r/PhD

I’m currently doing a PhD in biochemistry, and I’m increasingly convinced that I don’t want a career in science at all. I’m trying to work out whether this is a genuine change in what I want, or whether I’m just completely burnt out.

I used to be genuinely interested in science. I did well academically, enjoyed learning, and was interested enough in research to choose to do a PhD. But somewhere during my PhD, I seem to have completely lost that interest.

I really don’t enjoy the day-to-day research process. I don’t particularly enjoy planning experiments, doing experiments, troubleshooting them, analysing results, or writing about my own experiments. Even when something works, I often don’t get the satisfaction from it that I feel like I’m supposed to.

The strange thing is that I still love learning. I can happily spend hours reading about completely unrelated topics. I enjoy reading and trying to piece together information, writing/editing, and explaining complicated things to people. I think I like learning and thinking much more than I like doing research.

But I’ve also reached a point where it’s not even just academia that I’m put off by. The thought of jobs that are still fundamentally science/lifesciences-related makes me feel a bit… ill? 😭

For example, I’ve looked at things like pharma, biotech, science policy, scientific communications, etc., and logically I can see why they might be good options for someone with a PhD. But my immediate reaction is basically “oh god, I’d still have to think about science all day.” And that makes them feel incredibly unexciting to me.

Which makes me wonder if I actually need to leave science rather than just leave the lab.

At the same time, I’m very aware that this could absolutely be burnout. I’m exhausted, and I’ve spent years being surrounded by science, studying it, researching it and having to constantly think about my project. So perhaps my brain has simply had enough and is currently reacting to the entire concept of science with no thanks. I don’t know how much I should trust my current feelings when I’m this tired.

I’m also at a slightly awkward stage because I’m doing well enough in my PhD and I definitley will finish it, even just for myself, but I’m struggling to find motivation career-wise if I don’t want to use it in science afterwards.

So I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.

Did you completely lose interest in science during your PhD?

Did you eventually realise it was burnout and regain your interest, or did you leave and realise that you genuinely just didn’t want to do science anymore?

And if you did leave science completely, what did you end up doing? How did you figure out what you wanted to do instead when you had basically spent your entire education heading towards science?

I’d especially love to hear from people who moved into something completely unrelated to science, rather than just going from academia into industry/pharma/biotech.

I’m also interested in whether anyone had the same experience of being told “you have a PhD, you could go into pharma/policy/consulting/science communication!” and thinking “yes, but I don’t want to think about science anymore” 😂

I’m genuinely quite lost at the moment, so any experiences/advice would be really appreciated. I’m particularly interested in hearing what happened after people made the jump, rather than just which careers are theoretically available to PhDs.

Hi everyone,

I’m a first-year PhD student currently preparing my first scientific article in maritime field , and I’d like to improve the quality of my figures.

At the moment, I mainly use PowerPoint and draw.io to create diagrams and schematics. They are useful, but I would like to learn how to produce more polished, consistent, and publication-quality figures.

Which tools do you use for scientific illustrations, diagrams, workflows, or graphical abstracts? Are there any online courses, tutorials, books, or other resources that helped you learn figure design and data visualization?

I’d be especially interested in hearing:

• Which software you recommend and why
• Whether you use different tools for data plots and conceptual diagrams
• Which courses or tutorials are genuinely worth the time
• What you wish you had learned about scientific figure design during your first year

Thank you!

Hey everyone, wanted to put up a post as a bit of a public forum for this year's NASA NSTGRO fellowship. I have not found many posts discussing it and think a thread would be nice for those searching for info.

I know of people who have been made "selectable" others who have straight up been rejected, but have not heard of any acceptances yet. I'm wondering how things are going for others who threw their hat in the ring. Any discussion is appreciated

(if this is not the proper place for this kind of post, sorry, and please lmk where is!)

I’m completely new to academic conferences and have just started my PhD, so I’m a little confused about how conference presentations actually work.

When people say they are presenting at a conference, what exactly are they presenting? Is it usually a completed research study, or can it also be a research idea, proposed study, literature review, theoretical framework, or work in progress?

I’m also confused about the difference between an oral conference presentation and a poster. Do both generally present the same kind of research, just in different formats?

My biggest confusion is about PhD students who present at conferences only a few months after starting their PhD. For example, if someone starts their PhD in September and presents at a conference a few months later, what would they realistically have to present by then? It obviously wouldn’t be their entire PhD research, so would they present their research proposal, an initial research question/framework, preliminary work, or something else?

Does this depend entirely on the specific conference and what they accept in their call for papers?

I’d really appreciate hearing from current/former PhD students about what you presented at your first conference, especially if it was early in your PhD.

I’m an incoming 1st year PhD student in the physics program at an American university. Initially, I was interested in working in Professor A’s group, and before committing to the program I reached out to them to confirm that they have the funding to take me on as a student.

However, that was in April, and in the meantime I’ve had the chance to gain experience in an adjacent subfield that aligns much more with the work done by Professor B. I’ve realized through this new experience that I would much prefer to continue this same type of research during my PhD, and that I would prefer to work with Professor B. I’ve reached out to them and confirmed that they have funding for me to do so as well.

However, one big issue is that I verbally confirmed my interest in working with Professor A back in April (although to my knowledge they never signed the forms to make them my official advisor). What’s more, A is in the Electrical Engineering department, which admits directly to a PI’s lab instead of the program at large. Because of my initial verbal commitment, Professor A’s group denied admission of an additional PhD student in order to have the funding available for me. I feel awful about backing out now, but I’ve realized working with Professor B would be much better for me overall. How should I handle this situation?

TLDR: I informally committed to joining lab A, but before my first day I’m looking to change to lab B and I’m wondering what the etiquette surrounding that is

Hi! I'm a first year PhD scholar. I started 6 months ago and the work has been genuinely so fun and interesting. I love deep diving for hours on end. My supervisor and seniors are also very helpful.

I just need to vent about my colleague.

Little background: all the (dry lab) scholars work in this huge room with desks. These desks are not assigned by the institution to anyone, but by mutual understanding people respect each other's desk space. We all paste name tags and stickers to decorate our space.

The institution has recently started desk allotment but only 10-12 people got the mail, out of 70-ish people that sit in the room. This caused a little shuffling as the few people sitting in those assigned desks had to find other desks.

While this was happening I was on a sick leave. My colleague who's in the same year and department as me, lost her desk to this allotment and sat down at mine. She also removed my name tag and anime stickers. Her two friends started sitting on either side as those desks were empty.

I came to college on Wednesday still sick cuz I had to submit some forms, I saw her sitting at my desk but thought nothing of it as I didn't have any work to do that day.

My sick leave ended on Friday and I had prepared what to say to ask for my desk back. I went to her and said I'll be coming regularly so can I have my desk back, she was not ready to leave it. She had three main reasons:

1. She had sat on it for 4 days so she didn't want to move.

2. She wants to sit next to her friends.

3. She claims my desk was allotted to her (not true).

She told me to go sit anywhere else as she's not leaving this place.

Anyway, my seniors intervened and told her she can't claim anyone's desk unless it's assigned to her and she very reluctantly gave me my desk back.

Today while I was working, she along with her friends were being passive aggressive saying "some people don't even qualify for funding yet claim desks like it's their right" (as I didn't qualify for institutional funding) and "some people need to be taught a lesson in adjusting" among other things. I felt suffocated and went to my supervisor to vent.

I also talked to my colleague after this and she denied saying the things and said I must have misunderstood as she was just talking to her friends. She said I was the rude one as I "kicked her away from her friends." Her friends are also narrating to everyone that I shouted at her, which i didn't. She also said she didn't remove my name tag and that I have no way of proving it. Again my seniors noticed and intervened to find a middle ground but she was rude to them and left.

My issue is that had she just texted me about it when I was on leave I would have given her the desk. I don't like conflicts. At the end of the day it's just a desk so idc who sits where but she's creating a hostile environment. My chair disappears everyday, there is random paper trash on my desk in the morning. I feel petty discussing this with anyone so I just wanted to vent here.

Attendance is mandatory for a minimum 3 years after which I can apply for part time/work from home, so I just have to go through 2.5 years of this. I want to keep enjoying the work like before, i just want to do my work and leave.

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

My experience in the lab, however, was complicated.

I was never really given a defined thesis project. Instead, I was frequently assigned tasks across multiple different projects. At times, I was working on tasks contributing to five or more different projects simultaneously. My workloadb could become extremely scattered, with new tasks being added before I had finished previous ones.
I tried to keep up with everything, but I never felt that I had a coherent thesis direction.
Then, during my fourth year, the situation deteriorated significantly.

My advisor repeatedly told me that the reason I couldn’t continue was funding.

Because I wanted to understand what was actually happening, I reached out to members of my dissertation committee for clarification. They told me they had spoken with my advisor and that their understanding was that the issue wasn’t actually funding, my advisor simply didn’t want me in his lab anymore.

I was never given a clear explanation as to why.
At one point, my advisor also told me that I had a “bad reputation.”

This was extremely confusing because I had never previously been told that I had a serious reputation problem. I didn’t know what I had supposedly done, who I had a bad reputation with, or what specific behavior was being referred to.
If I had been given specific feedback, I would have wanted to address it. Instead, I was left with a very serious characterization of me without a clear explanation of what it was based on.
Because I still wanted to finish my PhD, I began contacting other faculty members about potentially joining their labs.
Some faculty initially seemed interested. Then later, they would apologize and tell me they could no longer take me.
This happened multiple times.
I don’t know what was communicated between my advisor and those faculty members, and I have no direct evidence that my advisor contacted them or said anything negative about me. But after seeing this happen repeatedly, I began to suspect that my attempts to find another lab were being undermined behind the scenes.
Then came the part that ultimately forced my decision.
My advisor communicated through the program coordinator that I had two options.
Option 1: I could accept mastering out, which would guarantee that I would receive a master’s degree.
Option 2: I could refuse to master out, register for the following semester, and according to what the coordinator communicated to me, my advisor would give me an unsatisfactory grade for the current semester and the following semester, which would mean I would ultimately be unable to graduate with a degree.

So from my perspective, the choice was essentially:
Accept the master’s degree now, or remain in the program under circumstances where I was being told I would receive unsatisfactory grades and potentially leave without any degree.

I chose to master out.
This was in my fourth year, after I had already passed my candidacy exam and spent years working toward the PhD.
The hardest part wasn’t simply losing the PhD.
It was the fact that I never really understood why I was being forced out.
I had been told it was funding.
My committee members told me they understood that it wasn’t really funding, but that my advisor didn’t want me in his lab.
I was told I had a “bad reputation,” but I was never given a clear explanation of what that meant.
I tried to find another lab, but faculty members who initially seemed interested later withdrew.
And eventually I was presented with the two options above.
I am now finishing my master’s degree and trying to decide whether I should apply for another PhD.
I don’t want to make this post simply to complain about my former advisor. I’m genuinely trying to understand what happened and whether there was something I could have done differently.
So I’d really appreciate perspectives from professors, graduate students, or people who have served on graduate committees:
Is this a normal way for a PhD student to be removed from a program?
Is it normal to tell a student that they have a “bad reputation” without giving specific feedback or an opportunity to address the alleged problems?
How common is it for a PI to effectively prevent a student from transferring to another lab?

And perhaps most importantly:
If you were in my position, would you view mastering out as a failure on your part, or as an outcome of a dysfunctional advising situation?
Also if I master out, how can I narrate this in my SoPs for new PhD admissions. In my last year of undergrad, I got 8 PhD offers when I had less research experience than now but now I feel like I am in a much worse situation than when I was in the last of undergrad.

Dear community,

I’m in need of some advice here: how do you all organise your research and papers?
Many people have recommended Zotero, but I’m not overly happy with it and can’t seem to quite warm up to it. In the past, I’ve always organised my research using colour coding (green for the introduction, orange for Chapter 1, red for Chapter 2, etc.). This system is fantastic because it works with everything: Notability, printed material, PDFs...it doesn’t matter, as long as the colours are available.
I’m worried that using Zotero will throw off my system and add an additional layer of organisation that I then have to maintain. On the other hand, all of my peers swear by Zotero.
My supervisor is a dinosaur like me and does everything manually, so he’s camp me. I’m just worried that sticking to a manual system will eventually become unmanageable and get ahead of me as my research grows.
So: is there anyone else here who doesn’t use Zotero? What has your experience been, and what do you do instead?

UPDATE: ok, only a couple of hours in and the replies keep flooding in. I suppose there’s no way around it. Will book my library’s free training sessions. I will go through all the comments one by one but for now, I am convinced to at least give it a try. Thanks everyone!

I’m coming to the end of my PhD in public health in Australia, and feeling really burnt out and unmotivated. I’m just starting to apply for jobs, but getting some early rejections/not hearing back.

I’m having a lot of career regret as I see friends in actual health fields like dentistry, radiology, medicine etc accelerate in their career with career stability and high earning potential, and even pretty good work life balance. I turned down uni offers for undergraduate health degrees because I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and now I feel quite a bit of career regret.

Job market for public health right now is not great, and even the jobs I see advertised don’t even earn that much salary wise. Plus, lots of the skills I learnt in my PhD are now easily done using AI, like the coding and data analysis side. Worried I won’t get a job, and even if I do, I won’t be earning that much. Any words of wisdom from someone who is a bit further down the line in their career? 🥹

I’m a third year student, and I’m at a point where I feel like I need to make some significant changes, but I don’t know what those changes should be.

The short version is: I am extremely burned out, my phd is very much contributing to problems with my health, I feel like I can never catch up, and I’ve also developed a serious conflict with the animal work in my project that has made me question whether I actually want to continue with this research.

I recently took the summer off to focus on my health as it is something I have severely neglected throughout all of undergrad (and even before that honestly), and it gradually built until it reached a point where I couldn't ignore it anymore. I let it get bad enough where I literally could not function.

Coming back was honestly terrifying for me. I was so scared that I'd come back and everything would set right back up the way it was, especially because, while I did get a diagnosis over the summer break finally, I haven't really reached any real progress with treating it, because it is mostly lifestyle changes that I have to make that feel incompatible with my phd.

My first week back actually went really well. I was very intentional about not setting high expectations, and using my first week back only to plan and reorient myself to what was going on. And I was happy. The structure of the lab is really helpful for me, as I need routine in order to hold these lifestyle changes that I need to incorporate. There were some hiccups. I feel like I still didn't really have time to eat as well as I need to without spending money that I don't have to get meals that are made already, which is a huge hurdle for me. And this food prep time conflicts with the time I need to spend exercising, etc, which makes me feel overwhelmed and like there aren't enough hours in the day. (but this is less of a phd problem and more of an any job problem, honestly. I just don't think I'm really all that great at being an adult to be honest)

But all in all, things at the lab were great. I was very excited to think about my project again. I really enjoy this aspect of my phd. Planning experiments and generating hypotheses and analyzing data is so fun for me. But then this week I needed to turn the plan into reality. And that's where it all fell apart.

I had a flare up this past weekend that bled into this week and then when I got to the lab I just had zero motivation again. I was exhausted and feeling like I got hit by a bus because of my flare up, but I tried to push through. It felt like what led me to have to leave, and that made me spiral. I felt that familiar wave of anxiety that blocks out any chance of a productive thought.

A lot of this has to do with the fact that I don't like animal work. Ethically it feels wrong to me. I am putting these animals through suffering actively, only for the possibility of messing up some step that makes all of it feel like it was for nothing. That in turn puts a huge amount of pressure on me to do it right, which makes me so anxious I'm scared of trying or thinking about it at all. But this feeling has bled into literally everything. Even genotyping sends me into a spiral at this point. And then I feel even more behind and like I need to be working more hours which means I feel guilty for taking care of myself.

Honestly. I'm exhausted. This anxiety spiral combined with the worsening of my health and the feeling like I am behind in the lab and with my health simultaneously is becoming too much for me, and I can feel it wearing on my advisor as well, who is doing his best to support me. My advisor has been so great throughout all of this, and I am so thankful, which honestly leads to more confusion and guilt about everything. I've had many less than great advisors in undergrad, so coming here and having someone who it feels like genuinely cares about me as a person is huge. And I can't discount that. 

I wanted to come back to the lab and try my hardest. Give this a real shot before seriously considering leaving. But I'm at the point where it feels like an option that I should seriously consider. I know that leaving won't solve my problems. I will have to face life in a different font. But I wonder if working a less demanding job for a while could be good for me. But I'm scared that leaving is stupid, and that this is normal and is just something I'm supposed to push through. 

I wanted to do my phd because I love science. And that hasn’t changed. I’m not sure if I want to stay in academia because I haven’t really experienced much of the PI side of academia, but I love teaching and writing and thinking and collaborating on science. I just feel like the amount of space in your life academia takes up is not compatible with the life I want to live. I want my life to be centered around community and wellness and being outside, honestly (another point of contention for me, my lab is a brick box with no windows). This has made me consider trying to switch fields to either some conservation or other life sciences related field. I do love neuroscience and thinking about it but my curiosity with is has always lied in learning what makes people tick and evolutionary biology, not necessarily disease, which is what I’m studying, which has made me consider a more psych aligned path.

I don’t know. I have a lot swimming around in my head, and most of them are doubts about staying. But I just keep hearing “I think about quitting every day” and “it’s part of the process, keep pushing”. And I don’t want to feel weak for stepping away from all of this that I’ve built. 

So, I guess I have a few problems here, but the most applicable one to this sub is: Is it stupid to quit my phd to switch fields? I know how hard it is to get into programs right now, and I worry that I’ll run into similar issues with my health in another field anyway. Should I take time off and work at a coffee shop or something? (I have student loan debt and am terrified I won’t be able to afford living, especially with my health issues if I leave)?

Sorry for the mega long post. Any advice on any aspect of this situation is appreciated. I am having a hard time getting support on this as I’m not great at talking with people in person (I ramble). I’m scared to talk to my advisor candidly about all of this but I plan on doing that when I get back. Thanks!

Dear everybody,

I am a Bachelors student currently doing a placement in Cambridge University. I study in mainland Europe, where, to do a PhD, you have to do a Masters placement. I found out that in the UK you don't actually need a Masters to do a PhD, just a bachelors. I was thinking of doing a Masters anyway (and then a PhD), and although this peaked my interest I didn't think too much about it.

Anyway, talking to a PI recently at Cambridge, I apparently impressed and he is now interested in taking me on as a PhD after my Bachelors (I didn't ask for it he just offered).

I wanted to ask, what are the positives and the negatives of doing a masters first. Should I accept or say I would like to come back after two years. I have actually a fair bit of research experience already, from summer programs, the Amgen Research Program and internships during my studies.

I like the field of research he works in and have done some myself, but of course this is all coming at me very quickly.

Any advice would be much appreciated, especially fro those with PhD and academia experience in general.

I'm currently a year 1 PhD student in cognitive computational neuroscience. By the end of the first year, we are working on our annual progress report, but I found it challenging to build a mature, logical storyline for my ongoing project.

Writing is hard for me, particularly since I'm not a native English speaker. It is also hard from another perspective, as I was not trained this way. I majored in computer science during undergrad, but the courses were all about engineering. I changed my major to cognitive neuroscience because I was interested in the human mind. It is interesting and a field in which I could leverage my previous coding skills. I had gained experience in a basic perceptual neuroscience project, yet it was not computational at all. Later, I completed an MRes in neuroscience and learned how to use computational models to understand our perceptions. My current work shifted from the perceptual field into the social sciences. I guess my supervisor sees my potential in conducting computational modelling to facilitate their work. However, doing such an interdisciplinary study is way more challenging than I thought.

Throughout this journey, I have two primary reflections. The first is that coding is not programming, especially since my previous courses did not provide me with any knowledge of cognitive modelling, Bayesian methods, or even neural networks (old-school lol). I learned a bit on my own from the internet, but I still find it insufficient for research. I guess students who trained this way may feel the same, as knowledge itself is evolving all the time. But given that the techniques are serving the research questions, so generally we actually do not need the most popular one to complete the study and the story behind. The second one is the complex storytelling about social cognitive computational neuroscience; it is way harder to knit together the social sciences-related background, the research question, and why compu, why how neuro, why neuro. In closing, my frustration is getting plain, and I deeply believe it is indeed fortunate to get into the field, even though the pain in doing it is so real and deep. The doubt of not being good enough, the pain of endless learning and negative feedback, and the frustration of uninterpretable results.

I think the next reflection is what science is, especially when working on the data-driven, project-based, and feedback-lacking journey. I was optimistic before because I saw it as a 3D observation of a toy in my hand. Different analyses are like changing views; looking at them, we will find a way to see the truth. But do we really have a truth within the current stuff in my hand?

Get back to my annual report writing, I still have another 5 days to improve it. Please give me any advice on how you got through the hardest time in doing your PhD. And if you have a similar background or struggles, maybe we can have more talks about how we see things similarly or differently, and how we could see things more scientifically as our supervisors :p

Yesterday I received the first citation on my first paper ever! I know it's nothing big but it excites me soo much, since I am currently a masters student and planning to start my PhD next year, and this somehow gave me some sort of self-approval :)

Hi everyone,
I’m currently navigating the waiting game with a manuscript submitted to Wildlife Research published by CSIRO (So Australian based journal) and could use some perspective from anyone who has seen a similar pattern in the portal. Mind you, its my first manuscript, so if i sound confused/green/novice please do excuse me.
I submitted my paper on May 26, and it went into “Under Review” after a few days. On August 3, the status changed to “Decision in Process,” although “Under Review” was still visible beneath it at the time. Then, yesterday (August 18 EU time), the status updated again—“Under Review” completely disappeared, and now the portal only shows “Decision in Process” and lists the name of the Editorial Assistant (EA).
Around the same time, I received a mass administrative email about APC discount codes for submissions made before August 13, though the email explicitly mentioned applying the code “after acceptance.”
It has now been nearly three weeks since “Decision in Process” first appeared, and the final removal of the “Under Review” status only happened yesterday. I’m trying to figure out if this specific sequence usually signals that the reviews are finalized and the editor is now just drafting the final letter. Also, is a three-week window for “Decision in Process” common, or does it typically suggest a more complex decision, like conflicting reviews leading to a Major Revision?
And finally, does the appearance of the EA’s name at this stage usually mean the manuscript has moved to the final administrative checkout?
I’d really appreciate any insights or similar experiences. Thanks!

As a PhD student, I did not expect my dissertation would be read by people outside of my committee. Although I published it on my institution's open access repository, I thought it would languish on a server -- like a book collecting dust on a library shelf.

Today, I went to the repository to confirm my expectations. I was wrong. My dissertation has been downloaded over 1,800 times and viewed 289 times since it was uploaded in March 2023. For someone who had low expectations, those stats are huge. I doubt that I would have gotten those numbers had I published my work through a university press.

I am happy that I chose the open access route. As an academic librarian, I advocate open access to information. I was never going to lock my work behind a paywall.

I advise doctoral students and PhD holders to share their dissertation through open access, if they can. Having one's dissertation disseminated freely translates to more readers and potentially more impact in the field.