u/Cardie1303

In advance, apologies for the very long post.

Okay, I think I need to hear some outside perspectives because I have gotten into a pretty unhealthy habit of spiraling about my future career (or lack thereof).

I am currently in my third year of a PhD in organic chemistry, mainly doing total synthesis. I also have 2-3 methodology projects running that may work out or may ultimately lead nowhere.

Publicationwise, I currently have no first author paper. I have co authored two papers, one in Angewandte Chemie and one review in Natural Product Reports. I am currently wrapping up my first first author paper, possibly with shared first authorship, which we are aiming at Organic Letters. I have another first-author paper in the pipeline building on that work, probably aimed at JOC. In addition, I am working on three methodology projects that could potentially become Org. Lett. level or better papers if they work but, being methodology projects, they could also simply end up producing nothing publishable.

The problem is that I feel increasingly anxious about how long all of this is taking. It has become difficult not to get frustrated whenever I have to spend time on things that do not directly move these projects towards publication, particularly teaching and supervising students.

I also have no idea what a "normal" PhD duration in synthetic organic chemistry actually is. I have heard opinions ranging from "anything beyond three years damages your chances of a successful career" to "eight years plus a five year postdoc is fine as long as there is clear progression/productivity." According to our university statistics, the median chemistry PhD here takes about 4.7 years, although that includes all chemistry-related subfields. Historically, people in our group seem to be closer to six years.

My ideal career would be academia and eventually having my own group. What I cannot judge is how realistic that remains if I finish my PhD without a first-author JACS/Angewandte/Science-level paper or without coming from one of the very prominent synthetic chemistry groups.

I know students who graduate with one or two Angewandte papers from groups where the lab essentially does not publish below that level and where the PI is heavily involved in defining and coordinating the projects. My PI works very differently. He is extremely hands off and considers PhD students independent researchers. He mostly acts as an experienced colleague who advises and discusses ideas rather than providing a detailed project and research direction.

Intellectually, I actually like that style very much. But I have developed this fear that choosing a less "brand-name"/high-output group may already have put me at a major disadvantage for an academic career, regardless of what I do now.

I know this is catastrophizing, but it has gotten bad enough that I can literally be doing a chromatography column and have intrusive thoughts along the lines of: "Your academic career is already dead, none of this will be enough, and the best you will ever get is some routine QC position where you follow SOPs forever." That then makes me frustrated and less productive, which makes me more anxious about being unproductive, and so on.

I am particularly interested in hearing from people who stayed in synthetic organic chemistry, either in academia or industry:

- How much does the duration of the PhD actually matter?

- How important is having a JACS/Angewandte-level first-author paper when applying for strong postdocs?

- How much does the reputation of the PhD group matter compared with what you actually did independently?

- Does finishing with several solid papers rather than one spectacular paper meaningfully hurt an academic trajectory?

- At what point in a PhD would you genuinely start worrying about someone's publication record?

One encouraging thing is that I have discussed my career anxiety with my PI. He told me that he expects me to do a postdoc because I am ambitious and that he would have no hesitation to recommend me to any postdoc lab I would want to go to.

I realize that is probably meaningful positive feedback, but at the moment I am having trouble calibrating my own situation rationally.

So: for people who have actually gone through this, does my situation sound genuinely concerning, or does it mostly sound like a third-year PhD student massively catastrophizing about a career that is still several years away?

Hello,

I am looking for recommendations for an analytical HPLC column to separate a mixture of four closely related diastereomers. All compounds contain the same disaccharide and differ only in the stereochemistry of the aglycone.

The best separation I have obtained so far is on a Luna Omega Polar C18, 5 µm, using an isocratic mobile phase of 12% ACN in water at 2.5 mL/min. The compounds elute at roughly 13–14 min. I can distinguish the individual components, but the peaks are broad and still overlap substantially.

The separation is very sensitive to the ACN content. At 15% ACN, I essentially lose the separation altogether, while at 10% ACN the retention becomes too long (no elution after 50 min) for a practical analytical method.

I also tested a Luna C18(2), 3 µm, which showed essentially the same behaviour with slightly worse separation.

I additionally varied the column temperature between 15 and 40 °C. Higher temperatures decreased the separation without noticeably improving the peak shape. Lower temperatures did not significantly improve the separation either and made the peak shape somewhat worse.

At this point I therefore suspect that I am mainly limited by stationary-phase selectivity rather than by further optimization of the current C18 conditions.

I have 800 Euros funding available to get a new column but without the option to test columns it is a bit of a coint toss. I was hoping to maybe get a recommendation here. I am currently considering trying a HILIC, C8, or a Macherey-Nagel NUCLEODUR ISIS column.

Has anyone dealt with a similar separation of highly polar/glycosylated diastereomers? Are there particular stationary phases or selectivities you would recommend trying?

Hello,

apologies if this is the wrong place to ask.

I am planning to visit the UK in roughly three weeks, but so far every attempt to use the ETA app has failed. I get to the point where I have to take a picture of my passport and then scan it using NFC. My phone vibrates, the app briefly switches to another screen, and then, within a second, changes again and tells me that it did not work and that I should try again, starting with taking another picture of my passport.

I have already tried restarting my phone, waiting a week before trying again, and attempting it at different times of the day, but I always get the same result.

I was planning to try again using a colleague's phone to see whether my phone is the issue. However, in case that also fails, is there another way to obtain the ETA without going through a lot of additional bureaucracy?

Thanks in advance!

Hallo,

ich plane, mir bei nächster Gelegenheit eine Midea PortaSplit anzuschaffen. Da ich zur Miete in einer Eigentumswohnung wohne, habe ich meinen Vermieter vorher gefragt und den geplanten Aufbau ziemlich genau beschrieben:

«Gemeint ist kein fest installiertes Klimagerät, sondern ein mobiles Gerät ohne Bohrungen, ohne feste Montage und ohne bauliche Veränderung. Das kleine Außenteil würde lediglich lose und standsicher außen am bodennahen Fenster, ähnlich wie ein Blumenkasten, platziert werden. Es wäre von der Straße aus nicht sichtbar und könnte jederzeit rückstandslos entfernt werden.

Selbstverständlich würde ich darauf achten, dass keine Schäden entstehen, kein Wasser problematisch abläuft und keine unzumutbare Geräuschbelastung entsteht.»

Darauf habe ich folgende Antwort bekommen:

«Danke, dass Sie nachfragen! Finde ich sehr in Ordnung! Solange es keine baulichen Veränderungen gibt, bin ich einverstanden. Bei baulichen Veränderungen hätten nämlich unter Umständen auch Hausverwaltung und Eigentümergemeinschaft ein Mitspracherecht.»

Grundsätzlich klingt das für mich nach einer recht eindeutigen Erlaubnis. Ich frage mich aber, was passiert, wenn die WEG später trotzdem etwas dagegen hat, zum Beispiel wegen des äußeren Erscheinungsbilds, und mein Vermieter daraufhin seine Erlaubnis wieder zurückzieht.

Ich hätte das Gerät dann schließlich gerade im Vertrauen auf seine schriftliche Zustimmung gekauft.

Wie wäre die Rechtslage in so einem Fall?

Könnte der Vermieter einfach verlangen, dass ich das Gerät wieder entferne oder nicht mehr benutze? Und müsste ich dann selbst auf den Kosten sitzen bleiben, obwohl ich den Aufbau vorher genau beschrieben und seine Zustimmung eingeholt habe?

Außerdem frage ich mich, ob in so einem Fall nicht eigentlich mein Vermieter als Eigentümer die Sache mit der WEG klären müsste, da ich selbst mit der WEG ja kein Vertragsverhältnis habe.

Mir ist klar, dass die Zustimmung des Vermieters die WEG nicht automatisch bindet. Mir geht es vor allem darum, wer am Ende das finanzielle Risiko trägt, falls die WEG sich querstellt.

I’m a chemistry PhD student in Germany and I’m starting to seriously question whether I should stop aiming for academia and focus on industry instead.

When I joined my group, I was very open with my PI that I was seriously considering an academic career. He encouraged that and presented himself as supportive of academic ambitions. Over time, though, I realized that his idea of “support” is very different from what I expected.

His philosophy is basically that PhD students should be independent scientists from day one. He does not see it as his job to provide publishable projects, actively steer publication strategy, or discuss journal placement before everything is done. He often frames himself as “quality control at the end.” If students need infrastructure or resources, the answer is often essentially “figure it out.” For example, I needed LCMS access for reaction control in complex synthesis work, and the response was not active help securing access but more or less that I should solve it myself.

The group also has a culture of very long hours. We are often the only group in the faculty working something like 10 to 10, but the publication output does not feel proportional to that effort. Former students have told me the PI used to be much more proactive and project-driving in his junior group phase. Now, papers can sit on his desk for months, funding applications are delayed for years, and he still tends to frame the productivity problem as mainly the students’ responsibility.

This has been difficult for me because I had tied a lot of my self-worth and future plans to becoming competitive for academia. I cared intensely about timelines, publications, and strategic positioning because I thought I had a fair chance at a PI career. Recently I started looking more realistically at academic hiring and realized how much high-impact publication output, strategic positioning, and mentorship matter. That led to a pretty serious spiral.

I’m not saying my PI is abusive. He is generally collegial and probably means well. But I increasingly feel like I am expected to carry career-level responsibility without receiving career-level guidance. I am supposed to be independent enough to generate publishable projects, solve infrastructure issues, coordinate collaborations, teach, and keep projects moving, while still being evaluated by publication output in a very competitive system.

The result is that I have developed significant mental health issues around academia: panic, constant anxiety about productivity, inability to relax, and a growing sense that I’m sacrificing my health for a career path that may not be realistic or even worth the cost. I have almost no social life outside work, and academia had become basically my whole identity.

Recently I started considering industry not as “failure” but as a legitimate primary path. Strangely, that immediately made me feel better. I started feeling motivation again for hobbies, language learning, travel, and taking care of myself. That makes me think the problem may not be science itself, but how much I had fused my entire future and self-worth with academia.

Now I’m trying to recalibrate without overcorrecting. I still want to do good science and finish the PhD professionally. I do not want to throw a tantrum, disengage, or burn bridges. But I also do not want to keep sacrificing my mental health for a PI-track fantasy if the environment is not actually structured to support that path.

I’m wondering whether others here have experienced a similar realization: not necessarily leaving because of one dramatic abusive event, but because the mentoring structure, uncertainty, publication pressure, and lack of strategic support slowly made academia feel psychologically unsustainable.