r/PhDStress

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 workload 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.

This is a rant. Not looking for advice.

From the low pay to ridiculous supervisor expectations and failed experiments. Sometimes the lack of supervisor expertise, their absence or micromanagement. People in my life just don't understand.

"Why don't you just tell your advisor you need more time?" Because my thesis due date doesn't give af if I need more time or not.

"Why don't you just take your leave you're entitled to?"

Again. Thesis due date doesn't give af.

"Have you told your supervisor how much work you did?"

They don't care what you do unless you give them a publication.

"You should just tell your supervisor to send his feedback on time". They genuinely believe their time is worth more than yours. You are just a means to an end. You're the only one meant to stick to a deadline but rules don't apply to them.

"You should ask your advisor for help"

Nope. They are remarkably unhelpful. They aren't knowledgeable in my subject area, and the more I involve them the more they use it as an opportunity to boost their egos or create more work for me. Luckily my co-supervisor is helpful. Unfortunately his suggestions don't align with my primary advisors so I get to juggled opposing views too.

"Have you told your advisors the experiment has been really difficult to troubleshoot and that's why results are taking long and are complex to analyse"

All they hear is I'm not working hard enough.

This whole thing is the perfect situation for advisors to avoid accountability. Everything is your fault. If you struggle, it's a right of passage. You're supposed to be burnt out, you're supposed to meet ridiculous expectations, you're supoosed to not take leave. All while not losing your shit or burning bridges because you need their reference to find a job.

Sorry, I'm getting ready to submit and the closer I get the more triggered I get and quips from my advisor. I tried to vent to my partner about something and he made suggestions that don't help me and no one who's not doing a PhD will know how trapped you are in your situation.

Before anyone says I should speak to HR, take leave, set boundaries, switch advisors etc, I just want to say 90% of my PhD has been spent trying to find ways to survive this time in my life. I've been to HR, I did set boundaries, I negotiated keeping my current advisor as long as they do x and y, I do also take leave. But some things still bleed through and it will only be enough when I leave.

Commiserate with me and tell me how people don't understand how a PhD runs your life even if it isn't just experiment or project struggles.

I don’t think I can do this anymore. I’ve been so stressed about my PhD this summer that I completely missed the abstract deadline for a conference, full submission is the end of the week. Now I have a completed paper but nowhere to submit it. I emailed the conference organizers to explain what happened, but I don’t have high hopes.

I’m seriously considering handing in my resignation. I’m just not sure I can handle this level of stress anymore.

What’s up Docs (and Docs-to-be)!

Any advice on what to look out for while picking supervisor? I’ve heard both testimonials and horror stories that have made me really cautious about this.

How did you navigate your selections?
For those who got great ones, how has that affected your research?

As well as the terrible ones? Have you had to confront them about their negativity? How did they react?

Baseline question: What made you know you and your supervisor were compatible/incompatible?

my experiment isn't working and it's the last one i have time for before my deadline. im getting nothing helpful, one week my supervisors are talking about how i really need to think about what im doing and make plans and the next week they're trying to reassure me that i don't need to panic. i think they just keep pushing and pushing until i finally can't control my emotion and have to hold back tears, and that's when they finally notice and pull back a little bit, but it's too late because they've questioned every decision ive ever made without providing any alternative so now i don't trust myself making any decision at all and they reassure that i can just go for something and stick with it but ive done that before and then other people have basically told me that was a stupid thing to do and now it's all too late and i just think im going to fail so i might as well quit now because i don't know how much longer i can take this at all. and there's just absolutely nothing that is meaningly helpful and sustainable, there are no options that actually work to help me. but i need the money of the stipend so ill just pretend im doing okay enough that they don't kick me off the phd and then ill figure out what i do in my life with a failed phd and no helpful experience and no published papers or conference posters or presentations and no connections and nothing but wasted time for everyone involved.

Recently I submitted 2 articles in 2 different journals published by Wiley and they both went from In screening to Under review! Does that mean these papers has actually passed the desk check or it's still on the table with the editor??

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?

I’m nervous! I have my oral defense tomorrow and i a
worried that after my presentation I won’t have anything to say!

The total time for the defense is 2 hours of which 20-25 minutes is for presentation and the rest is the actual defense. I have attended a few presentations where the defense part of it is always closed. So I don’t know what to accept! I have chaged my slides 4 times now, modified my notes it sounds more academic and now I don’t think it sounds like at all! I feel like and sounds like someone else. My thoughts are scattered (if not evidenced by this post😑🙈) and I feel like I will forget all the work I have done!

Any advice!? 😭

Admittedly I wrote a complicated research paper that was ambitious. I was trying to bridge corrosion performance with dielectric properties of a unique composite lubricant.

This was novel in many ways, but yeah it was quite loaded. I tried to over explain myself to make my points thoroughly come across. I tried my level best to juggle the multiple variables in an artful and pragmatic way.

Anyways we've went back and forth with my revised drafts about 7 times. Each time we've been nicking, tucking, and performing intellectual microsurgery on the manuscript. But after version 6, we basically decided that trashing the latter half is the way to go. Conclusively I'll have to rewrite the paper.

I don't feel anything towards this paper anymore. I can't recognize it. Everything that made me feel on fire while writing it is gone. The crux and creativity of this paper have been pasteurized.

I’m in the later stage of my PhD and honestly struggling to tell whether this is normal PhD pain or just a bad supervision situation.
My project is highly interdisciplinary, involving experiments, modelling, biology, chemistry and computational work. The biggest problem is that my main supervisor doesn’t really understand the technical side of my topic, so I often don’t get useful scientific guidance. Sometimes I’m asked to do calculations that don’t even correspond to anything meaningful scientifically.

I also recently discovered a questionable term in my work that apparently had been added. Somehow this went unnoticed despite the results being checked multiple times by co supervisors.
Now I’m trying to figure out what is actually scientifically defensible, fix problems from previous work, and turn everything into publications, while also running out of time.
I have a collaborator who understands my topic much better. I can actually discuss the science with them and get useful feedback, and honestly they sometimes feel more like my real supervisor than my actual supervisor.
The frustrating part is that I don’t mind working hard. I just need to know that I’m working on the right problem.
Instead, I often feel like I have to first figure out whether the question I’ve been given even makes scientific sense before I can answer it.
At this point I’m wondering: Is this just part of becoming an independent researcher, or is this genuinely inadequate PhD supervision?
Has anyone else experienced something similar?

Hi! I’m a PhD student in accounting, and I was told that you should only keep the literature that directly serves your hypothesis and that there should be a clear line of story running through the literature. But I’m still struggling with how to actually implement this.

Basically, I have two difficulties:

1. How do you connect the dots across different papers in a way that builds a coherent story and motivates your research question?
2. How do you quickly identify the “skeleton” or core structure of a literature?

If you have any great books, courses, or other resources that helped you develop these skills, especially for accounting research, I’d really appreciate your recommendations!

Today, I got to warn one of the undergraduate students about the toxic environment of my research group before they applied with one of the professors.

I wish someone had given me a warning when I was in their shoes.

Hi everyone,

I’m 26M, currently 2 years into a Master’s in Physical Oceanography. I’m severely stuck with procrastination, low motivation, and a lack of interest in my specific research topic. I feel isolated seeing peers move forward in their careers, while my only experience consists of my degree's internships. All of my good friends did not go to university of finished a while ago. Babies are coming, and houses are bought, and I'm still unemployed.

Have any of you guys been in that situation? It's bad to the point where I'm not working at all on my master and wasting my time gaming or doing other stuff. My supervisors don't know that I'm not working at all on the project, but they know about my anxiety and my slow pace. When i have a deadline, I always manage to get my stuff done. Bad mental health and lack of purpose should be the cause of this. I haven't achieved much progress in the last 2 years on it. I'm too ashamed to even go to school now that I suffer some kind of social anxiety, and avoid my supervisors and haven't made any friends at school because of that.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and pardon my bad English as it's my second language!

For context: I am in math/theoretical cs, EU-based.
My supervisor left for the whole month of July, during this month me and a postdoc did substantial progress on an important paper we are working on, we are happy about it. The postdoc left for their vacations, and I've met with my supervisor twice now this month.

First meeting, they were all happy and agreeing with our ideas and how the paper is looking. Next meeting, they backtrack their words (without acknowledging it), says "I have big doubts on all your methods and proofs", tries to change the approach we collectively agreed on (with them) before they left, and demands a clean draft quickly to review.

I am just sick of this guy always doubting my abilities, backtracking without at least saying sorry, and trying to change things last minute.

My other supervisor is nice when the other is not around, otherwise he is a yes-man to this guy.

Second-year ML PhD here, and I keep falling into the same trap whenever I start looking into a new research direction.

I tell myself I just need to read a few papers before I start testing anything.

A few papers becomes 10, then 20, and suddenly I have 30–40 PDFs, way too many highlights, and a Notion page full of notes but still no actual experiment. The weird part is that it feels productive the whole time. I’m reading, comparing methods, taking notes, but if someone asks me what I’m actually going to test, the answer is usually still pretty vague.

This time I tried forcing myself to stop treating literature review and experiment design as two completely separate stages.

I was looking at recent work on alternative attention mechanisms for low-resource setups, and instead of trying to understand everything, I focused on a few things: common baselines, metrics, differences in experimental setup, and places where the results didn’t seem totally settled. I also used mira by deep principle to help me get through some of the paper comparison work. Mostly just because doing the same kind of breakdown across 30+ papers manually was getting old.

I actually ended up with a few hypotheses, a baseline, and a rough experiment plan instead of another giant pile of notes.

Still need to write the code and find out whether any of it survives contact with reality lol.

How do you guys decide when you’ve read enough and should just start testing?

LONG RANT AHEAD:

I am a sixth year PhD candidate about to defend next week if all goes well, but all I can think about is how everything has gone so wrong during my time in my program. I consider myself a below average candidate for many reasons and these are not just the imposter syndrome talking.

To summarize the issues that transpired over the years:

I was the only student that had to repeat a stats course within my cohort. My stats professor behaved like a sweetheart when interacting with students but graded exams like he had a personal vendetta. A third of his exams consisted of two full essays and if you forgot a detail about a particular statistical method you would lose points even if the argument or comparison provided in the prose was accurate. Nonetheless this was a pretty traumatic experience and my peers and I still refer to this professor acknowledging how bad it all was.

I only have a coauthorship with a few first author manuscripts close to being finished. Now here I will admit I could have been more proactive, but whenever I would share drafts to my advisors they would take a long time to give feedback or they simply wouldn’t. I know for a fact that my advisor only gave me feedback once on a paper that was part of my dissertation proposal and by the time I defended this paper, I almost didn’t pass.

Speaking of advisors, I chose my main advisor because I had worked with him previously as an undergraduate and I liked his mentoring style. I remember him being supportive, understanding, helpful and would advocate for me and other students so much. However, ever since day one it felt like I was left to figure out and learn everything on my own. I understand this is part of the experience to become an independent researcher, but when you ask an explicit question about something someone should know given their expertise and you don’t get a clear answer then something is not right. For example, my work implements longitudinal analysis because it focuses on neurocognitive development. Whenever I asked about the proper implementation of methods while presenting analysis updates I usually wouldn’t get clear answers and he is supposed to have a strong background using these methods or with developing populations. In a different example, I spent a large amount of time working with large neuroimaging datasets that were processed with more unique and sophisticated parcellations of gray and white matter and I could never be referred to a paper, codebook, guideline, or even a person that could clearly answer what the thousands of variables I had on the spreadsheet I downloaded were referring to. This issue became a daunting problem recently while I drafted the last chapter of my dissertation.

I also originally had a co-advisor that left around my third year because he got a job offer at a different institution in a different country, but promised he would remain responsive and provide feedback an my quals. Well, this advisor did a no-show during my advancement and caused growing tensions with my other committee members and almost delayed my advancement. He also never responded to give me feedback on my quals and he had the most relevant experience with the methods and area of my dissertation proposal. This one really stung because whenever my main advisor would take longer to get back to me my co-advisor would pick up the slack or give me more detailed and practical guidance.

I’m at the point where I don’t even know what to do. I struggled at every step of my PhD journey while my peers seemed to just breeze through, publish at least a first authored paper, or seemed to have received more structured guidance from their advisors that allowed them to complete milestones by required deadlines. While my advisor would seem to wait until the last minute to give me detailed feedback that required major revisions and editing. I just shared my dissertation with my committee earlier today after I had to ask for an extension when some aspects of my last chapter raised eyebrows and while I’m trying to reframe and fix this chapter, he went back to previous chapters to nit pick them, even though he spent the last several weeks praising my excellent writing on these previous chapters. He goes on to say that not having significant results in some areas of the dissertation is not the problem as long as I can properly account for this, but then goes on to say that maybe I should consider adding more analyses. He went from praising my writing to comparing it to the writing of one the students he hardly has anything good to say about in the span of a few days.

My overall experience was very isolating too, until I TA’d and met other students and faculty from different departments and I began to mentor my undergraduate research assistants. If I managed to stay this long it was largely because of them to be honest.

So I’m a few days away from defending, I don’t have a postdoc lined up or any job. I have a good amount of teaching experience, but I haven’t even heard back from the lecturer positions I applied for. I’m also afraid my advisor will simply disappear after I defend and won’t work with me to publish my pending manuscripts just like he has so far. I do want to continue doing research and mentoring/ teaching, but I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do at this point to improve my situation to continue down this path. I constantly search reddit for stories similar to mine, but I don’t find them relatable, or thanks to the fact that they had publications and a record of awarded funding they were able to land a postdoc or job offer even before defending or without much trouble.

If anyone has a story about how they pulled through a similar situation it would be really helpful. I’m at the point where it feels like I have nothing else to lose and don’t know what think anymore. Thank you for reading.

I’m doing a PhD at the moment and can’t believe the amount of pressure it’s putting on my life and mind. It takes up every waking hour of my thoughts and I feel like I’m in a state of chronic stress all the time. I need to complete the PhD for my future job.

Does anyone have any real advice or perspective? I’m so upset all the time.

I'm really struggling and I could use some advice from people who have been through something similar.

I’ve been working on my master’s thesis for almost 2 years straight, with basically no holidays or proper breaks. The project is also pretty ambitious for a master’s and honestly feels more like a PhD project sometimes, but I kept pushing through.

After I finished a big milestone, I took a break because my eyes were really tired from all the writing. I thought I just needed a little time to recover, but somehow that break turned into 3 months. I also ended up postponing my defense to next semester.

Now I just can’t seem to get back into it.

I’ll work for one day, then all the stress and worrying starts building up again. Sometimes after a writing session I realize I’ve been clenching my teeth so hard that my jaw is actually sore. Then I get overwhelmed and stop again for a week. After that I feel guilty for wasting another week, which makes starting even harder.

I just don’t know how to get myself back into it anymore. I’m even thinking about going back to the city where I’ve been studying, just so I can get away from all the distractions at home 🙃

Has anyone been through something similar? How did you get yourself to start again after being away from your thesis for so long?

I just failed my comp exam for a social science major, and I was wondering if anyone has advice. I plan on retaking it soon, so if you have any suggestions, let me know. I have been very stressed lately, and I really want to do well because I want to be a professor after I graduate. It has been a lifelong dream of mine.

I’m so tired but I feel like I’m so behind and that others are working harder than I am. I feel unappreciated for what I do, but also that I’m not doing enough. I feel like I try to put on a happy mask when I come into lab, but inside I’m just so overstimulated by social interactions and all the lab sounds that I just want to lock myself in a dark room by myself in silence. I’m trying so hard yet it never feels like it’s enough.

And yet here I am, working in labs on the weekends basically alone, but it never seems like I’m good enough.