that it is necessary in this case. I had to move back in with my grandparents during the pandemic to take care of them and have been having trouble with school ever since. Nothing I haven't been able to handle, thankfully. However, after they got their vaccines on Thursday, they fell unwell and I've been pressed for time as I've managed caring for them, finishing this paper, and working. I reached out to my instructor on Friday morning with a brief email asking for an extension on this assignment due to trouble at home, apologizing profusely. He only just got back to me with a no and a suggestion to see a therapist for my home troubles. He might have meant well with the suggestion, but I cannot help but feel a little ashamed. I'm worried I have lost good standing with him and I am worried I have offended him. I hope he does not think I lied. I don't know whether I should respond with an apology, but I don't know what to apologize for? Anyways, I may just be overthinking this... Pandemic stress... Thank you for your time nonetheless.

This sounds like a stressful situation, and I'm sorry that you are experiencing it. I can't speak for your specific professor, but I don't think it's likely that you harmed your good standing. In general, as long as you approach a request for an extension respectfully (e.g., it's not an indignant demand), you should be fine. A professor may not give an extension for a number of reasons (e.g., they don't believe it would be fair to other students who might also be struggling, they don't provide extensions except with a Dean's note, it was too short of notice, etc.), but it doesn't mean they think ill of you for asking. My advice to you is to do what you can to submit the best work you can today. Or, if the late penalty is relatively light (e.g., 10%) and you think having an extra day will help you to have a substantially better assignment, go ahead and take a penalty if you need to. It sucks when circumstances beyond your control affect your grade in a class. Ultimately, you can only do your best, and it is okay if your best today is not quite as good as your best under better circumstances. Good luck.

"Make all the figures before you start writing the paper" is terrible advice Biomedical sciences student here. I am curious what people think of this statement. Personally, I have heard it from many PIs, including my own, leading me to believe it is a common bit of philosophy throughout academia. Based on my experience, this has been garbage advice. Sure, you need to know your data, and you need to have it analyzed before you start writing. But I have found that the story only comes together when pen hits paper, and some parts of the story end up needing to be emphasized while others can be ignored. In the past, I tried to stick to pre-made figures and maintain the expectation that they weren't going to change. Ultimately I found that this unnecessarily constrained the story I ended up being able to tell and became a waste of time since I just remake the figures anyway.

There's a reason lots of people use that advice: it works. No, the figures won't be perfect, but you need an order of events that makes sense, and figures allow you to present that story. Same reason shows put together a storyboard. I don't believe your PI meant that the figures shouldn't change at all while writing; if he did, that's taking this too far, you're right.

Not a professor but a graduate student. I would like to write a recommendation letter for my thesis advisor as she is an awesome mentor who really cares about students and is an inspiring scientist. I’m a PhD candidate in biology and in a research- focused university. I hope to seek some advice regarding writing recommendation letter for my thesis advisor to the Vice Dean in charge of faculty. My advisor ( relatively young PI) is an exemplary mentor who has inspired me in many ways in terms of scientific thinking and she truly cares a lot about students progress/and gives us both the space and support to develop our scientific minds. Therefore, I would like to write a recommendation letter for her in hope that it will be beneficial for her tenure consideration. My hesitation is that: how effective will this letter be in aiding her to get tenure? Or will it on the contrary, be something against her(?)- I am not sure how common is this practice of students writing recommendation letters for their advisors are in academia.

Just a note if you do write a letter of support. Since it is (apparently) common to have notes from students in the portfolio, that means the professor will sometimes solicit those notes. It might be worth saying something to the effect of "This letter was not solicited by anyone. I volunteered it because I feel so strongly about...". If I were on the committee, I would give an unsolicited letter a bit more weight than a solicited one because it is more likely to be sincere.

PIs, what do you find most impressive about exceptional grad students? I know it's not about knowing the answers to everything (as I was once led to believe), but a part of grad school and growing is asking dumb questions, lots of them. This is especially so if one worked in an interdisciplinary field. What then, separates mediocre, good, and exceptional students? When is the last time a student genuinely impressed you? What did he/she do? I'm less curious about the specific outcomes (publications, high grades, engagement, etc.), but more about the characteristics and habits great students have. Could it be creativity? Productivity? The ability to ask relevant research questions and design experiments? The ability to conduct experiments independently and discuss the results meaningfully? Put another way, aside from tangible results, what (soft) skills should I aim to gain in grad school to become a better academic? What makes you say, *wow, I am really impressed by this student*? Hope the question is clear. Thanks for your input!

Students who have impressed me most have (1) had the desire and ability to become strong in the fundamentals of the field and then (2) worked with me as partners in pushing research in a direction that they find personally interesting. I suppose that’s a combination of ability, interest, and professionalism.

What’s life like Post-PhD? Does one feels less dumb? Only interested in unpopular opinions.

No, it's great. On days when I'm lounging around, being a useless lump, I catch myself and I'm like, "Damn, I'm a doctor!" And then I feel fancy and validated as I uselessly lump around.

I love working for my PIs because... So this isn’t a question but I just wanted to take the time to make a shout-out to all the awesome PIs who are nice to their students, and I’m posting this here instead of r/Academia because 10 times the audience haha Context first, I am a student researcher. I’ve been making a lot of mistakes with my work recently despite having a couple years of lab experience, for a multitude of reasons including Covid. Instead of getting mad at me or engaging in any of the negative behaviour we hear often on this sub, my PIs (I’ve got 3 advisors) have been wonderfully understanding about my poor performance. They’ve repeatedly reassured me that I am not a dumbass, that I am adding value to the lab and projects, and that it is ok to screw up sometimes. At this point, they probably believe in me more than I believe in myself. Also, my PIs seem to make it a point to thank me whenever I’ve done extra work or taken initiative, and are lavish with praise for anything they think I’ve done well. They make me feel like I am valued in the lab and their actions assure me that they will be here to support me no matter what. I feel like I would do anything for this lab. It may not mean much to them, but for a young student like myself, being praised and supported by my PIs means the world to me. It motivates me to keep at it, and it pushes me to want to grow and work harder and be a better version of myself. TLDR: be nice to the students and the students probably might sell their soul to your lab willingly

So much this. I ride the offhanded "good job"s for days. First time doing research (undergrad) and my advisor is so nice. I was actually worried because Reddit (whether it be this sub or other academic subs) makes it seem like 99% of advisors are toxic micromanagers, but I've seen nothing of the sort IRL.

As a student, should we challenge our textbooks when they contain bullshit and where is the onus for the bullshit? I'm a student who keeps finding bullshit in my assigned textbooks: >"For example, most Americans do not leave home without their mobile phone. And, if they do forget and leave their home or office without them, they're covered. While out and about, they buy a disposal *(sic)* mobile phone with airtime for a few dollars. However, disposable phones typically lack most of the features of conventional mobile phones." From *Communicating in Business* by Robert G Insley 2nd edition, Kendall Hunt Publishing 2017. There's no citation for this claim because no one does this. Here's another one: >"As a result, many adverse physical, mental, and emotional conditions associated with chronic stress can be reduced or eliminated with regular practice of PMR. It helps decrease insomnia and posttraumatic stress disorder". "The Effects of Music Relaxation and Muscle Relaxation Techniques on Sleep Quality and Emotional Measures among Individuals with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder," by M. Blanaru, B. Bloch, L. Vadas, et al., Mental Illness, 4(2) (2012): e13 From *Stress Management for Life: A Research-Based Experiential Approach 5th Edition* by Olpin and Hesson Cengage Publishing 2021 I looked into that and the study of 13 people with PTSD tests them with music relaxation and muscle relaxation. The study finds that there are positive effects with music relaxation. But the description in the book claims that the PMR is the effective part. Here's a third one. >Instead, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator" (MBTI.,) instrument is a personality assessment tool developed in the 1940s by Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Cook Briggs. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® assessment is an inventory test that identifies sixteen personality types. From *Essential Study Skills* 5th Edition by Wong Cengage Publishing 2013 Except no. Who should be responsible for these things? Should it be the student, who should not accept what is being taught at face value? Should the professor, who should have reviewed the textbook to make sure that what is being taught is accurate? Should it be the publisher, who is selling these as learning instruments without fact-checking? Should it be the author, who is not doing their due diligence prior to releasing these turds? Should we as students challenge these things?

Who is responsible? All of the above. I explicitly tell my students to question what they are taught and to challenge it when they think something doesn’t add up. I point out when I disagree with something in a textbook. You should have been taught to think critically in high school, and you should absolutely be doing that in college. The publisher should be fact-checking their authors before they publish. As faculty, I try to read all of any book I require or recommend, but I skim some and could miss something even when I read thoroughly.

Those who discovered they had ADHD during their PhD, what is your story ? Hi ! I started listening to the "How to ADHD" podcast on youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvq9Tp5JZ8oDV3SIpSJX25Twp9FHKqi\_l ) and honestly, it has brought me to tears... I'm not sure if I'm just exhausted or realize that I've been struggling with this for such a long time. I'm now a PhD student and have been having great grades in school most of my life, even if I didn't study a lot (excepts for math... where I have to study a lot and have meh grades...) Anyways, I'm interested in how you discovered that you had it, what caused you to get diagnosed and what you are doing now with it.

I'm in a similar situation, and there's good news. Now that you know, you can harness your ADHD to your benefit. Usually, for me, there are a couple of hours a day when my brain chemistry is balanced; I have the optimum caffeine and food energy levels without jitters. I use that time to do my "A" tasks, like writing. Then, when the full ADHD kicks in, it's time for emails (i.e., "C" tasks). By the end of the day, when I'm tired enough that the ADHD isn't overwhelming, I settle in a little for reading, "B" tasks. This is what works for me; YMMV.

Struggling with Disrespectful Masters Students Hello, I'm (30f) a north american doctoral researcher at a French university. This semester I'm teaching two classes: an undergraduate class and a masters class. My undergraduate students are wonderful, excited, and truly a joy to teach. I'm week 7/12 with them and I'm delighted each time I get to have them in my classroom. They're highly active, very engaged, and seem so passionate about the coursework. My masters students....are not. I'm on week 4/10 with them, and it's like pulling teeth. The purpose of the class is for them to practice speaking English in a scientific manner. That's the point. For the first half of the class, I designed it so we discuss readings that were given out as homework the week before. The second half, we break into group work so they can practice speaking in English to their colleagues. During week two, 33% of the class didn't do the readings. I'm flexible, so when I came to a student who didn't read, I changed questions. "What do you feel about the title of the paper?" -- "I don't know." "What do you think it means?" "I don't know." "What do you think about this topic in general?" "I don't know." Eventually, I moved on. During week three, they were meant to hand in an assignment -- the title of an article they'll be doing a five minute oral presentations on at the end of the semester, and the title of the book they'll do a book review on (also due at the end of the semester) Six students didn't show up. It's a class of 20. 10 in general didn't even turn in the assignment. Students have come up to me and said, they don't feel like doing the book review can they just do the oral presentation? No. A book is too long to read (over the course of 7 weeks), can they just do chapters instead? No. The most recent, tonight, was an email response to a reminder that I hadn't received this student's work. He told me he didn't know how to find a journal article, JSTOR and Research Gate has a paywall, can I just give it to him? I explained he could get institution access through the school library to find a journal article, that JSTOR has 100 free articles even without institution access, and Research Gate does as well. The parameters for choosing a book/journal article were: in he student's field of study and in english. That's it. I don't know what to do or how to respond to what seems just persistent disrespect for me and the class itself. Half the class seems to be doing okay, they're engaged and they do the work and they talk. I have one student, a professor on sabbatical taking a second masters, who seems to really enjoy the class. She tells me I'm doing great and that she wants to use my methodology with the group work to help keep classes engaged. But it feels like whiplash when she says that, because I feel like I'm fighting non-stop to keep the rest of the group engaged. I don't know the best way to reach out to these students, and also...how to respond to the blatant lack of care for the course. Apparently this is a weighted class system, so even if they fail my class it will barely affect their overall average. But that doesn't mean they should just be so outright *rude.* They don't even *try* to lie. They just tell me that they're not going to do their work. What do I do with that? I could really use some advice.

I can speak from a student's perspective here. The problem with classes like "English for Scientists" is that they are often the first thing you stop caring about when other classes get too stressful. They feel unrelated to your degree, often take up a lot of time, and it's just more work. I'm very sorry that I can't offer a solution here, and it's sad that you spend all that time and energy, and students can't appreciate that.

What are some obvious issues in academia, nobody wants to talk about? Like inter-departmental politics, everybody knows but people rarely talk about it to resolve it.

Expectations are that a single academic will do everything — teach, do cutting-edge research, manage people, do administrative work, write papers, communicate science to the general public, service equipment, and so on. No support staff, no division of work between people; you need to do everything and be excellent in every aspect.

Why should I peer-review a paper? (Honest question) Today I received two emails from a journal I never published in. In the first email, they communicated to me that I was added to their database. In the second email, I have been asked to I) review the paper before the 1st of Jan, or II) suggest another expert in the field. My question is: why would I ever work for them, for free? And why is it even acceptable that I get registered on a database of a journal that I have never had anything to do without my consent? I completely understand the idea that I should do it for science, and that someone else did the same for my manuscripts. But isn’t that crazy? I mean, they are asking me to work on a tight schedule entirely for free, on a paper that they will most likely ask money to access. And I don’t even see one way how this will benefit my career. Am I missing something here? Should I accept this review for some reason obscure to me?

Speaking from an entirely “selfish” point of view, you review papers for two reasons: 1. It forces you to keep up with the literature in the field and will give you new ideas. 2. Reviewing journal articles is seen as an “essential” part of your job as an academic. You have to show that you regularly review papers when applying for fellowships, grants, tenure, etc.

Title IX investigation preventing me from crucial lab work - defense scheduled in 3 weeks Hi - I need some advice regarding how to stay motivated and get work done. In December at a conference, my PI got super drunk and suggested we go back to his hotel room. When I confided in a lab tech, I was told that everyone in our (large clinical) lab thought I was simply too young for him - but that otherwise they would have warned me. Apparently he's sexually harassed every woman who has come through this lab for decades. Our clinical half of the lab makes MILLIONS for the university though so it's not surprising he's been protected. So - I started the title ix investigation in December. It's still ongoing. As long as he's in the building, I do not go in - which means I am no longer able to complete lab work except for on weekends. I didn't have *a lot * left to complete, however, the stuff I do need to complete requires more than 2 days at a time and I'm getting desperate. I've tried to get in touch with the Title IX chair/coordinator/president? about needing to come in on weekdays but he hasn't gotten back to me. At this point I have no hope that I'll be able to get anything done. The two main issues I have are: I have zero motivation whatsoever to work at all. It might be depression, maybe burnout, IDK. My new PhD mentor is phenomenal and is really working hard to help me graduate on time, but my attention to detail is poor and my motivation is essentially zero. I even told her I'd be okay leaving without a PhD at all. She suggested I push back my defense. Unfortunately, the second issue is I am dual-degree MD/PhD. If I don't graduate by May, I have to wait a whole year before reentering the medical school. I can't just push graduation back to fall - I'd have to either work a whole year or take time off w/o pay. I'm just at the end of my rope. This isn't my fault, but I feel like I'm being punished. I am hoping someone here could advise me on what steps I can possibly take to make sure I graduate. Obviously finishing my dissertation/papers is key - and I'm on schedule despite low motivation to finish all writing this week. But regarding lab time, etc. - what do I do? I need to increase n for two experiments, but our lab techs are busy with clinical lab work and even if they weren't I've been doing all the research stuff alone due to COVID for 2 years anyway. I'm the only one who can do my protocols. Should I settle for lower quality data and just accept I might not be published? Should I suck it up and go into lab even if he's going to be there? It's only 3 more weeks. I really just want to drop the whole thing and take the next two months to prepare for clinicals. Honestly I'm at a point where I went from super excited and proud of my data in December to the realization that doing a PhD is the biggest regret of my life. That is probably clinical depression talking, but still. I feel no honor or pride in my work and cringe at the idea of being forever linked to this person professionally. TIA and sorry about the rambly nature of this post. FWIW I'm working on getting into therapy.

I'm so sorry this has happened to you, and that you're suffering the consequences of reduced research time during the investigation. Two thoughts: 1) Have you been very explicit with your new mentor that your ability to only be in the lab on weekends has impeded your ability to finish? If not, I suggest you write something along the lines of the following to your mentor: "I am struggling to finish my PhD work because I am only comfortable being in the lab when [former advisor] is not there. This means I am suffering consequences from reporting harassment under Title IX. I am hoping you can help me come up with an arrangement with the Title IX office that ensures I get the necessary time in the lab to finish my degree. I do not want to be punished for trying to have a harassment-free workplace." Lay it out clearly that YOU are the one suffering consequences here. 2) You might also consider escalating to either your department head, the dean, or even the university ombuds. Usually escalating is a bad idea, and given too freely on these subs. But you absolutely should not suffer consequences for trying to have a harassment-free workplace. And that's the wording you should use in all of your communications. Is there any way for you to be able to go into your lab in the evenings, or is your former advisor potentially still there? Basically, don't let this person harass you out of getting the PhD you have worked so hard to earn! I know fighting can be exhausting, especially when it feels like the institution has let you down. But I encourage you to press this further and more forcefully with your new advisor and the department chair. Don't let them ignore you while they wait for Title IX. Sending so many good thoughts your way.

Is it common to fail to get a PhD after 10 years of being in the program? Someone I know is returning to our (mutual) home country without finishing her dissertation after 10 years in the PhD program. She said she can't stay in the states longer I thought she was graduating late because she was in humanities. I never imagined someone can fail to graduate after whopping 10 years Is this a common story?

It certainly *used* to be common. Back in the 1990s, when I was in graduate school, there was no limit on time to degree, so we had a bunch of people in residence who were 10+ years into the program. Most of them never finished. In fact, the completion rate in my program was about 10% in the late 1990s, despite it being highly ranked. A lot of that was due to people dropping out and taking tech jobs, but another big chunk were those ABDs who just stayed around on the books forever and never managed to schedule a defense. Around 2000, they instituted a policy that limited people to seven years in candidacy; the clock would start when they passed comps, and after seven years, their coursework credits would start to drop off. That pretty much put an end to the 15+ year graduate students, but I’d imagine it also led to more “failures” in that it would be pretty remarkable for someone to hit that 7-year deadline and then actually start taking classes again. More likely, they would just finally pack up and move on to something else. Sometimes these long time-to-degree delays are related to money. Many of my friends, for example, had to do field research abroad. But there’s seldom much funding available for humanities dissertations, so they’d have to work for 1-2 years to save up enough to spend six months in European archives or whatever. In other cases, there were relationships involved, so leaving the university town wasn’t an option. Still others realized the job market was terrible and intentionally put off their defense so their student loans would remain in deferral.

Academics who publish more than your peers: what do you do differently? I've been using Scopus to compare publication records of academics in my field who have received early career grants to get an idea of what I should be aiming for. In doing this I've noticed that most people have a similar number of publications - usually 1-2 first author papers per year, plus a more variable number of co-authored papers further down the author list. However, there are some people who are comparably prolific, publishing upwards of 4 first-author publications a year multiple times in the first 5 years of their career (highest I've seen is 7 in one year), usually alongside many more co-authored papers. These authors are publishing in reputable journals with solid citations so they aren't just targeting easier journals. I've noticed that this usually occurs when the authors sticks closely to the same topic, sometimes even the same dataset (cohort studies in public health/psychology/psychiatry), or studies of different cohorts testing the same/similar research question. I'm curious about some less obvious differences that might be present. Writing on the same topic/data over and over of course is going to make writing faster and reduce time spent collecting data, but I don't think it's the whole story. I assume there must be other contextual factors at play, as well some differences in how these authors work. If you are someone with a lot of first-author publications (in a field where that matters) compared to your peers, or you know someone like this, what do you think allows them to publish twice as much as their peers?

No kids and a spouse who also has a career allowed me to spend as much time as I wanted publishing papers that I really enjoyed writing. I’m not crazy prolific, but I do tend to fall above the mean. The prolific folks I know in my field (social sciences) seem to be in that boat (at least in the earlier stages of their career). The most prolific person in my field publishes 20 or so articles a year as a first author. In chatting with him, it’s because he has a formula he uses to “tell the story” for each article. It works really well, and his articles are always some of the best I’ve ever read.

Should I contact my previous advisor to see how they are doing? I graduated with my masters degree two years ago. I have two academic and research advisor that I guided me throughout the program and I managed to land a very good job and get on my feet after graduation. I want to send an email to two of my advisors to check in. Do you think this is a good idea? Do professors like to hear back from their previous students? I don't know if it matters but im an engineer and they are in school of engineering

Lecturer here! I love to hear back from my old students. Not only because I care about most of them, but also because I love to hear that their education has helped them achieve their goals.

Quitting Prof job Hi all, i was wondering if I could get some opinions or advice to the following situation: i’m in my seventh year of assistant professorship, three of these tenure track US and four of these in a permanent position (UK). I am getting ready to apply for promotion. However there are a few issues. First my spouse and child absolutely do not like it here and want to go back to previous country. Second, i’ve been working my ass off especially post covid. I have ten undergrads, five PhD students, led two courses this semester with over 100 students in them. I do the grant applications (not going great but there are small steady funding amounts) and the publishing thing (very productive despite not having many resources or time).... I had to remodel my two courses to work remotely because of Covid whilst homeschooling. Well: just got my evals back and students loved the first module but absolutely hated the second! That one is a difficult, technical subject which is mandatory and half of them usually really loathe it even during non covid times. Others who are more interested love it—- smh. The spread of these evaluations goes from “best course i ever had” to “i’m gonna change my degree now”... I think I might be having an oncoming burnout or something but I just ... want to quit..... right.... NOW! I’m normally calm and rational but i feel like I am trapped in a nightmare. I got scared of myself and have just taken leave over the holidays to let all of this settle - i normally never take any time off since i started in academia about 20 years ago- but i think i want to try getting into a different job. I’ve applied to a museum job on a whim the other day and they want to interview me. The more i think of it the more i like the idea of doing something practical that isn’t such a terrible 80 hour/week slog all the fucking time. I’m so tired and nothing is ever good enough. On the other hand it’s a secure job with benefits and they allow me to do my “research” at night times and weekends .... I’m so confused.

I think the middle of an extremely stressful pandemic is not the time to get down on yourself for bad student evaluations, and not a great time to make snap major life decisions. I would take a long vacation over winter break and then do next semester and see how you feel next summer.

Anyone feel like they are left out of research work because you are not in the clique? I work in an academic research institute where everyone has some type of STEM PhD. I am typically the "get shit done person" (engineering), but left out of the initial decision making process when grants are written because Im not mathy / physicsy enough. Normally not a concern for me, but projects end up being a cluster because the grants are based in theory and implementation is somewhat of an after thought. Additionally, coworkers speak a lot of jargin and/or highly specific language which I am not versed in and eyes get rolled whenever I try to offer constructive criticism. Best analogy I can give is a restaurant owner giving a chef a bunch of tv dinners and telling him to make Michelin star quality food. Just venting I suppose...Anyone else have similar experiences?

I'm a chemist working with biologists. So I kinda know how you feel. My advice is to learn their jargon. After all, you are in research. In research, because it's on the cutting edge, it would be a disservice to yourself if you kept yourself to a "bottle engineer." You are a scientist. Period. To be relevant, you need to understand their theories and provide them with that link if they can't provide it to you. Build the bridge. Explain to them the limitations of certain theories in applied science. Then brainstorm. :) You can do it. And believe me, when you show you are useful to them, you'll be flooded with meetings of people wanting to hear your opinion on things.

PhD students, how much of your time is spent on administrative tasks? It's mentally exhausting. I keep track of my time, and I can see that over the past year and a half, 26% of my time was spent between meetings, preparing for meetings, filling out university and committee forms, and reading and writing emails. Is this normal? This is not including the time I spend preparing for classes and teaching either, so there are some weeks where I feel like I haven't actually worked on anything. That's not to say that meetings are not productive - they're often necessary. I've just realized how long it takes to prepare for them, and of course that's something I need to work on. I'm just curious if people have more or less administrative stuff to do and whether it also feels like an added mental drain or whether it feels like something that is more integrated with your research as a whole.

Maybe this is just me, but I would not consider preparing for meetings and email correspondence with advisors to be administrative. Preparing for meetings allows you to think about all your updates and distill them, communicate them clearly, and solicit feedback. Advisors, committee members, and even collaborators are busy people; if you do not invest sufficient time in communicating well with them, you fail to use them properly. This is a very valuable skill, learned over time. The rest of the stuff you describe (barring teaching) generally does not occupy much of my time, maybe 5% at most? It's true that when we teach, it can feel unproductive, but I encourage you to consider a different perspective: when I do research, I'm often stuck, and real progress comes sporadically, so teaching can actually make me feel productive—I've actually helped someone learn!

My PI is asking me to falsify data. What is my recourse? I am a postdoc at an Italian research university. In a meeting yesterday, my PI and a senior professor instructed me to rush necessary foundational research and greatly overstate the reliability of certain data in order to produce results that would generate a great deal of press. This is data falsification. I will not be a part of it, but I have never dealt with a similar situation. What next?

Before you report anything, I would advise that you very carefully think through what exactly was said and asked of you. If you were specifically and explicitly asked to falsify anything, then yes, immediately report it and forward any and all information to the appropriate people. But... most PIs are smarter than this, and to be fair, a lot of papers and grant applications sadly attempt to work in a gray zone that blurs the line between rigorous science and salesmanship. For the sake of academic survival, many researchers try to forge a very positive and optimistic interpretation of what they have or plan to achieve. No one will fund you if you fairly disclose that your methods and data are questionable... but this doesn't excuse overselling "bad" science. It's also important to consider whether the second person in that meeting will side with the PI and claim that you grossly misunderstood the conversation. So I strongly suggest that you follow up with an email or documented conversation that can be read by a third party and objectively conclude that they were asking you to do something clearly unethical. And beware: Universities from any country will always act on blatant law-breaking... but when it comes to the gray zone of ethics, they will most often give the PI the benefit of the doubt. As leaders in their own field and research niche, administrators often consider the "expert" in deciding what is okay and what is not to be the PI. Unless there is documented evidence, paper trails, or direct proof, I would expect the university to chalk your situation up to a simple miscommunication. I encourage you to do the right thing, but also to tread carefully. Consider another serious conversation with the PI and ask for clarification. Make your concerns clear and then decide what to do based on their response. A premature jump to reporting them can do more harm to you than to them, and it could get you "blacklisted" in terms of your professional career if this person is truly unethical but able to escape justice. Good luck, OP!

How do you cope that you won't deliver a good thesis due to the pandemic? I will finish my PhD next year, but this week I entered the existencial crisis of a PhD: my thesis will not be good. I receive a scholarship from my government to develop my project, which I received after proposing three main objectives, two of them a bit risky but were mangeable - before covid hit. Since the pandemic began, everything I do came to a complete standstill, as I have to work on the laboratory, which was closed for almost a full year. I have a salary until July of next year, but I don't know what I will do until then or even after. My country (brazil) is in the middile of a 3rd wave, with a 4th wave incoming. My state's healthcare system has already collapsed. Me and the other laboratory members have, since past month, made an agenda where we have no more than 2 people at the same time (so everyone has exactly one day in the week to do their work), but we all know that if we were to catch covid, it's stay at home and hope you don't die, because there is no more oxygen, hospital beds, the medicines used are slowly ending as well, and no vaccination in sight for us (in the brightest scenario, late november to mid december) My first objective has been completely cancelled, impossible to do until late 2022, because the facility has closed. The second one involves an experimental technique that we still haven't been able to finish developing (people involved have left the city/state due to covid, facilities are still not open, purchase of new chemical reagents has been slow because everything is out of stock). The third objective requires me travelling to another side of the country (about 10h by bus) and spend some weeks working in another laboratory, something that not only is not recommended to due in the midst of our health crisis, but also I do not feel comfortable in doing as my immune system sucks and I'm very prone to getting sick, which is why I have been in quarantine for as much as I can, only leaving home for the essentials (and more recently to work). So there we have it. I don't have anything to continue with my original plans and objectives, I don't know if I have a story to tell with all the incomplete and broken data that I have, and I'm scared shitless of having to do a complete 180º on my project which, if it's not accepted by my funding agency, they have the right to cancel my scholarship and demand that I pay them back everything that they have given me, which I mostly ceratinly cannot do. Besides changing everything when I have about 14 to 15 months left on my PhD (after this time I will be without a scholarship, and I cannot survive here without it due to money reasons), the only alternative I see is to lengthen this PhD until god knows when, when I'm finally able to complete all three objectives. I am absolutely lost, and later today I also have a meeting with my advisor because he wants to talk about my project...

My PhD advisor always said, "It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be done." Even in a normal year, theses and dissertations are terrible writing. They're a bizarre genre that doesn't easily map to anything else, really. So yes, the pandemic has likely made this worse, but it is also increasing your anxiety about the quality of a document that is usually not someone's "best" work anyway. I remember writing mine and thinking to myself, "I've never written anything important before." What I didn't understand then is that while it was important in the completion of my degree, in the long run that document would not be important at all. If I were to publish any of it then, it would need to be majorly revised to fit a journal. I had to do extra research. I had to refocus everything. And THEN it was something worth being proud of. I'm 10 years out of finishing, and I STILL panic when I hear somebody is reading my dissertation. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO DO THAT????

New search engine that find answers in academic papers Check out our new AI-powered search engine that lets you ask questions and instantly be returned answers from hundreds of millions of academic papers. Join the free beta here: Sign-up Given this a thread for asking academics questions, I hope you all might find this interesting! Here's an example query: Does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Disclosure: I work for the company

Hey, thanks for sharing with the community. I tried it out a bit, and I'm a bit disappointed with the results. It seems to be able to pick up on general themes in my questions but doesn't offer specific answers. Sometimes it merely quotes authors stating that the topic of the question is important. Other times, alarmingly, it quotes the author as saying the exact opposite of their conclusion because it has taken a phrase from the introduction or conclusion sections completely out of context. YIKES! I am concerned that you do not have any warnings or clear instructions on how to interpret what the search engine returns. If your target audience is laypeople, you are setting up a dangerous situation without proper guardrails.

Visiting Scientist making up data (looking for advice) Throwaway account because some people at my school know my other one. I'm a PhD student in chemistry in my 3rd year at a large public flagship university in the USA, collecting data for later processing for a paper to be published (much) later. Some wild stuff has happened, and I'm looking for some advice on what you think I should do about this. Long story for all the context with a TL/DR at the end. Thanks! Yesterday while checking over the instruments I noticed a loose bit of tubing, and after double checking the manual for the instrument I was sure that without this tube connected, the instrument would not be collecting any data. It would still run like normal, but no sample would be collected. I promptly reconnected this tube and asked my (other PhD student) coworkers about it. They all told me that they had also seen the loose tube and that one of our lab's visiting scientists had set it up and left the tube off, telling them not to mess with the instrument. Now, this particular instrument has been running for the past month. That tube has not been connected the entire time, meaning this instrument has not collected any samples for the past month when there should have been 1-2 per day. This could be an honest mistake by the visiting scientist, but we (the grad students) are not feeling very generous towards them because they have a history of being very rude to us and asking us to do things they just don't want to do. Today, the visiting scientist sent me a figure comparing our data to the data of a nearby environmental sensor, showing that we have good agreement between our measurements. These data have been entirely falsified and I have the evidence. Now that the instrument is properly connected, the data look quite different, and I have eyewitness and some photographic evidence that the tube was never connected, so no sample could have possibly been collected. The data were recorded in a notebook and spreadsheet and look like a random distribution, which is to be expected as it is really a variety of blanks. After asking the visiting scientist for the data to go with the figure, I can see their numbers are, for the most part, totally different from what is in the spreadsheet. This visiting scientist has also hassled one of the other grad students about "doing \[their\] data processing wrong" and then when asked to show how to do it correctly, picked and chose random cells in the spreadsheet to get the values they wanted instead of filling down the rows and using the correct (though blank) measurements. This is obviously a major breach of academic honesty, but there are a few important details that make me uncertain of what to do: * Visiting scientist has their PhD and has published quite a few papers (others with falsified data perhaps?). * Visiting scientist is not from my home institution or my home country and I don't know anything about the system over there. * My PI is extremely nonconfrontational, and I'm afraid they might choose to ignore the problem instead of addressing it since Visiting Scientist will only be with us for another two months or so. * We are in the early stages of this study, nowhere near publishing. This figure was not presented in a manuscript or at a conference or any kind of formal presentation, so I'm not sure how "academic honesty" kicks in yet Thankfully, this data is not a big part of the study, so it's no real loss if we don't include it and scrap that part of the project. That being said, making up data is completely unacceptable. My fellow grad students have already been warned to not take a co-authorship of any paper that Visiting scientist decides to publish later. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Have you ever encountered something like this before? What kind of punishment does this conduct incur? I'm going to tell my PI, of course. TL/DR: Visiting scientist is flagrantly making up data, but I'm afraid my PI will just choose to ignore the problem instead of getting involved.

I agree with everything already said: *Document, document, document.* Immediately go to your PI. Additionally, keep bringing up the discrepancies and co-authorship issues down the line. At least inquire with your Office of Research Integrity. Also, keep a close look on your PI—this is where personal backbone comes in. And if they don't quickly take the measure of the situation (they might! Some people are non-confrontational by inclination, but have good values nonetheless and aren't afraid to take the right action if they have to), then you know that you will *have* to direct your career away from this PI in the long run, independently of how good a scientist they are, etc.

No matter what I do, I keep feeling the pull back to higher ed. I'm 28 and will probably apply for a PhD next year but feel like I'm too old and the market is too volatile. Thoughts? I graduated from university several years ago now. I had intended to apply for a PhD straight out but didn't due to a combination of health issues, feeling insecure about my chosen PhD project, and imposter syndrome. Well, at the end of last year it became clear to me that my mind was never going to stop gravitating back to higher ed. I just fucking loved it. I loved taking classes, I loved going to guest lectures and panels and doc screenings, and I really loved being a research assistant. And, in a weird way, I felt a sense of kinship with my discipline (in the social sciences) and my professors. It's hard to not feel gushy about it all, but I felt it then (even when it wasn't easy) and I feel it now. My intention was to apply this year but all things 2020 really took a toll on me mentally, to the point where it really started to impact my physical health. So, sadly, I am not ready to apply for programs this cycle (and a lot of programs closed their admissions anyway). At this point, the insecurities have started flooding in. Partially because I feel like I'll be starting my PhD very old and that it will make me incredibly unattractive in an already unstable and volatile higher ed market. There is also the good ol' imposter syndrome drilling away at me HARD. I'm honestly just looking for any personal advice/thoughts. No one else in my life has any real grasp on the academic or higher ed space. So I'd just love to talk to someone about this.

I wouldn't say your age is a factor that would impact how you are viewed, but could impact you just due to life stage—do you have or want children? Will you be able to move freely for fieldwork or future employment? Or are you more tied down? Also, consider that you won't be saving money, and it kinda sucks to start retirement savings in your late 30s. The bigger thing is to realize how few people land an academic job. Make sure you are going in informed on how unlikely that is, how much adjuncting can suck, and what other careers you could do with your degree. If all that sounds okay, go for it.

What's on your most recommended reading/activity list for early career academics? Are there any books (or other references) you find yourself reaching for over and over again or recommending to your mentees? Alternatively, is there an activity that you personally find very useful (journal clubs, independent reviews, ect.) for newcomers to your field? I definitely fall into early career myself, but there's a few books I've collected that I can't help but recommend to anyone I think may benefit from them. * "Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded" by Joshua Schimel * "The 2-Hour Job Search: Using Technology to Get the Right Job Faster" by Steve Dalton * "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot * "The Emperor of All Maladies" by Siddhartha Mukherjee (I'm in cancer research) I'm hoping to expand this list, especially as I work with my postdoctoral and graduate student office to establish a lending library of sorts for our institution.

Found a lot of helpful tips in "The Professor Is In" by Karen Kelsky related to looking for academic positions. Also, thanks so much for initiating this topic! Always looking for more academia/writing/reading/communicating science books.

How do you deal with burnout as a researcher? I am a postdoc and confronting a serious burnout situation. I cannot focus and become very depressed so frequently. I feel I am not so great researcher, colleagues do not respect me as a researcher, and I do not see hopeful future. The actual situation might not be actually that bad, but I am thinking that way very often probably by the burnout. I think I am worrying too much about bad things that are not happen yet. When I do a Zoom meeting, my energy goes down real quick so that after the meeting, I cannot do anything for the rest of the day. I tried multiple things to fix this situation, like working out regularly, waking up earlier in the morning, going to bed early, meeting some friends in person, purchasing things that I always wanted, etc. But these did not work. Do you have any practical recommendations? Would be good to hear from people who went through this.

1) Get help: therapy sessions. 2) Take a break. A long break. Like a month. Go hiking, do some manual labor, go surfing, or rent a shed in the mountains and learn snowboarding. Anything that prevents you from thinking about science. Talk to your boss about it. If they're a human being, they'll understand.

What are your best academic writing tips? I'm a first year UK PhD student in meteorology. Currently, I'm trying to write my first formal progress report which (if you don't know) is just a summary of my project, my progress up to yet, my methods and my future plans. I'm having a bit of writer's block - maybe it's the impostor syndrome but I feel less able to write a good piece of work. I'm doubting everything I write and struggling to come up with a good way to start and finish my writing. **So what are your best academic writing tips?** One thing I picked up from a Nature workshop is to make your reader understand why something is important, rather than saying "this is important because..." For example: * "Identifying flaws in weather models is important because it enables meteorologists to make direct improvements." vs * "Identifying flaws in weather models equips meteorologists with the knowledge to make direct improvements to the forecasts, which could increase the lead time on evacuation decisions."

The main thing I've learned is that trying to sound smart usually backfires. Smart people communicate as simply and efficiently as possible. Sometimes that requires "big words," but usually it doesn't. When someone starts using fancy words in an effort to seem smart, it usually has the opposite effect, and the reader will have the feeling that the complicated writing is hiding a lack of important information. Overcomplicated scientific writing is a relic of an elitist, bygone era. As a small example, when using a word like "utilize," stop and ask whether "use" would have worked. In most cases, "use" is the better word. When people say they're stuck trying to communicate something in writing, I ask what it is they're trying to say, and they can usually say it to me simply, eloquently, and clearly off the top of their head. Just do that, but in writing. It's that simple.

Humanities PhDs that have left academia, what do you do now? The market has been terrible since I was in undergrad. I am getting towards the end of my PhD and I know that I need plan B's and C's (really these will more than likely be A and B with academia being a Hail Mary). But I am struggling with thinking about alternatives. I have some friends in the private sector that say consulting could be a good fit. Others say to go into teaching, but I'm certain that this requires even more school.

The fact that people have to resort to Reddit to find answers to these questions tells you everything you need to know about how much academic departments care about what happens to their PhD graduates after they’ve pushed them out the door.

How do people publish 200+ papers? On google scholar I see that some professors and researchers have hundreds of publications which to me looks like a lot of work and dedication. How is it possible? Do they write about and research multiple topics simultaneously? Is it easier because they are experts and familiar with the relevant literature in their field?

Apart from the reasons already mentioned, one important factor is time. If you've been in academia for 20 years, you only have to publish 10 papers a year to reach 200.

How can I stay professional and calm while meeting with my toxic Ph.D. supervisor after I've graduated? I am a Postdoc now, and I graduated back in 2019. My Ph.D. lab environment was toxic ( sabotaging experiments, favoritism, disputes about authorship, reagent hoarding, etc..), and my PI was extremely narcissistic and manipulative. I somehow fought my way through the years, got my degree, and shifted to the US for a postdoc. I even avoided getting a Postdoc in a lab that my PI recommended because he knew the professor personally, and I did not want to be under his umbrella anymore. I still kept an amicable relationship with him, but I am in touch with very few of my previous colleagues and avoid the rest, as I had a rather unpleasant experience with them. Recently, he personally invited me to join a get-together of his lab, which will consist of past lab members, but I really want to avoid it. My wife (who was in academia too) says not attending might come across as unprofessional and can have repercussions later (if we decide to move back) since he (the PI) is well connected and influential in the academic circles in my home country. Any suggestions?

It sounds like you would need to travel to attend. So I would just tell PI I cannot travel at that time, but I appreciate the invitation and wish I could come as he's a big part of how I got to this point in my career and wish him the best. Something that's a no, but still makes a narcissist feel good, so next time I ask for a favor he has positive feelings.

How important was being around campus as a PhD student? Obviously the last year has been weird for graduate students. Despite the darkness I’ve had the good fortune to receive funding that has liberated me from the need to TA for the remainder of my degree. But it’s opened up some new questions. I’m in the social sciences, so I don’t have any physical lab equipment I need access to. I’m done classes as well, so I’m seriously considering whether to just go somewhere sunny to crank out the writing and analysis for the next few years. It seems pretty common for people to leave for relationship based reasons and finish remotely. Then again, there’s a community of scholars I would like to engage with at my university, but I also find that faculty are not that interested in building relationships with grad students if they’re not on your committee or you’re not doing research for them. I’m wondering, especially among people with social science backgrounds, how critical was sustained campus engagement for you? Is networking better done on campus than at conferences? Is sticking around with your cohort important for your professional development? Many thanks!

I have a PhD in psychology (social/personality) and I found that people tended to take notice of who was on campus and who was not. I was able to get involved in a few projects largely because I was around. Then, as people learned I was reliable, I was able to get involved in a lot more collaborations. Some people couldn’t care less if students are around or not, but for those that do care, showing up can do a lot for their perception of you. As much as networking at conferences was invaluable, I think the networking within my department gave me a good jumping-off point for when I networked elsewhere. Academic communities are small, and people talk to each other more than you might think. Sometimes impressing a professor in an adjacent field can mean that people at conferences have already heard good things about you. I also found that being around was helpful whenever I needed another perspective or some help on my work. Sometimes I would explain my reasoning to other graduate students just to have them poke holes in it. Overall, I think those perspectives made my thesis stronger and helped prepare me for my defense.

Enjoyable PhD/academia success stories I hear so many graduate school horror stories and I feel like those are the majority. Are there people who enjoyed their PhD experience? Had a good work life balance ? Did not overwork themselves to exhaustion? Took most weekends off ? Had good, supportive PIs ? I started a PhD in 2014 but quit after 2 years and left with my masters because of mental health problems. I’ve been working in industry/ government since then, and I love it but I realized that my true passion is research and I am happiest doing experiments, and want to get back to grad school and apply to PhD programs. I sorely miss being in the lab doing experiments. I’ll be quite a bit older (30-31 when I start) but I’m not too concerned about that, in fact I think my experiences and perspective will help. My scientific skills are better than they were too so I feel ready. However, I’m concerned about the transition to life back in academia, in terms of the lifestyle. Also long term, I’m more inclined to an academic career although most don’t recommend it - I have an open mind for sure but I’ve realised in the 4 years of working in industry that it’s not my thing. I’m in USA and my field is biophysics/biochemistry. Many of my friends in Europe enjoyed their PhD experience but I know it’s different in USA. I’d love to hear about some good experiences! TLDR: looking to go back to get my PhD after 4 years in industry, want to hear about positive PhD experiences.

90% of the time I worked from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. I graduated on time despite taking leave to have a baby and am about to be TT faculty at a university you have certainly heard of. Most of graduate school was good. The hard times were really hard, though.

Update: "A PhD program posted the wrong deadline on their website. They won't consider my application after I missed the true deadline. Do I have options?" \*\*Update to previous post regarding a program that had posted the wrong PhD application deadline: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/a7d269/a\_phd\_program\_posted\_the\_wrong\_deadline\_on\_their/ After hearing from you all and talking with a mentor, I ended up sending my application materials to the two faculty members I was applying to work with, explaining my situation, and asking for their help. It appeared to work at first--a professor responded sympathetically and said he would do what he could, as I must not have been the only applicant to miss the deadline. The head of the graduate college (who had been ignoring all emails until this point) then got in touch with me to apologize for being out of the country and that he would make a decision after the holidays. So, I was hopeful someone was working on my behalf behind the scenes. But I got the final word a few days ago: the university says they have to treat the true deadline as final, and won't accept my application. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement, especially since this was my top program and applying to others without being considered at my top choice feels a little empty at this point. But I'm tired of fighting it. Hard not to feel completely turned off by academia after all this, too, so also considering applying to other jobs. Anyway, I wanted to thank everyone for their responses and advice. Here's to new things in the new year...!

This is incredibly frustrating. I'd email the professor you've been in contact with: "Dear Professor XYZ, Thank you for your help with this matter. Unfortunately, ABC from the Graduate College just informed me that my application will not be considered after all. I was very disappointed to hear this as I was hoping to work with you." Let them know that the Graduate College seems to be mishandling the admissions process for their department.

Have your academic pursuits ever cost you relationships? Context: Recently left a 2 year relationship because distance couldn't keep working (I'm studying for a masters and she worked a lot, so were seeing eachother less frequently). The final straw was my accepting a PhD at the end of this course, which she'd supported my intention to do throughout, but the prospect of several more years of long-distance was too much. Have any of you had similar experiences? How did you move past them?

Yes. My 15-month relationship ended a month ago. I just couldn’t do both. I was exhausted. I started neglecting his needs to satisfy my own—things like needing a night to myself after a long week. It just created issues because it started to seem like I was always making excuses not to see him, but I honestly was just so fucking tired from school that I had nothing left in me to make someone else as happy as they deserve.

26% of Cambridge's PhDs are fully self-funded This is from this infographic from the University of Cambridge's 2020/21 funding site. As an overall percentage, I suppose is not unheard of. But what I find astonishing is that on average 43% of the Humanities PhDs are fully self-funded. Unless someone is independently very wealthy, isn't this a big financial risk to take? Not to mention paying to work? Also, the job market for the Humanities can be tricky as it is so there's no guarantee this will pay off. Because, at least in STEM, the person could specialise and switch directly to industry.

I work at a Russell Group university in a humanities department. I have met plenty of self-funded students throughout the years. Most often, they are international students supported by either family money or a private/governmental sponsor from their country of origin. I think it's very hard to keep the motivation going if you are self-funded, if only because the university clearly treats funded students as an elite group that has access to further funding (for conference trips, for instance). So, in my experience, this whole situation creates unhealthy competition—but, hey, this is how the system was designed. I prefer the approach used by other countries, wherein you can only start your PhD if you have at least partial funding.

What is the best scientific article you have ever read purely based on it’s readability, taxonomic levels, structure and overall design? I’m looking for some good inspiration on how to structure my own article.

Miller's 1956 classic on working memory capacity, "The Magic Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," is one of my favorites (although, just a heads-up, our understanding of working memory has advanced a bit since then).

My advisor showed me his LoR and asked me what I thought. He mentioned my poor undergrad grades but "put a positive spin" on them. Should I ask him to remove it? Hello community. Please remove if not appropriate. Thanks. I'm an international MS student looking to apply for PhD programs in the US this round. My advisor called me in and showed me what he wrote for my LoR and asked me if I wanted to change anything (I don't think this is normal or "ethical" but who am I to say no to a kind gesture). I'm not originally from my current major (CS) and I did a double major in undergrad. My grades suffered because of my unfamiliarity and, to be honest, immaturity. My advisor mentioned it in the letter and said something like (from memory): >Although I admittedly had concerns as to whether Joe would be able to keep up with graduate courses and conduct research due to his unconventional background and his undergraduate record, he immediately proved that my concerns were silly as he was able to maintain a near-perfect GPA and was able to successfully participate in research. I'm honestly extremely flattered that my advisor thinks so highly of me (he's not the expressive type), but at the same time am conflicted because I've heard that anything critical or mediocre on a letter is going to be viewed negatively. This has led me to wonder if I should bring it up and suggest that leaving out the part about concerns may be best. I don't really have anyone around me who's experienced higher education (my school doesn't really receive international students/faculty and no one really goes abroad either, I'm also the only one of my friends or family to have went to college) and so I decided I'd try to make a post here. Thanks for any feedback.

Part of the purpose of a LoR is to address things on your CV that an admissions committee might find questionable, such as poor undergraduate performance. It’s good that your advisor brought it up, and — this is key — said how it did not negatively impact your higher-level academic success.

I am struggling with my thesis writing, please suggests sentence starters. I am currently writing my engineering Ph.D. thesis. One of the challenges I am facing is, I ran out of sentence starters. I have used 'In addition', 'Additionally', 'Moreover', 'Furthermore', 'Therefore', 'as is evident above' and 'However' a lot. I mean, really a lot to the point where everything looks cliche and uninteresting or even annoying. So, can you please suggest to me some interesting/unique sentence starters alternative to these words? Thanks.

Stop using those transition words. Leave them out and your writing will improve immensely. It will go from a meandering walk through an overgrown path to a straight shot down a clear highway. Trust me. They are really only useful in a few situations. Most of the time they are rhetorical fluff or signs of a poorly structured argument, making sentences longer while adding nothing. A much better solution is to structure your writing more. If you have three points, say so, and then use words like "First...", "Second...", etc. That gives your readers waypoints so they know where they are in your argument and makes your writing much clearer and easier to follow.

Does online teaching make you tired? I am a first time professor and while I taught a couple of classes in person before the pandemic, this is my first time teaching this many hours. I found that attending conferences online is much more energy draining if compared to attending them in person. I started teaching after earning my PhD in 2020, so you can imagine that I've only experienced online professoring for the time being. What I realized is that teaching for hours online is incredibly exhausting. Given what I experienced with conferences, I can imagine that if the similarity holds, teaching in person should be somewhat less exhausting. Is this true? Do you think that online teaching is more exhausting than in person teaching?

I teach online, primarily asynchronously. In an average year, I don’t find it more tiring. However, the pandemic has made everything tiring. If you are teaching live on Zoom, I can imagine it’s exhausting. After a day on Zoom, I am physically and mentally drained. I’m tired of looking at myself; I’m tired of not being able to read cues. It’s tiring. I do find in-person teaching to be both exhilarating (while it’s happening) and exhausting (after), but I am an introvert.

Academic Appeal - PhD removed without fair cause Hi all! Further to my post from a few weeks ago when I was initially removed from my PhD project. All your comments and advice were really helpful! On 19/06 I was informed by my assessor and supervisor that they could not condone my transfer into 2nd year due to "poor writing" of my continuation report. No actual instances of poor writing were highlighted, my supervisor had actually read the report and said it was fine to submit, and no concerns of writing ability were raised at any point prior. Additionally, a colleague and I had compared our reports and feedback comments. I was negatively marked/criticized for points he was praised for. We both used the same journals/figures as our introductions covered similar areas albeit different organs as endpoints. He was positively marked for good use of figures whereas I was told “Figures are of poor quality”. I was negatively marked for not using a GANTT chart in my planning, where it is not a formal requirement and he didn’t use one either and it was never raised. “The future plans seem a bit general” We were told to keep future planning broad as this is not a “final paper”, arguably I had shown potential and well thought out avenues for future works and exploration for the study though kept in mind the ability to expand or adapt depending on future results. I was negatively marked for this whereas he was not. On 20/07 a progress committee meeting was held with myself, my supervisor, and the PGR assessors to discuss outcomes. I highlighted that at no point in the year had any concerns been raised. I have always performed well and have been well praised by my supervisor. My supervisor had read the report and not mentioned any issues that would significantly hinder my progression so to remove me based on "poor writing" when 1) no evidence has been provided and 2) as if writing skills cannot be taught/improved over the course of my PhD education is a very drastic and final approach. It was also at this time I was prevented from speaking about the bullying/harassment I have faced in my lab and told that this was only a discussion on the academic side of things. In this meeting, I mentioned that in light of the COVID lockdown/closure of the university. I had to carry out my assessment from home, no support or guidance was offered by my supervisor aside from a link to a ‘phrasebook’. I addressed all the points and adjustment which were highlighted in the initial assessor's feedback and had weekly meetings with my supervisor/team, though no support was given/offered. In this meeting, it was also admitted by my supervisor that he did not offer/implement any support. Though he tried to cover his own back by saying he had “reservations since early in the year” (though this was never highlighted, discussed or anything spoken about as a point to improve) and that I “was an average student and not forward-thinking” which I have evidence to the contrary that I have performed well and produced a number of plans/presentations and avenues of exploration for future work. I also achieved all the milestones set for the first year, the work was otherwise well praised and had also carried out extra work to help on other projects. Following this, on the 22/07 I received an email that it was decided that the decision to not support transfer into the 2nd year could not be overturned and it was a unanimous decision by the panel that the written work would not be sufficient for an MPhil re-write as I “demonstrate at the Progress Committee Meeting a full understanding of the extent of your writing difficulties and the requirement to improve your written communication to an extent where writing for a research degree would be possible”. Concerningly overlooking the aforementioned points of lack of support, communication, and consideration to the COVID lockdown. So I have worked for two years in this lab only to be removed with no fair cause and no further qualification/career development. As I am in the process of launching an appeal. I had requested a copy of the meeting minutes to compare with my own. Strangely all mention of my supervisor not supervising was omitted. It downplayed any of the supervision shortcomings and painted me to be a lost cause/bad student – saying that I did not provide drafts (I sent my supervisory team drafts 3 weeks before submission and also sections with their comments/adjustments) and I have the email logs to prove it. Saying that I had not taken any initiative to seek support – 1) no issues have ever been raised prior relating to my writing, 2) I had elected to attend a number of development and training workshops on my own accord 3) In light of the COVID lockdown, any access to support and guidance was severely limited/if any provided at all. I mentioned in my earlier post that the lab that I worked in was notorious for politics, nepotism, and bullying. The student who had the project before me was bullied into leaving after a few months. It has become clear this is a reoccurring issue involving the behavior of particular senior members of staff which I and others had tried to raise. In my own experience, I had found myself subject to unwelcome comments regarding my appearance and stature made by a senior member of staff. Rumors were being spread about my apparent use of enhancing drugs (I don’t use) and that I was “all brawn, no brains”, comments to that effect. Furthermore, on a number of occasions, I had also experienced uncomfortable and unwelcome physical advances by a member of senior staff who would grope my chest and arms. I made it clear to this individual that I was uncomfortable with this behavior and in a professional manner would not like to be viewed as such. Unfortunately, this unwelcome physical behavior continued. In addition to remarks being made that I do not partake in social drinking (due to my religious beliefs) or the eating of shared food items (pork, meat, bacon). I had highlighted this to my supervisor. Particularly the physical harassment and groping who told me he was aware of this individual, politics such as this has a history and that his advice was to “keep your head down, let it happen and you can get your PhD at the end”. Members of the lab were frequently told to not socialize with me, not talk to me, “I don’t want to see you with him” which cultivated an environment of isolation. Finally, I raised this to the Head of Department via email, because it was taking a toll on my wellbeing and the enjoyment of my work being in such a negative and isolating work environment. This culminated in an interaction a few days after sending the email, where the senior individual in question lured me to a private corner of the workspace for “a quick chat” and attempted to intimidate me saying I should stop talking to members of the office (my friend/colleagues) and that I should stop talking about the issues and that I wouldn’t be remaining for much longer and that things could be made difficult for me. It is impossible to say whether these instances of bullying and harassment may have tainted my character in the eyes of senior staff for whistleblowing and potentially influenced the channels involved in my academic progression. As I had made it clear that I was not going to be subject to intimidation. It is arguable and perhaps logical that I was removed as a means to silence these issues. As I have highlighted before, written communication is an extremely atypical reason for such a drastic and final solution. Particularly when I have demonstrated promise in all other aspects of my performance. I would appreciate any advice/avenues to explore. I am currently launching an academic appeal so I can get a proper grading or an MPhil to at least show for my years of work. In addition to contacting the OIA, Research Excellence Framework, and potentially the local press / the Independent and the Guardian do articles based on student submissions and academic experiences to name and shame these members and faculty.

I am very impressed by your willingness to continue to fight. It takes courage and perseverance to hold a mirror up to broken systems. Hurrah for those like you willing to make those sacrifices!

How do institutions handle cognitive decline in faculty? To elaborate on the question, I'm wondering what measures are (or historically have been) used to address situations where an individual has lost their ability to do intellectual work (research, teaching, admin, etc). For example, someone becoming senile, or suffering a mental breakdown which they never fully recover from, putting them in a state where they can no longer work at the level they were qualified for, and are possibly incapable of self regulating/assessing. I'm also curious about the effectiveness of different measures (pros, cons, personal experience). For background, I am a graduate student in STEM who has some professional experience working for the university. My university has a system where professors will review one another, which includes auditing lectures, and provide a report to the university. I have been told that they usually write two versions, one for the university, and an off-the-books version for the person being reviewed. They usually reserve their criticism for the latter report, I believe to limit the influence of an overly financially-motivated administration. We also have some faculty who seem to be in the state I described, which has me wondering why situations like this occur, and how they can be prevented.

When I was in undergrad, I had a year-long course that was team-taught, but one of the professors had a stroke the summer before. He was at retirement age but a brilliant man with many teaching awards, so their solution was to switch around the order everything was taught in with the hope he would recover enough to teach in the winter, instead of teaching in the fall like usual. In theory, this was fine because the order of the material didn't matter. But it was already renowned as one of the more difficult classes you could take, and he didn't end up teaching well at all. Sometimes he told us the wrong stuff; sometimes he just forgot what he was going to say entirely and just sadly stood there awkwardly smiling and apologizing. The entire class did very poorly on that exam, and most of them were pre-med and extremely bitter about their GPA going down. He was basically forced into retirement after that. I feel like, on the whole, it was handled poorly for everyone involved. Maybe if he had more time to recover, he could have kept teaching? Maybe he only should have done some lectures? I had another class, a core class, taught by someone in his late seventies who had taught it since the 1980s. He unexpectedly died the following year, and they were left scrambling.

How does academic networking work? How did you learn this? Academia appealed to me because I thought it was based on objective merit - good research gets published; worthy applications get grants; expertise means you will be asked to contribute book chapters and present at conferences; all that produces a strong CV which leads to a TT job. Where does the benefit of networking come in? I’ve read that professional networks provide ‘support’ and ‘opportunities’. Could you give some concrete examples of this? Most descriptions I’ve encountered sound like favouritism but said in a way which tries to downplay that. It seems to be some kind of mutual support but I don't get what resources are being provided without it being an unfair system. I defended a PhD without knowing I was supposed to cultivate a network. I received messaging that academia was (1) competitive (so why would people be interested in helping each other?) and (2) academics ought to be independent researchers who didn’t need hand-holding (so why ask for help or direction?). Also, how did you learn about academic networking? Did you have to be taught? By who? How explicit was it that you were being shown how to network?

My PhD advisor, before she passed, made me promise that I would attend the national professional conference in my major research area. I'm pretty introverted, and the idea of attending a conference was very unappealing, but I had promised her, so I went. I ended up interviewing for my first academic position at that conference that year and got the job. I made sure to attend sessions I found interesting, not just in my research area, and I also attended the business meetings for those groups. Through attending the business meetings, I was able to get minor (then later major) service opportunities I needed for my position. When the time came to go up for promotion, individuals I had served with on those committees made up the majority of my external reviewers. I never had to struggle to find external reviewers who knew me. I never "networked" purposely, and I'm horrible at small talk, but showing up and volunteering at conferences has made all the difference in my career (and personal life, as I met my husband at my first academic job).

What did you do during graduate school to fully take advantage of your time there? Hi everyone! I'm a STEM master's student in Canada and about a year into my degree. I couldn't really find a good discussion on the topic, so, like the title says, I'm curious to know about what you did during grad school that you felt help you stand out? Did you join a graduate council or a field-related organization? Did you teach yourself skills that aren't necessarily related to your work? Did you start an initiative of some sort? Apply for awards? I feel like I could be doing more, but with COVID, and working entirely remotely, it's hard to get new perspectives and ideas. Thanks!

I climbed a lot, traveled internationally quite a bit, fell in love, got married, and had a kid. Don't underestimate the importance of actually having a life during this time. I also published in *Nature* as a first author, which was cool, but honestly, it isn't even in my top 10 experiences during my PhD.

What are your views on reducing core curriculum requirements and eliminating required courses? I was speaking to a friend who works at the University of Alabama, and he told me about proposed changes to their core curriculum. You can read about them here Notable changes I found intriguing were: * Humanities, literature, and fine arts are reduced from 12 to 9 hours. Literature is no longer required as the other options can fully satisfy the requirement. * Writing courses (comp) are reduced from 6 to 3 hours meaning only one writing-focused course is required. * History and social/behavioral courses are reduced from 12 to 9 hours. The social/behavioral courses can fully satisfy the requirement, so no history course is required. * Overall reduction of core requirements from 53-55 hours to 37-38 hours. More hours will be added to major requirements. My friend said he and a lot of his colleagues are up in arms about it. He also mentioned that statistics will satisfy the core curriculum math requirement. I'm conflicted on my personal feelings on this. I like that students have more choice, but it feels like it's pushing the university experience to be more focused on "job training" rather than a liberal education. I'm an idealist though.

Colleges in the US have had to step in to give students general skills that other countries provide in secondary school. With no national secondary curriculum and wildly different standards, even within state boards of education, I can't help but feel like changes like this are going to create a further divide between students who have had the benefit of a high-quality secondary education and those who didn't. It's something we already see in my college's first-year classes, where about half of the students can't properly understand or respond to an argument being made, and the other half feel (correctly) that they are wasting their time.

How do some professors (in the US) earn half a million dollars? So information about compensation is public information. E.g., Purdue Salary Compensation I browsed through various departments (STEM specifically) and found that some professors absolutely make a killing. Is the grant funding included? If not, then how do they get so much money?

Soft money positions can make a lot more. I know some soft money professors at UCLA make $500k+ because they pull in so many grants. Also, industries that pay a lot (e.g., economics, medicine) have some departments that pay their top-tier professors a lot because they want those professors, who could get a lot of money working in industry. Competing offers are always the best way to raise salary.

How to defend graduate teaching assistants After months of advocating to university leadership to include graduate teaching assistants in on decisions about whether we hold our classes face-to-face or online (rejected - we are teaching in person while faculty teach online) and pleading for some guidance from HR about documentation of our employee rights (ignored), I learned yesterday - five days before classes start - that myself and my graduate teaching assistant colleagues will have no long term leave if our lives are interrupted by the pandemic. If we are ill beyond 14 days, our contracts will be terminated. We had no choice but to teach face-to-face. We do not qualify for FMLA. We have no health insurance through the university. And now, if we fall ill in a scenario the university constructed, we will lose our jobs. We are not unionized, and our graduate student association was kept in the dark about all of this and told we would have the same rights as faculty. I have two questions about how I should respond to this situation: Any ideas about how we can productively proceed? All we want at this point is not to get fired if we get sick in the classroom and to be able to use our resources to help the university reopen in a safer way for our entire community. I value my students and I do not want to disrupt their education, but I am tempted to tell them what the university is doing to the GTAs and then ask that they not come to my class in person unless they absolutely need my help in that format, because it is not a safe space for us. Then, I would host my class online, from the classroom. Would that be unfair to my undergraduate students?

We had no choice but to teach face-to-face. We do not qualify for FMLA, have no health insurance through the university, and now, if we fall ill in a scenario the university constructed, we will lose our jobs. Talking to a lawyer about a class-action OSHA suit could be done; several professors at my university are taking that approach. If you have a GA/TA/RA union, talk to them about it and potential collective bargaining.

Is there any other industry which requires so much training for so little reward and so little job security? I suppose that many of you will also be in the similar situation to the one I find myself in, starting to see the finish line on my PhD but begrudgingly coming to the conclusion that a career in academia is now so unappealing that I'll need to come up with some other career path. I'm not driven by money so it's not a problem to me if I never earn more than what an average lecturer makes, but all the same it's still pretty low given that it: (a) to get these positions typically requires ~6-10 years of studying, multiple degrees, significant research experience, and a track record of publications; and (b) student numbers, student fees, and university profits all seem to be rising (at least where I am, in the UK. What's even worse is that postdoctoral and junior lecturer positions - if you're able to fight off all the competition to get one - are even more poorly paid and insecure. From the conversations I've had with people in those roles, there seems to be very high workload, and a lot of the key aspects of being an academic (e.g. writing papers, acting as a reviewer) have to be done in spare time. So is there any other industry which requires so much training for so little reward and so little job security? For those who are a little longer in the tooth and know these sorts of things, has it always been like this or did the nature of the industry change more recently?

Ever thought about dance? You start training when you're 4. This continues up to age 19 or 22. Then you start a series of temporary jobs that pay peanuts. Each might last a few months if you're lucky, or maybe just a week if ticket sales are poor. Then it's back to job interviews (they're called "auditions"). You can get tossed out on someone's whim for just about any reason. Any injury can mean weeks or months without pay. And your career is over by the time you're 30. And -- particularly if you're a woman -- the field is ridiculously oversaturated with top-notch talent. Those 15 to 18 years of training more than likely end with no jobs at all. Of course, there is teaching. You can even combine academia and dance, and become a professor of dance. Now, guess what the lowest-paid academic field is.

They stole the project I had been working on and never gave me credit! Hi everyone, I have been working as a graduate assistant for almost a year now. One of the projects I have worked on was a survey that I developed with the Principal Investigator. This spring semester the PI decided to leave academia so he is in the process of transitioning out. The dean contacts the PI on an email to give permission rights to the other person who is taking over his job. Today, my responsibility was to transfer the project to the said person. Today when I logged in to my account I have no more access to the project. It seems that they just took the project away. Does anyone have an idea how to proceed with this ? I am so bummed out because I worked really hard in this project to be taken away like that! Thank you for your responses!

Talk to the new PI. A change of guard will sometimes cause administrative snafus. If the new PI is not being cooperative, talk to the Dean. Take it a step higher in the chain of command until you exhaust all options or get the answers you are looking for.

I hear lots of talk about Imposter Syndrome, but have you ever dealt with an actual imposter? I mean impostor in the sense that they say they have credential X, but it turns out that it is astronomically unlikely that they actually do. Concrete example: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2007/4/26/mit-admissions-dean-resigns-after-fake/ I'm asking because I think I've run into such a person. I have no intention do anything about it because, I'm not 100% sure, I feel like it is none of my business and I have too many deadlines and unanswered emails to voluntarily get involved in anything. Is this a once in a decade event or does this type of thing happen all the time?

I'm currently supervising a third-year PhD student who is, in my opinion, way too underqualified to complete the degree. Which means she must have been pulling the same tricks for a while now. She is extremely comfortable presenting herself and her work, even though she can't answer most direct questions, even about the most basic stuff. She never once asked for help or guidance, despite being repeatedly told not to make any decisions without consulting the supervisors. She basically memorizes whatever information is thrown at her and repeats it to the best of her ability. I've personally told her that her work is at the level of a high school student before a project meeting, and she went on presenting her slides as if nothing ever happened. She's confident beyond reason. It's simultaneously disheartening and impressive. So, yeah. And she's not the first I've seen like this either.

Is it normal to get angry at a student for ignoring advice and wasting their own time (teaching undergrads)? I am normally a calmn person but I am finding myself angry at a student for a nonsensical reason. I am teaching a CS course. In this course we provided undergrads with a template in Javascript so that they could do a demo. The assignment uses a sophisticated data structure that is common in geometry processing that we provided students so that they can do their assignment. Using the DS is not complicated but it takes a lot of effort and care to make it work properly which is why we give it to them instead of asking them to code it. One student came during office hours to ask for help, and I am more than happy to help them out. I went over multiple examples on paper on how the algorithm they need to implement works. I suggested multiple different possible implementations to see if one would click. I asked the student to walk me over a few steps of what they should do, to try to gauge what they were confused about. This student is a PhD candidate taking an upper year undergrad course as part of their degree, take this into consideration for what I am about to describe, this is not a first year undergrad but someone who already graduated and is at the PhD level (albeit in a different discipline to mine). After an hour of trying to help the student understand the assignment they said two things in that conversation that struck a cord in me (politely, the student was never rude in any way). 1) Can I get extra marks for making a writeup of what I understand about the assignment? Which absolutely not, the course is about application and being able to code the algorithm, failing to implement the algorithm (which many other students have implemented) is a failure in the assignment, period, why would you be entitled to marks for a writeup when there is no written component to the assignment? 2) They mentioned that they were struggling for time and they thought they might not finish the assignment (not asking for an extension, they just mentioned it as part of the conversation and did not dwell on it, they did not ask for any additional considerations). And they also said that to "understand the algorithm" they would code the entire thing in python (without a 3D visualizer like the one we gave them for js), without the sophisticated data structure they are supposed to use (i.e. he wants to brute force the solution in python without any acceleration queries). I tried to gently advice them to not waste their time and just sit down and understand the assignment proper. I did not say anything in that hour, but even though it's been hours I am so... angry? Like I want to shout at this student and tell them they are being positively stupid. They want to waste hours of their time replicating 10% of the assignment (the result), when the whole point is for us to test them on their use of the data structure. Understanding the data structure IS the assignment, if you get it you can get the solution in 30 minutes. They are a PhD student in a subdiscipline of CS, I feel they should be embarrassed to be scared of properly learning the course material and finding copouts and crutches to get by instead of properly studying. But I have no stakes on this, if they fail the assignment it's on them, not on me. Why am I so upset at this student self sabotaging by not realising they are using python as an unhealthy coping mechanism to not deal with the anxiety of learning new languages and algorithms? Have others felt this way? Is this normal? Do I need to seek counselling? I have never gotten so angry at someone over something so inconsequential to my own status.

The frustration you are feeling is natural. The course is designed to teach students certain skills, and despite their engagement with you, they seem unwilling to take the time to learn them, opting instead for something easier. By coming to your office hours but ignoring your advice, they wasted not only their time but yours. Watching someone fail because they ignore the help provided is frustrating. Feeling that frustration is normal. As you've said, in the end, if they fail the assignment, it's on them, not you. You've done your part, and they've chosen to ignore you. You have to divorce yourself from their choices. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Sometimes people need to learn the hard way.

Dating/marriage and Tenure Track Academia I am in my final year of my PhD and also in my late 20s. I am currently single but I find it constantly weighing on me that I feel like I should be dating if I don’t want to be single for the rest of my life but also the demands of academia are significant. I currently am fulfilling a senior role in my lab that is much closer to a postdoc than PhD student with regards to research and management responsibilities, that plus teaching activities, and finishing my dissertation leave me very busy and often overwhelmed. Every time I look at getting into a relationship I can’t honestly say I have the time that most people want. I don’t work a 9-5. I work kind of insane hours. Also, I worry that any time I dedicate to a relationship is time I could be spending writing that next article or doing XYZ thing to advance my career. Does it get better? How do you all find/make the time? Do you feel like it takes away from your career? Field: Engineering Title: PhD student Country:US

At some point, you need to define for yourself a work-life balance. There is no time card in academia. You could work 50 hours a day, and there would always be more to do—more to read, more to write, more ways to pad your CV. And no one is going to stop you except you. Do you want to write that next article, or do you want to have that time for yourself, whether it's for a relationship or anything else?

I hate my PhD supervisors. Is it worth even continuing? Their feedback is always too broad for any real application, they're, at best, indifferent about me continuing my studies after severe extenuating circumstances (worsening of my physical and mental health, the passing of my mother after a long battle with cancer, my wife being diagnosed and treated for autoimmune disease, and more) and they go out of their way to passive-aggressively make me feel like I don't work (every conversation with them starts with "as we've already told you" even when they haven't told me, they don't believe in any form or shape of encouragement and have never said a single positive thing about me or my work, they constantly ask if I'm still interested in continuing my PhD even though I've been meeting my deadlines, etc). More than that, they actually recommended that I quit my part time job so I can focus more on my PhD, even though all they ever tell me is that I'm falling behind with no actual advice to fix things. They are purposefully opaque and honestly might as well be magic 8 balls at this point, randomly answering my questions and serious concerns haphazardly. Further, they are charging a premium because I'm an international student, and I am being charged literally the highest possible cost for my PhD (the bench fees are absolutely ridiculous for a non-lab based PhD). I have a professional doctorate degree and a masters degree already, and received them both with honors. I've never had any problems with anything coursework related before this horrible, horrible experience. I'm at the end of my first year, and may or may not pass my first year. But I'm wondering: if I even do pass, should I even continue? Best case scenario is 3 more years of suffering, then a PhD so I can get a teaching job that pays less than my current consulting job but that I'm passionate about. Worst case scenario is I fail the final viva and lose some very serious time and money. Anyway, rant and questions over. Thanks for reading, appreciate any thoughts.

I recently left my PhD program with an MS degree. I had a similar situation—an international student, problems with a supervisor, etc. It was the best decision ever. If things don't work for you, you should really consider leaving—it is never worth it! Your mental and physical health are the most important things here. Don't torture yourself. Would you stay in a toxic relationship for 3-4 years like that?

Does anyone else have anxiety attacks when you see a dense textbook chapter or research paper? For example yesterday I had to read and write a summary of two chapters of Janeway's Immunology and I am freaking out and can't force myself to get started. This has sometimes happened in the past, but it got so much worse

Yeah, a friend of mine gave me this excellent advice: your brain is a baby, baby it. That is to say, take it one small step at a time, don't expect perfection, and just put one word in front of the other. As someone very rightly said, revisions take time. Just focus on hitting the word limit. You can fix a summary that's not up to the mark; you can't fix something if there's nothing to fix. Focus on getting *something* on the page that you can fix later. Good luck!

What’s the craziest shit that happened to you in academia? (Horror tales only) Hi Reddit, I'm producing an episode on toxicity in academia for a podcast, and I've been making a compilation of the horror stories people have told me they've been through. There are the "standard" bully supervisor cases but also things like 100-hour working weeks, women feeling they have to give up motherhood to be successful academics, PIs blocking their post-docs from applying for their own grants and really sabotaging their careers, a case of someone stealing a colleague's work and them accusing THEM of plagiarism, people faking their results because they desperately need to publish to secure grants... Please tell me yours. But I thought I would start by sharing mine (sorry it got long): I got admitted into a super prestigious uni for my MPhil, of course I was over the moon. I had been doing research before somewhere else and had such a great time there, I loved being in the lab. Well, things were very different in my new place. You would've thought you were walking into a funeral when you walked through those lab doors. No one talked much, no one laughed, no one seemed happy. As a new student I didn't know where to find anything, and the lab technician had quit before I joined, so I went to ask things to the postdoc who was extremely rude and unpleasant from day 1. Me and the other new students felt awful when we had to ask her anything, but we needed some initial guidance to do our work that we weren't getting at all. Another student told me I shouldn't ask questions, "that's how things were" \[red flag\]. With the supervisor things were fine at the beginning because I just never saw him. I went home for Christmas and when I came back he started weekly meetings saying he was "extremely worried" I took that break. He then kept asking if I was sure I had "what it takes", constantly questioning my potential. I was lucky my experiments were working at the point and I knew I had pretty good results already despite what he said, otherwise I would have probably given up. He a few times suggested I should probably apply to get a less important sort of degree -what people get when they don't have enough for an MPhil-, or look for funds to change it to a PhD. Actually the MPhil student that started the year before was persuaded by him to change to a PhD because he said she wouldn't have enough to get an MPhil within that timeframe, so that poor woman got stuck 3 more years with the bastard. I was NOT going to fall into that trap, but there was just no way we wouldn't get impostor syndrome around that man. He told me because I was an MPhil student I didn't have the "luxury of time" PhD students had, so I should be the first one in the lab and the last one to leave, and that he would work all weekend as well if he were me. I was thinking errr, surely it's proportionate, or does he want me to get a PhD within my fucking 12 months?! Anyway, I ignored his request because I had a life. My mentor who's a super accomplished researcher told me he would only be in lab from 9 to 5 and always got loads done, so I knew it was about the quality of time, not the quantity. There were experiments that did require me to be in lab for 12 hours, and I often had to go in on Sundays to get my samples ready to go on the Monday, but I find extremely important to have quality time out of the department. In fact the other events, talks and seminars I had access to within the uni were super valuable, and the network I built in my college was what kept me sane. Every two to three months we were required to give a presentation in our lab meetings. To add some context, everyone was terrified when it was their turn. There was zero encouragement to the people presenting, no smiles, no nods, no claps at the end of the presentations (I had never seen that before). At my friend's lab her supervisor got champagne so everyone cheered the person who presented at the end! Well, not there. When I presented in the journal club the presentation wasn't what he expected, my nerves were high, I was probably rushing through so I was done within 40 minutes instead of the 60 minutes I was supposed to take. He was SHOUTING at me in the end. I can't remember what he said, I was in shock, but I had the feeling he was expecting me to cry and would go on and on verbally abusing me until he got what he wanted. But I didn't cry, I just stared at him super blasé, because it just felt so surreal what this guy was doing. I did feel embarrassed though cos everyone could probably hear everything outside his office. It was soon my turn to present again, this time my own work. I prepared super well, the presentation was good, some of my colleagues told me afterwards I had done a pretty good job. My supervisor then comes and says I didn't seem very "enthusiastic" about my work, and no positive comments, never. And of course how did he expect anyone to sound enthusiastic in such a toxic environment. The anxiety we all felt before having to give these presentations because we were so scared of his reaction was unbelievable. 100% everyone left that lab mentally scarred. There was a particular experiment that was quite tricky to get to work. I tried and failed several times and this man kept telling me it was such a simple thing, implying I was just super incompetent not to get it to work, so of course I was also feeling super on the edge about this. But I finally managed to make it to work, on and on, I mastered it. Fast-forward I was in a presentation of a PhD student who had just submitted her thesis, so she had been there for 4 years and she mentioned she NEVER got that method to work. So I started noticing it wasn't as straightforward as he implied. Then a couple of other students in my lab also got stuck with the experiment. What the supervisor made me feel awful about for weeks wasn't that easy and no one else there was getting it to work. He hadn't done bench work for 2 decades, these methods were quite new, and he himself never actually got any of it to work, but he was bullying his students over it. A second-year PhD student was the only one trying to speak out about it. She told her advisor about all the bullying -advisors are other professors in the department randomly allocated to each student so they have a person to go to who's not their supervisors-. The advisor went straight to our supervisor and told him everything she had said, so the supervisor only made her life there even more difficult (she eventually quit)!!! By the way, our supervisor was the head of the department, we just didn't know where to go, who to complain to. Every Friday we had our weekly meetings, I was constantly dreading it, Fridays became my nightmare. One of those Fridays the abuse was quite unbelievable again, so the following week I tried to record our meeting but then he just acted normal! It got to a point in August I just couldn't get myself to walk into the lab again, though I had planned to run some final experiments. I just didn't have the strength anymore to see him, so I never went back. I never spoke to him again, I didn't respond to his e-mails. I worked on my dissertation, applied to my degree without his consent, got my viva, I passed. I got my MPhil. It sounds like a happy ending but it wasn't. I don't think the degree was worth it, I would've been better off in a less prestigious institution that didn't have that toxic environment. It took me months, probably over a year to build back my confidence and recover my mental health, and trust me, confidence is just as important as competence. I completely ruled out a PhD, and I would never ask for his reference anyway which I thought was essential for me to get admitted into one. This has completely put me off academia. The supervisor is still there, bullying people. He was supposed to retire the year after I left, but I found out he had recruited new PhD students, so I guess he wasn't planning on retiring at least in the next 4 years. Sometimes I google him hoping to see an obituary. So far, no luck.

My first MSc advisor treated us like human garbage. He would only call one student by his name, instead of using derogatory nicknames (the PhD who supervised me was called a cockroach by this advisor), because this single student came from the same university as my advisor did his undergrad. Oh, he also tried to slap me in the face after I told him I was quitting because I didn't want to work with him (I was funded, so I was ready to return all the money). The first time in the lab, I broke an expensive piece of glassware and cried in desperation because I was scared he was going to find out. Nobody wanted or cared to help me; they just told me to stop being a pussy and get it done. This happened in the span of three months. And this was from a young researcher hired two years before all of this. He was around 33 or 34 if memory serves. At least I had my revenge. I wrote a six-page document detailing everything that happened (including emails, voice recordings, and a video), and I went straight to our dean's office and every social movement I could find (I'm a gay man from a poor area, dark-skinned—do you see where this is going? Yes, exactly that). Every single person in our institute, from undergrad to all the professors, heard about what happened. The next year, he almost did the same thing to another student (coincidentally, another gay guy with dark skin), and I helped him get revenge. That advisor spent three years without a single new grad student, and not a single professor wants to work with him now.

Do You think most of the research doesn’t have and won’t have a real world application? I am working on drug discovery field and most of the research drug screening etc. doesn’t have any continuation. After the paper gets published, people doesn’t care about the found compound.

I feel this all the time with my research. That being said, it will have more effect than you might think. Anyone who’s worth their salt in research—or in your case, anyone who works with this specific drug situation—is going to do a comprehensive literature review at the beginning of a project and will continue to read relevant papers while working on it. If your paper is easily findable after publication, there’s a very strong chance someone will read it. Even if you don’t get immediate citations, people are still reading your paper, and the things they read will influence the general picture of what they work on and how they frame the task in their minds.

Did any Professors go easy on the grades this semester? I am a literature major in my last year at a University in CA. Due to virus, campus closed and everything moved online. I have social anxiety, so I was ecstatic to switch to remote learning. I attended zoom class from the beach, for christ’s sake. This semester, I got the highest grades of my life, period. Straight As, and I am typically a poor student (am also a first generation college student, so not a lot of support or motivation). I worked hard this semester, but I expected maybe a B average. Is there any chance that our professors were encouraged to go easy on the grades this semester (due to covid)?

We weren’t encouraged to “go easy,” but to be accommodating—which means more deadline extensions and that sort of thing. Scores in my classes ended up being pretty typical. Lots of As and Bs, but also some Ds and Fs. I didn’t make it easier; I just took more late assignments and allowed quizzes to be made up late.

It’s criminal what they pay adjuncts I was asked to adjunct teach a course for a university I am staff at. This course would force me to rearrange my entire schedule. They offered me $1600, plus the department head was very condescending. My other adjunct work pays $3500 at another university. Is this normal!? Thankfully I have a clinical license that allows me to have other employment opportunities and the adjunct teaching I’ve done supplements my income and gives me experience on my CV for when I complete my PhD. But it is absolutely criminal what they pay! It comes to roughly 16$/hour that you’re in class, not including the grading and office hours.

Unionize the adjuncts! The union at my school, while I've heard some rumors it's not the strongest you'd like to see, just got a raise to $7,000 per course! Finally, they're getting what they deserve.

I love learning, but hate academia. How do you manage with the love/hate relationship? I feel like many folks might be able to relate. I love learning and being in a setting where people are bright, asking important questions about the world, and creating solutions. I like my research. But I cannot stand the elitist culture of academia. This has become more irritating to me the longer I've spent in higher ed. In particular, as I'm prepping for grad school apps, I keep reading about basically the culture of academia runs off prestige, seniority, not questioning authority, etc. I've also had really smart friends who left academia because of the culture. To be honest, most of my friends in grad school or academia seem stressed and depressed. Lastly, I feel like all of these problems feel more acute to me because I don't fit into the academic majority/mainstream. I am a first-generation, low-income college student and a queer person of color. Despite all of this, I understand that no career is perfect and academia still seems like the best possible fit and has amazing smaller communities of students, professors, and others who really share my values. How do other folks reconcile their love/hate of academia?

You haven't even started grad school yet... don't give up on academia this easily! The level of elitism you encounter will vary widely between institutions and departments. Try to get a sense of that when you visit places! My department has a very low level of elitism and is extremely intellectually fulfilling for me. Also, and maybe this doesn't mean much to you, but we have plenty of minorities similar to you, and nobody cares! Everyone is welcome as long as you are enthusiastically participating in the department (which you probably are, or else you wouldn't be accepted!).

The Good, the Bad, and the Bye Bye: A Professor Shares Why He Left His Tenured Academic Job I found this article interesting and wanted to share it with the community, since it could be relevant to many people here: https://reyammer.io/blog/2020/10/03/the-good-the-bad-and-the-bye-bye-why-i-left-my-tenured-academic-job/

Everyone, please take this under **serious** consideration: his discipline. He is in a very sought-after field of computer science/cybersecurity. He can get multiple job offers almost anywhere in the world. So his ability to say "goodbye" to academia is somewhat also colored by having multiple, very safe alternatives. So his situation does not really apply to all academics in all disciplines.

When was/is it time to cash out? For those of you who left for the industry, how did you know it was time? I’ve been on the market for like 5 years now. A dozen journal articles (about half first/sole authored), 50 or so conference papers, and a few book chapters. I was an instructor for 3 years, so I’ve got a ton of teaching experience. I get a fair number of interviews. I used to get a fair number of visits. I’ve literally never gotten an offer. (I think I’m a decent enough person, but maybe I have horrific flaw nobody’s ever told me about.) This year was more of the same. 6 interviews, no visits, obviously no offers, and the candidates getting the jobs generally have much weaker CVs than mine. I just can’t keep doing this. It’s killing me. So for those of you who got out (assuming you wanted in in the first place), how did you know it was time to give up on this stuff?

Over 100 pubs, a couple books, and a former tenured full professorship. We had not gotten merit-based raises in 8 years; I was advising 3 PhD students with no course release and was graduate director. Those who do [get raises] just keep getting asked to do more. I had gotten a decent (but not great) raise only by getting an outside offer. I love my new position in industry; the irony is I still get to do research and teach.

How to tell my PhD advisor that I don't want to be a professor anymore? In the beginning of my PhD program (Materials Science, R1) I told my PI of my ambition to be a faculty. I'm the first PhD student of my PI, so I know that they put lots of effort and resources for my research training. As a young PI, having a mentee who goes on becoming a faculty seems like a big achievement and a legacy to be proud of for the rest of their career. Now I'm nearing the end of my PhD and, after contemplating, I want to have a comfortable and stable life after PhD. I don't see doing postdoc(s) and looking for non-existent tenure-track faculty jobs as a comfortable/stable life. Although this may not be true if I decide to move elsewhere out of state. With all the sacrifice my PI has given to me (resulting in my super productive outputs, a number of first-authored papers, as well as several fellowships in my belt), how should I respectfully tell my PI that I changed my mind about my future career? What is the best way to explain that I may no longer want to be a professor? I'm not really good at speaking and choosing the right words to say, so your suggestions are highly appreciated.

Dear Professor, I've been thinking about my future, and I'm not as excited about an academic path as I was before. Instead, I want to XYZ. How can I pivot my work to be more competitive in that career trajectory?

Deans, department chairs, and others who have dealt with grievances against faculty: what is the most ridiculous complaint someone has made against a professor in your department? What did you think silently to yourself and how did you actually respond? In asking this, I don't mean to disparage legitimate complaints about biased, abusive, harassment-prone, absent, incompetent, or otherwise unprofessional faculty. But I know a lot of academics have stories about a student with a completely ludicrous complaint or a time when something entirely innocuous got escalated to a higher administrative level. I'm thinking of emails to the department head or Dean that say things like: "I didn't turn anything in all semester for no apparent reason and my professor won't accept an entire semester's worth of late work on the last week of the term!" or "My professor said the word 'shit' in class once and I think she should be fired!" or "My son's professor said he won't tell me my son's grade on the final exam because of some stupid privacy law!" or "My colleague insists on playing music while working in their office!! How can I get anything done with Britney Spears blaring in my ears all day?? I hate them and want them banned from the building!! Btw I am too shy to ask them to turn it down or use headphones, so they may have no idea this is even an issue" or "I AM INVESTIGATING THE THEFT OF A PEN FROM THE COPY MACHINE ROOM -- PLZ BAN GRADUATE STUDENTS FROM USING THE COPIER UNTIL THE CULPRIT IS APPREHENDED!" So, what are your stories? How did you actually handle the situation? What did you really think/how do you *wish* you could have responded?

I'm a chair...once had a pair of parents send a letter directly to the college president accusing one of my colleagues of "not inspiring" their son. Who was flunking out because he rarely went to class and didn't turn in much of the work the entire semester. But of course, the president's office sent it to me for a response—because they were donors. The letter was two pages of single-spaced text, but it simply boiled down to "you should fire this professor because our son told us he wasn't inspiring enough." We passed it around the department and framed a copy for the faculty member in person. I replied with a short note that basically said, "Please talk to your son about the choices he is making in life."

Is it necessary to have an academic twitter account? Today I saw some crazy nuts trolling under a tweet of a simple PhD recruitment ad. I know in general twitter is a very toxic environment but I didn't expect ppl can troll under sth unrelated with them at all. I know a lot of profs have twitter accounts with their full name and affiliation, and most of their tweets are new papers published/conference announcement, and they retweet paper they are interested in or tweets by ppl they know, and it looks like a causal way of networking. I wonder how necessary this is. I have an account using fake name just for collecting info and I never tweet. Personally I extremely hate seeing trolls so I quit a lot of social medias already. I want to do networking for opportunities of collaboration and jobs, and I am wondering whether twitter plays a major part in networking nowadays in academia.

I think it depends on your area of interest. I know some disciplines have very active Twitter circles that are super fruitful, and it's pretty much expected of you to have one if you're going to be "somebody."

I just received tenure track offer and start up package - do I need to negotiate? Is it gauche to discuss with a new prof in the dept? I received a tenure track asst prof offer on Fri in chemical engineering at a mid level R1 institute in the US. I am happy! I do not have other offers and 100% plan to take this because my husband is here and there’s no other option within two hour commute. (1) I can see salaries online as they are public. I am very happy with the salary offer. Should I still negotiate? Always? (2) The start up funding is quite low ($25,000) unexpectedly low, for someone who does wet chemistry. I genuinely expected it to be an order of magnitude higher. I cannot buy any piece of equipment or support even one student with this money. Not sure what to even say. I thought about asking another professor who just began in the dept last year what he thought I could negotiate for in funding. Unsure what’s appropriate given the large chasm. Almost want to accept and not deal with it, after I waited 3 months for the offer.

Ask for the startup you need to succeed. That is important, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else got. The department wants you to be successful, so they won’t mind you asking for this.

Male profs/students always referring to female scientists (profs & students) as “girls” or “ladies” I (F 25) am a doctoral student at a large American research university. Something that has been bugging me (and all of the other female students in my department) is that most of the male professors exhibit some sexist behaviors. What’s really disheartening and offensive, however, is that one of the younger PIs (early 30s) and his male students appear to go out of their way to always call attention to our gender. For example, they constantly refer to us as “girls” or “ladies,” express actual surprise that the female students are able complete work by deadlines and meet/exceed expectations, remark that it’s so unfair that a female TT “will get tenure only because she’s female”—I could go on but you get the idea. I don’t understand why our gender always has to be mentioned in every conversation. I voiced my reaction (“it makes me feel uncomfortable when male students and faculty members constantly remind me that I’m female. I don’t understand why every sentence has to end with “girls” or “ladies.”) to one of the students in a graduate student seminar when we were discussing inclusivity in the classroom, and he didn’t even try to understand where we were coming from (“But if you’re talking to a group of girls, what’s the problem with stating that?”) and it has only gotten worse since then. There isn’t a female professor that I can go talk to for advice, so I came to you, R/AskAcademia. These are good people with good intentions, but they don’t realize how the words they choose on a daily basis reinforce the “boys’ club” feeling of our department. What can we do to encourage them to think about it from our perspective?

A few people here are missing the point. The fact that they say things like "women will get tenure just because they're women" is incredibly off. There's a blatant disregard for or dehumanization of a person based on gender at play here. It rings starkly similar to the way people denigrate race inclusivity programs. The "ladies" and "girls" remarks seem innocuous if taken as just that, but if it's coming from people who partake in and condone that kind of discussion, there is a problem.

Is it normal to be put down in your first year of a PhD? I won't lie, there's been a massive learning curve for me this year to get used to how things are done at this level. Even simple things like writing papers, reports and presentations demands a standard I'm not very used to. Maybe I'm just being self-conscious and potentially reading the situations wrong but I always leave supervisor meetings feeling exhausted and somewhat put down if that makes sense? Like yesterday, my supervisor seemed very cold and distant, only offering criticisms of my work. Maybe it's just me?

You're right. Graduate school is a whole different set of expectations. You are shifting from being the consumer of knowledge (as an undergraduate) to the critic and producer of knowledge (as a graduate student). Here are three pieces of advice that really helped my mental health in graduate school: 1. Try to find a more senior graduate student in your program to serve as an informal mentor. This is particularly useful if they are in your same lab, but any student who has been through a similar thing can help. It really helped me to talk to others who had been through what I was going through. Senior graduate students always seemed so put together and on top of their work, that hearing they had similar struggles eased my anxiety a lot. They also can become invaluable assets in getting information about random paperwork and milestones. Academia is filled with red tape, and having a resource who has recently had to navigate it helps a lot! 2. Faculty will only invest the time in criticizing your work if they care. The worst thing an advisor, reviewer, instructor, etc., can do is to either ignore you or passively tell you that you're doing great when you're not. 3. You need to separate your self-worth from your work. I'm not saying that it is easy to do, but it will help you survive in graduate school and in an academic career beyond graduate school. I found that once I was able to separate evaluations of me as a person from evaluations of the work I submitted, graduate school got a heck of a lot easier. Best of luck in your program!

I think my boss has been playing me and as a result my career is likely ruined. Help? I want to stay in academia, and I have a specific vision for my work. When I joined the lab (2nd postdoc), my boss made promises of mentorship and support to reach my career goals. Since then: \- I had a big grant rejected, which could have been avoided had she not pressured me to add more and more experiments that I have no expertise in, claiming that the collaborators would be enough to convince the reviewers. I found out the hard way that that's BS \- I then got another grant for 2 years with the possibility to hire my own PhD student, if she had promised to pay the third year. She told me she had no idea if she would be able to pay, which ended up in me getting a TA instead. I then found out that she offered a PhD student to another postdoc with the same funding as me a couple of months later \- She was dismissive of my ideas to the point that I was seriously doubting myself, until I received good feedback from our collaborators. Then she was interested. Now she's trying to push her own unfounded, sloppy ideas into my story and is threatening me that if I don't work on this aspect she has no interest in keeping me \- She blocked a collaboration that I made with an industry partner at a conference, saying she has no interest in it and the idea is 'stupid' (its not). She then uses my contact to ask for something completely different and not related to my research and expects me to do the experiments. In the emails she switched from english to her mother language and even sent one without me in Cc which I later saw in the thread, saying that I work for her in a very condescending tone \- I have been asking her consistently for other projects since I didn't publish since my last postdoc (4 years, hoping to submit this year). She keeps giving me dead-end mini projects she knows won't be published. There are other opportunities in the lab that she is not including me in, saying I will get 'distracted' \- She blocked me from publishing because we got 1 (ONE) editor rejection from a high impact journal, so now I am working overtime for more functional experiments that would make it 'interesting enough' for publishing, so I can finally submit and apply for other positions while in review \- she's arguing with me in front of other people, via email or in online meetings, anything I say is wrong, she's constantly putting me down given the chance and it's awkward and embarrassing. \- she argues with me for not telling her absolutely everything, even though I started with the aim to build up to independence. This includes applications for conferences and discussions with other PIs in the institute \- she yelled at me several times for spending too much money for my project, whereas another colleague is spending 10x more but that's apparently ok because it's my boss' ideas. We are working in one of the most funded institutes where money shouldn't be an issue \- if I confront her about anything she gets super defensive, aggressive even, and I'm afraid to say anything in case it makes things worse. I told her I am applying for faculty positions (with a preprint), and she sent her references, but now I am really worried that she will ruin me. I always had good feedback from other PIs and collaborators but she broke me down so much, I am doubting my abilities as a scientist, and I am getting bitter and jealous of other postdocs who have OK projects but are getting ahead because they have the right support/ contacts (as I said, well funded institute). Ultimately I feel like I am missing out on productive and fun scientific discussion and real mentorship, scientific and otherwise, and I am worried that I am not equipped for the next step because of it. I still have a tiny slither of hope but I don't know for how much longer. Several people have left the lab already for similar reasons apart from her now 'star postdoc' who is wasting tons of money. Her PhD students all left (or will leave) academia. Am I doomed?

Have a friend at an institution ask for your letters of recommendation. Then you can take a look. I uncovered a faculty "friend" who damned me with her letters. No regrets.

Is burnout normal in academics? Im a doctoral candidate, (4th year) and though there is the light at the end of the tunnel, I feel like I burnt myself out so hard last year (COVID, grant writing w no laptop, could not go to lab, got married, family disowned me, and threats from family members, took quals twice (failed the first time)). My advisors dont know how hard the last year was for me. My advisors are extremely selfless and wonderful advisors and they are treking out a plan where I can publish 1-2 papers within 20-24 months and graduate on time. Since May, Ive been completely burnt out and disinterested. I never get up on time, and I am going to lab at 2pm and forcing myself to stay there for 8 hours. Even when my body is in lab, my work is not great, and I can hardly motivate myself to thaw out cells. Other people in academia seem to have trials with burn out from time to time. Virtually all PIs are over extended, post-docs too. I was wondering if burnout is a bug or a feature in academia? Does everyone feel burntout from time to time or did I fuck myself? thanks

It's sadly very common. Try to prioritize mental health now. Don't tell yourself to push through and deal with that stuff after finishing the PhD. I've seen many friends where this strategy did not work out well.

Why do professors ignore letter of recommendation requests instead of just declining? Is it a sign that they simply forgot to reply or missed my email, or is it that they just can't be bothered to reply at all if they aren't interested? **Edit:** When I make requests in the future, would it be appropriate to tack on "just a simple yes or no answer is fine" at the end of the email, to hint that I would appreciate even a very curt refusal rather than silence?

No, tacking that on would be passive-aggressive. And it's often because the email was lost in the never-ending flood of other things, or because it's easier to ignore than to deal with the response to a "no." Send a single, polite follow-up, or ask them during office hours. If there's no response then, head elsewhere.

How often does research work go down the drain just because of a silly human error? Something as silly as testing the baseline on wrong data, performing wide variety of highly diverse amd incomparable tests. How often does that happen in the field and what were the consequences? I haven't had a lot of experience in research, but was curious.

In my undergraduate research, I accidentally led a few grad students down a rabbit hole of what seemed to be incredibly interesting results... Turns out I had just mislabeled the sample and nothing interesting had actually happened. The result was a week of wasted efforts, and my PI asked me to give a short presentation during group meeting on the importance of labeling samples correctly and good organization. I imagine situations like that probably happen every day.

What's the WORST career advice you've ever received? Something that, years later, makes you say, "what the hell were they thinking??"

"You have publications, you'll get something (a job)." Not a single interview in 3 years. "Keep applying, you'll eventually get something." 3 wasted years of my life spent falls churning out application materials and springs recovering from a flurry of rejections.

Harassment from student - avenues for reporting? Hope this is the right forum to ask this in--but was wondering if anyone has experience reporting an undergraduate for harassment? I am a teaching assistant (a grad student) and have experienced fairly serious sexual harassment from an undergrad in one of my classes. Someone in my department told me that undergrads cannot be reported for sexual harassment because instructors have the power in the relationship. Anyone done this before, or know if things go differently when the accused party is an undergrad re Title IX?

100% false: undergrads cannot be reported for sexual harassment. Sexual harassment does not go away because of power imbalances. If you are being sexually harassed, you need to report it immediately to Title IX and your department chair. You should ask that the student be immediately removed from your class. If your university has a behavioral intervention team, report there, too. I would also reach out to the Dean of Students and ask for their assistance in helping you achieve a harassment-free learning environment.

How to clean up messy dissertation after depression? I wasn't able to work properly on it due to depression. I was prescribed some emergency medication yesterday that will at least help me sleep okay which makes a lot of difference. I have ~7k words and need ~13k. What I have isn't great work - it's often incoherent passages with poor syntax as I didn't manage to work on it for a long time, sadly. Please don't judge me. I don't want to defer it, I'd rather get it done with and then focus on my healing. Can I fix this? I only have 13 days until I have to hand it in. If I need to prioritise parts of it, should it be on coherence / conclusion?

Gently, don't compound one mistake with another. You're in the middle of dealing with a mental health issue that has derailed the progress of your dissertation, which is less than half written. You should ask for an extension to the deadline. That shouldn't mean delaying for a significant period or missing this graduation window, but giving yourself another 2 or 3 weeks would be sensible. Pushing yourself for a highly unrealistic deadline, simply because you don't want to ask for more help, is just negating the help you've already received. I disagree that 14 days to write the bulk of your thesis when you're unwell is enough time. The university gave you a longer period because it didn't believe the work could be done in less time. Plus, you'll make yourself more unwell. Your career, including your degree, is a marathon, not a sprint, and you need to be able to pace yourself for the duration, not burn out in a blaze of semi-glory which takes months to come back from.

Is it possible to have a kid with someone who is only just about to start his PhD? My partner (27M) and I (28F) have talked about having children every so often, and yesterday he broke down when I said we may not be able to have a kid given I'll be the only one providing the income. He'll be starting his PhD late this year, and he won't be well funded. Given his response though, I'm willing to reconsider my thoughts on this. I guess this is more a question to PhDs and those who came before us - is it financially/mentally viable to have a child given I'll have to bear a child and also provide the income for it? Im only willing to have one in the next 5 years (before I hit 33). I suspect having a child will take me out of work for at least a year as well. I'm not sure how much pressure this would put on my partner's PhD as well but I'd love to get different perspectives on the struggles and whether it was worth doing from others. Thanks!

There were several married couples with kids in graduate school. They were not able to pull 14-hour days in the lab, like I was, but they wasted a lot less time than I did. If you're serious and mature, you can make it work.

Why is an European PhD considered shorter than an American PhD when an American PhD is really a Masters + PhD? Most European PhD programs require a Master's degree, which takes 1-3 years, whereas an American PhD can be started after a Bachelor's degree. So even if an American PhD is typically 5 years, shouldn't it be regarded as 2+3 years, thus essentially being the same in length as a 3-year European PhD? But why do so many people perceive European programs as shorter?

Because in the US, if you do a master's and a PhD, you are still expected to take 4+ years to complete your PhD. And the "MSc+PhD" is often 6+ years long. So, any way you cut it, it tends to be longer than in Europe.

beating a dead donkey STEM Since a year back I am holding an instructor position at an ivy league school and I am miserable. I am supposed to be excited and look for the opportunities-grants-my own research questions. I fought hard to get this position, but I am dragging myself out of bed every day. Sundays I have anxiosity and I dont sleep more than 2h a night. I dont know whats wrong with me. An academic career was all I ever wanted. I sacrificed everything for it- constant moving countries (5x), no family,no partner, I have aquintances all over the world but no friends or feeling of belonging anywhere. I am currently seeing a therapist because, prior to this I was 10y a post doc, in a toxic place with high abuse of people. My strategy to survive was to put my head down and work harder, but the price was that I became exhausted- leading 5 different projects at any time, doing the experiements with only help from 1 undergrad, writing grants for my boss but never getting recogniton, 2 conferences in 10y was our allowance...you get the drill. There was no time or energy for personal relationships. Yes, I got publications but for a TT job it was not enough. Now, I am on this 2 year contract, in a new country, in the middle of pandemic. I have almost no funding, but I got one RA. Everything has been painfully slow. Because of lockdowns my experiments are behind. The leadership in the department is struggling to aquire funding and they have asked me to provide them with a strategy-because if they get money, I get money. And I am trying to use my collaborations in the world and create a program grant. Not sure if this should be on me, because if it fails they still have positions but I have nothing. Frankly, I have never put together a 2.5 milion program grant before. My advisor is a clinician that never had anyone with my background-or seniority-to mentor. His advise for me is to ask his post doc of 2 years to join the project- like a new pair of hands. I am also not happy in this country. I have been isolated for a year and I have no social network, and besides my therapist- no support. Maybe I am just not being honest with myself, maybe I am beating a dead donkey. I am just deeply heartbroken.

"An academic career was all I ever wanted." Why? To me, that looks like the central delusion. Admit that maybe you're wrong. Maybe a career in industry is what you really need.

How do I study and retain information from papers and books that I read on my computer? Sorry for the wordy question, but I'm at my wit's end. My go-to method while studying is reading a book, and underlining the important stuff with a pencil. Since I am a Math student, I practice all of the formulae and proofs on a separate rough page that I discard once I understand it. If there is anything that I need to add, I do so in the margins of the book with a pencil. Or in a separate notebook, if the book is a borrowed one. My question is, given the sheer necessity of reading so many papers for a single topic, I download them and read them on my computer via Foxit reader. However, for some reason, I find this extremely difficult. I have trouble even going through two pages at a time, and it's even more difficult to retain information as I'm not that comfortable with underlining stuff using those pdf highlighters. Could anyone just please please suggest some alternative? Distraction is not a problem, it's just the reading and remembering stuff that is. It'll really be helpful since it's undoubtedly more economical to read papers online (like reading 5-6 papers only to prove a single topic) Thank you genuinely in advance!

Get a tablet with a Bluetooth pen and use something like GoodNotes. It's changed studying for me forever. You can organize everything into folders for easy access, which is so helpful.

Am I Being Realistic in My Reasons for Pursing a PhD? I am a librarian in the U.S. with a Masters of Library and Info Science. I love everything about librarianship, and with ten years of experience in the field, I am thinking seriously about pursuing my PhD. I want to pursue it in library science (technically communications and information science with a focus on library and information science) not to work as an academic. I want to go for it because I love this field and I want to learn more about it and share what I've learned through publishing. I'm not doing it because I think I will make more money. I want to hone my research skills - I work with researchers, and I would enjoy knowing more about the high-level research they do that leads to publishing, which I hope I would get in my grad classes. Am I being realistic or am I looking at a doctoral degree and the years of crazy work through rose-colored glasses?

The advice I have always given is this: If you can see yourself being happy without getting a PhD, you should just go that route. If you can only see yourself being happy after getting a PhD, well, it doesn't really matter what I think, does it? Even though I also left academia, I don't at all regret my mathematics PhD. Still, part of me wishes I could have been happy without it. It would have been a much easier path.

I've just submitted my PhD thesis. I really don't know what to feel. Is that it? I spent four years working towards this document, and now it's completely out of my hands. Where do I go from here? Should I turn up at the office on Monday and start writing papers? How did you all feel when you submitted?

Congratulations! I felt exactly as you describe. It’s extremely common to feel that way when you reach a milestone you have been working toward so single-mindedly for so long. I encourage you to take a break, if you can, and reconnect with yourself and the things that bring you joy. Go sit in a park, go for a bicycle ride or a hike, watch a movie, go on a trip, or hang out with a friend. Do anything except work on the next paper, at least for a little while.

Scientists who left academia for the corporate world, did you find your education to be helpful? Im talking about chemists/biochemists/geneticists and others involved in laboratory related sciences rather than CS/Engineering academics. If you've left the academic world, do you believe your experiences in science have benefited you in your new roles?

I always targeted industrial R&D roles right from the start of my PhD, so that’s the perspective my answer is coming from. My experience has been that if you want a job in a hard science (like chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, etc., as you say), you basically need a PhD in order to have any meaningful career progression, at least in large companies. BS and, to a lesser extent, MS holders do not get promoted into management and have much lower salaries (like 50% of PhD holders). It’s not fair, but that’s what it’s looked like to me from the inside. You basically need a PhD to do my job (physical chemistry R&D), but not every job. You can definitely get there and be competent at my and other jobs where the employee has a PhD, but it’s a lot easier to start with a PhD since you have a lot of background to understand what you’re doing and, more importantly, design and analyze your experiments in any meaningful way. Most industrial R&D (in chemistry) is largely streamlined anyway, with most cutting-edge stuff being acquired or assimilated through industry-academic collaborations (which again, a PhD is helpful for).

Advice: professor listed as first author despite I did most of the work Hi, I am junior researcher within social science. I have been working on a paper for one and a half year with two professors, A and B. We are currently in the process of preparing the final draft before submission. Prof. A just sent out a draft listing herself as first author, me as second and prof. B as third. The paper is based on my idea, I have spent most of the time on the project and written 75 percent of the current draft. I cannot fathom why prof. A took the decision to put herself as first author. I have a meeting tomorrow with prof. A and wanted to discuss this issue. However, I do not know whether I have a case or not and how to approach the issue in a professional manner. Perhaps you could provide some insight or feedback? Best

What type of project was this for? Was it the first publication on a grant Prof. A had received? Also, I recommend (advice from my own advisor) that you lay out your expectations for authorship order before you start the paper. This way, there is no confusion. But I do think you may “have a case,” but I’d just politely inquire about why you were not listed as first, then respond accordingly to their reasoning.

Librarians of Reddit, what tools or systems at the library could greatly benefit a researcher’s search and workflow, but is rarely or improperly used? ***TL;DR:* Researcher and Librarians of reddit, I was hoping you could share techniques and tools/services/features that are often forgotten, tucked away, or just plain underutilized. I’m referring to things that could greatly help researchers in their lit- or topical searches, and information collection & management after they’ve begun finding info.** ___   I was going through some old documents that I needed to organize and thought about the systems that librarians used to use, such as index cards, and topic bibliographies. I remember getting a library ran crash-course in my undergraduate education on using EBSCO and other things, but it was relatively identical to what they taught to highschool students in the late 2000s: relatively analog methods of search, easybib and EBSCO as a search engine. Before that we learned about bibliographies written by subject-experts in a field that lists books and publications on a subject or sub-discipline. These were rarely used or findable during undergrad. *Is there a good digital version of subject bibliographies?* Most search algorithms don’t seam to curate the best books for a subject matter for a given year. Mendeley is a great tool it was relatively fresh in My undergrad years. However I’ve always wanted to know more about little known research tools that could drastically improve your research workflow and it’s organization. Researchers in academia often have access to software or database subscriptions as well interlibrary programs, but there are many facets to these things. *What tools or functions (digital or self-used) in a library is often underutilized or in-plain sight but is so useful if people actually knew about it?* When I think of tools & services, I typically think of EBSCO/EBSCO-Host, JSTOR, or WorldCat. Basically things almost every University provides. *What little known, tucked away, or underutilized features such as source referencing and search management, workflow aids, or other features that are super useful are rarely found by the average first year grad student?* Or *what features or common tool do you share that are rarely talked about that is a game-changer?* ***Side-notes:*** 1. I know that reference librarians are invaluable tools and people, but I want to focus on things that they and other librarians provide or teach about. 2. I hope this is the right place to ask.

I'm an academic librarian. I've learned about research through my degree, and through "dogfooding" (my university has faculty librarians, so I have to do personal research as well as helping students). I'm cribbing from my instructional presentation for incoming PhDs: - Forward citation searching. Very few grad students know about this. Scopus used to be the only tool, but now Google Scholar is so good at it, it's truly choice. I teach this all the time. Most of them know about regular (backwards) citation searching, so the idea of doing it in the other direction pleasurably blows minds. - Google Scholar Alerts - Statistics, how to find them. Usually subject-specific, so you'd have to tell me what you're into. Also, getting students to understand that statistics don't just come out of some ethereal place—no one can say "How many people use potholders instead of oven gloves in the US?" unless someone pays to do a study to get that number. - HathiTrust, search-inside feature for in-copyright books. You can use it as a power index for books you have in your hand. - Subject heading searches in catalogs and databases—this is the main value of professional databases over Google Scholar. - LibGuides—these are the modern version of the subject bibliography (though I am tickled pink to see someone who doesn't have an MSLIS who remembers them). If you can hit on a good one, you've got a hot little ticket to get your research in an area going. I maintain a very specific one for a unique study of a subject that gets thousands of hits a year, outside of my university. That's all I can think of off the top of my head! But I can answer questions about the mysterious powers on the other side of the reference desk.

A student cannot graduate because of a couple points in your class. What's your "merry Christmas, you lazy bum" free-point limit? I think it is silly to hinder a non-major from graduating because their final grade in my class is a 59 instead of a 60. But what about a 58 or a 57 or a 56? Do you have a line? Do you consider the financial cost of retaking your class and staying in school? Do you pull an extra credit assignment out of a hat and make them sign a NDA so they do not tell others? Or is hearing the lamentations of failing students the best thing in life?

I once let a student keep turning in missed assignments well after the deadline until he had a passing grade and was able to graduate. He'd been struggling ever since his sibling died a few semesters before.

Pregnant postdoc in a chemistry lab Hi all, I've been in my current postdoc position in the organic chemistry field (US) for almost two years now (33yo). I and my PI have discussed recently starting writing papers to prepare for switching positions by next year. But I still have some pieces left to complete a paper. I've struggled with infertility for many years. I am pregnant through IVF, it's now only 6 weeks. Until now, I am still doing research in the lab, even wearing PPE and performing in the hood, it's impossible to not be exposed to organic solvents. I plan to tell my boss until 10 weeks or so when the miscarriage chance significantly decreases. My major concern is the risks of continuing the lab works on the fetus. This pregnancy is too precious for us, I won't take any risks. I would like to hear people who have similar experiences or any suggestions are welcoming! Thanks!

Congratulations! I became pregnant during the final year of my chemical engineering PhD, and like you, had outstanding experiments involving harsh chemicals that I didn’t want to expose the fetus to. I had a great relationship with my advisor, so I chose to tell him about the pregnancy early (around 6-7 weeks). Together, we decided to bring on a master’s student to do all the wet lab work, while I remained in charge of planning the experiments, analyzing the data, and writing it up. While training the student, we ran mock experiments using non-toxic chemicals. Perhaps you can do something similar and bring on a student to do the wet lab work for you, who can become a co-author on the eventual paper?

PhDs how did you tackle your worst days leading up to the completion of your work? This is an open question, whatever was the biggest obstacle be it Problem related, health, advisor relation, family, dating or financial. And how you dealt with those to complete your PhD.

My very mild-mannered supervisor's advice in the last few months, when it was getting to me, was: 'It's just a fucking PhD, it's not that important, just write it.' I needed to hear that to realize that it didn't need to be perfect, it just needed to be finished.

During graduate admissions, would you choose a candidate with an amazing research project, and references, but a okayish GPA, or another with an okayish research project, good references, but excellent GPA? What's the protocol?

Amazing research project and references, as long as the GPA is still good. It depends what you mean by okayish. If the GPA is bad, then they'd probably be screened out before anybody even looks at the other stuff.

Discouraged Phd applicant on where to go from here. I got rejected from basically all of the Clinical Psychology Phd programs that I applied to. I am immensely interested in researching mental health/developmental disorders, as well as malignant brain development due to environmental stressors/trauma within marginalized communities. I have more specific research interests that I expressed in my personal statement as well, that I believe aligned with advisors I wanted to work with. I didn't apply to that many because I couldn't afford it and didn't qualify for the income waiver either that typically requires below poverty level indication. I've been trying to find full-time research positions since I graduated in 2019 with a B.A. in Psychology from a small university and I have been applying to a variety of full-time research assistant/coordinator/manager positions (*all around the U.S.*) since I graduated and have only gotten rejections and no interviews, even for positions I was clearly qualified for. The people that I've known to get these type of positions always have had some kind of connection from the inside to get in, which I do not. I ended up taking a full-time management job in the private sector, whilst volunteering in a research lab part time (*this lab does not have any full time positions*). I feel very stuck and discouraged especially as a BIPOC person, it seems like gatekeeping runs very deep in academia and full-time research/PhD opportunities for Psychology and Neuroscience are incredibly slim. Any advice on the next steps I should take to increase my chances of getting into a PhD next cycle? I would also be open to applying to Cog Neuro Phd programs as well. Thanks!

One thing to keep in mind is that the current environment is incredibly *atypical* because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There are many programs in many disciplines that have simply suspended their normal intakes of graduate students, especially programs where there is simply no way to avoid having people in close physical proximity during professional training and research. So, you need to avoid coming to any fixed or final view of your qualifications or chances of admission under more normal circumstances, which hopefully will return in the 2022-23 academic year (and thus will influence applications this coming fall). However, if you want to look carefully to see if there are any issues in your applications that you can improve on before the next application cycle, the very best thing you could do is to show your applications from this year to a trusted undergraduate professor you worked with—and if you had any peers or friends who were psychology majors at your university alongside you, show them too. The other thing to keep in mind is that even if it's true that the jobs you applied for were ones you were qualified for and should have been considered for, keep in mind that the atypicality of this year applies to those applications, at least since March 2020. It may well be true that many of those opportunities went to people who were known to the people running the lab, but you have to find a place to put your legitimate frustration and anger with that possibility out of mind temporarily while you are working on your applications—it can affect how you present yourself and your candidacy in ways that you might not pick up on.

Is it acceptable for a hobbyist to contact a professional researcher? So I am looking into some specific languages and their linguistics. I am not a professional in this field, and although I love linguistics I likely will not be going into it unfortunately. I found this researcher who studies the exact languages I am currently looking at. Problem is the only way I can find to contact them is on ResearchGate which I can't make an account on. So this leads me to the questions, 1. Is it acceptable for a hobbyist to contact them?, and 2. How do I contact them? They do work for a university, although it is in another country that doesn't speak English (but the researcher speaks English). I can provide more information but I'd rather not give out personal information about someone than what is needed, just for their privacy and security.

Perfectly fine. Do it. However, the times I have been contacted by journalists and others about my research, they mostly hadn't read any of it and just wanted me to summarize the writings they couldn't be bothered to read. I still answered their questions, but I didn't think too highly of them, to be honest.

So I'm getting ready to turn down a TT job offer... ...I'm a postdoc. I'm 6 years since my doctorate in a biological science. The salary and start-up are reasonable for the school but on the low end of the range I told myself I would take. Everything else is good just a little off for my particular situation (teaching load, location, department fit, spousal happiness/job prospects ). But, if I took the job I'd only be treading water in until I could start applying other places. How big of a mistake am I making turning down a reasonable TT job at the start of the worst academic hiring market in a century? Please talk me out of this or at least try to so I know I've considered everything.

Honestly, in my opinion, you are making a terrible mistake if academia is the only outcome that would make you happy. If you are just as happy working in industry, then turning down the job might not be a big deal. But if you are committed to academia, and you get offered a decent tenure-track job offer in a bad economy, then you take it. Going to a potentially shitty location is always part of the deal when you get into academia.

How to supervise student with autism? I have an excellent student that has been recently diagnosed with some kind of autism. I'm his PhD supervisor, and I'd like to adjust my interactions with as to make him comfortable, but I don't know where to start. I would appreciate any pointers, readings, programs, etc. Thanks

Ask them. As a father of an autistic child and a teacher to kids on the spectrum, also in my experience, it's best to ask what they need and how they work individually and then see how you can facilitate that.

Gift for my Professor who changed my life. I want to give an RBG bobble head to my Professor who has impacted me so much. She has championed for me, and given me great opportunities as being her TA and a scholarship. I want to give her a gift for winter break, so I got her an RBG bobble head, as she is a feminist activist and a lawyer. But I don’t want to cross any boundaries or make her uncomfortable. I know there is some policy that professors can’t accept gifts, or overall some professors get uncomfortable. I have a nice, but cheap candle that I can give her as a second option. What do you think?

At public institutions, we do have an upper limit on what we can accept—maybe the equivalent of $40 or so. Ethically, we can't accept anything until after grades are submitted, etc. This sounds like a really heartfelt gift; it will mean something to both of you, so I think you should give it to her. Wait until after she has entered any final grades for you (if she's still your instructor). I've gotten a couple of gifts like these—they truly mean a lot. Your professor will love it.

Trolls IRL: Dealing with anti-intellectualism and misinformation as an academic Does anyone have any stories about students or non-academics trying to argue against your academic work (or subject) but clearly have no clue what they are talking about? I’m wondering because (a) it’s somewhat of a fear of mine as someone interested in academia, (b) anti-intellectualism and misinformation seem abound right now (at least in the United States), and (c) such stories could be entertaining :)

Unfortunately, I've found it to be far too common to be entertaining anymore. My go-to response to anti-intellectualism baiting that usually shuts people down is "Hmm, you should write that up for a journal," in a very neutral tone. Strangely enough, they seem to recognize that whatever they're spouting isn't actually intellectually rigorous, and by not engaging with the ideas, they don't have anywhere else to take the debate.

Should I complain about my internal defence examiner I recently had my PhD defence/viva. It was a horrible experience lasting way over the 3 hours prescribed, with no break but I am happy to say I passed with minor corrections. The feeling of relief and joy about this was ruined by the stress and anxiety my internal examiner pushed onto me during the examination. Within the first 10 minutes he had wrongfully accused me of plagiarism and asked what was stopping him from burning my thesis in front of him. He was so rude that the external examiner actually told him to take it down a peg during the examination. I went into it expecting a productive academic discussion after speaking with colleagues about their experiences but I feel he over stepped the line into rudeness and borderline misogyny on several occasions. At the end he flicked a switch and told me the outcome and that I had a few corrections to do. I left the room with a migraine and wanting to sit in a dark room on my own for the rest of the evening. Luckily the external examiner was more professional and my supervisor was also in the room to witness all of this. My question is, should I complain about him and the general experience I had? I would really hate for someone to go through a similar experience. I think it would be best to say something after I am awarded my doctorate because unfortunately I have to liaise with this man for my corrections.

Have you spoken to your supervisor about his behavior? Because really, they should be raising this issue; you shouldn't have to. Also, do you know if it was this guy's first time as an (internal) examiner?

Why publish a 'new method' paper if you're not going to share the method? A bit of a rant, plus a genuine question. I work in a life sciences subfield where I deal quite a bit with image processing for data collection (high-throughput phenotyping). It's a quickly-growing area of interest, and papers are regularly published about new ways to count/assess/quantify characteristics from images. Obviously, these methods involve some sort of code - MATLAB, Python, etc. - but so few authors cite any sort of Github repo or any other method of sharing. Frustratingly, none of the authors I've ever reached out to have responded to my requests for code. This has happened a few times now, and more often than not I'm forced to re-write some program based on the sparse description in the paper (not a small feat for someone with a non-CS background). It just seems counterintuitive to me that a 'new method' paper wouldn't actually share the new method. Isn't that the point, accelerating the field of study and whatnot? There's some new journals that are moving in the right direction - not allowing submissions without proof of data and code in a repository, for example - and those who are committed to open-source programs, which is great. But, seriously: why the allowance of people to keep their 'new method' secret?

This used to be the case in astronomy but is a lot less so these days. It seems to be from somewhat of a culture shift, and one that probably hasn't hit the life sciences in the same way just yet. Ideally, the new method would be something to share. But I suspect that for many people, it's a way to do something they can publish and then cite with their own work. You'd think that gaining outside citations would be a plus, but I figure that a lot of people would rather try to squeeze what they can out of the method themselves. The analogy I can think of now in astronomy is the sharing of observational data. It's gotten a lot better now, but people like to sit on their data and squeeze what they can out of it. Of course, if you share your data (perhaps after a proprietary period so you can get first crack at your science), then you can gain citations and help the broader field. But that hasn't always been the case, and there are still plenty of sub-fields where people feel it's better to keep their own data, talk about the amazing stuff that one can do with them, and then just keep publishing results from them themselves.

Recommend a must read paper or scholarly article for the layman. What's a paper you read that you felt everyone in the world regardless of their academic background should read? Any field. Must be simple enough so that someone with only a general understanding can understand it.

Bruno Latour—Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? He explains in the first five pages how social science—including his work—contributed to conspiracy thinking. He ultimately argues that social science is important to the world, but it has to be more careful with how and what it argues. Plus, he’s pithy as hell.