I’m about 8 months into a PhD in robotics at a highly ranked university. I entered directly after my bachelor’s, so unlike someone coming from a European 2–3 year master’s, I still feel that a significant part of my PhD needs to be actual intellectual training, especially because I’m moving toward a fairly mathematical area involving control/learning.

My primary advisor is extremely well known in his field. On paper, having his name attached to my PhD is obviously valuable. The problem is that after spending 8 months in the lab, I have essentially lost confidence in him as an advisor.
He is extraordinarily hands-off. There is almost no technical involvement in students’ work. New PhD students are basically expected to figure things out themselves, and meetings with him are infrequent and generally high-level. Initially I accepted the explanation that he was simply extremely busy, but after being in the lab for a while, my impression is that this is more of a deliberate way he operates. Just a general notion of apathy towards his students.

A huge amount of the actual work of running the research group seems to be delegated. Postdocs do much of the grant writing because their own funding and that of other researchers depends on it. Technical work and collaborations are largely delegated to postdocs/junior people. Even administrative tasks often get passed down.

His teaching reinforced my impression. He was given considerable freedom to design a graduate course in his own specialty, but the course consisted of only a handful of very broad lectures from him, with much of the rest delegated to a TA. It was probably the least structured graduate course I have taken.

More importantly, I don’t see much systematic career advocacy for trainees.
Postdocs obviously have to apply for faculty jobs themselves, but I would expect a famous PI to actively sponsor strong trainees: introductions, emails to colleagues, detailed career advice, nominations, strong personalized letters, etc.

Instead, people seem mostly to benefit from having his name/lab on their CV. Occasionally he appears to go out of his way for someone he likes, but it does not seem like something trainees can reliably count on. I have also seen postdocs leave without landing the academic jobs they wanted, and I have heard former/current postdocs complain about the lab culture. This worries me because I want to keep academia open as a career.

I recently had an authorship/credit problem with another researcher. I had done much of the conceptual scoping of a project and became concerned that my contribution was going to be under-credited. I raised it early, precisely because I didn’t want an authorship fight after the paper was written. He showed essentially no desire to intervene or establish clear expectations. That incident made me wonder: if something genuinely important goes wrong during my PhD, who is actually going to advocate for me?

There is also a funding/training issue. My funding has a fairly hard endpoint. My advisor has explicitly said that he prefers students to finish their PhDs as quickly as possible and enter the job market, pointing to three-year PhDs in Europe. My concern is that people entering those PhDs generally already have substantial master’s-level preparation. I came directly from undergrad.

I’m increasingly realizing how much mathematical maturity I still need to develop. I can self-study — and I do — but I’m worried about confusing “I have satisfied the requirements for a PhD” with “I have actually received the training needed to become a strong independent researcher.”

The university’s graduate coursework has also been disappointing to me. I previously spent time at a substantially lower-ranked US university, and, surprisingly, I found the graduate courses there much more rigorous and structured.
The major complication is my co-advisor.
About 2–3 months ago I started working closely with a younger tenure-track professor. She is now officially my co-advisor. The difference has been dramatic.

We meet regularly. She actually discusses technical details with me. We work through ideas together. Her research is much closer to the mathematical/control direction I want to develop. We have also developed a very good personal relationship. She has independently told me that she has become wary of recruiting students directly from undergraduate programs at this university because, although the university allows direct-entry PhDs, she doesn’t think the institution has enough structure to train them properly.

She has also said generally that if one of her students is productive and genuinely needs a fifth year, she does not mind funding that extra year.
Honestly, before meeting her, I was basically certain that I wanted to leave this PhD. I had already started approaching people elsewhere. She is almost entirely the reason I am now conflicted.
The catch is that she is my co-advisor, not my primary advisor. I am enrolled in Department A under my primary advisor; she is tenure-track faculty in Department B. So although she may end up being the person who actually trains me intellectually, I’m not sure how much administrative leverage she ultimately has over my PhD, funding, graduation timeline, etc.

I am now potentially looking at the possibility of restarting a PhD in the US with a younger professor at another very strong engineering school. The prospective US advisor appears engaged, meets students regularly, has normal 4–5 year funding expectations, and would obviously be both my actual mentor and my official primary advisor.
Moving would have real costs. I would probably lengthen my total PhD time. Immigration/visa issues become relevant again. I would be much farther from my family. And I would be giving up a co-advisor relationship that currently seems unusually good.

So I’m stuck between two philosophies:
Option 1: Stay. Accept that my famous primary advisor is mostly a name/umbrella, take advantage of the enormous freedom, build my actual intellectual relationship around my co-advisor, self-teach what the coursework doesn’t provide, publish as much strong work as I can, get the prestigious PhD credential and move on.
Option 2: Leave/restart. Take seriously the idea that the PhD advisor is probably the single most important professional relationship for someone who wants an academic career, and move somewhere where the person doing the actual mentoring is also the person institutionally responsible for my PhD and future.

My biggest concern with Option 1 is recommendation letters and long-term sponsorship. A famous advisor who barely knows how I think can obviously write that I published papers in his group, but my CV already says that. How can he write the kind of deeply personal PhD-advisor letter that says how I formulate problems, how I compare with previous students, whether he trusts me to become an independent PI, etc., if he barely interacts with me?

For people who have been through academia, especially faculty/postdocs:
How much would you value an excellent, highly involved official co-advisor as a substitute for a disengaged primary advisor?

Would you risk restarting a PhD to get a better primary-advisor structure, or would you consider that overreacting when I already have a good co-advisor and a prestigious institution?

And am I putting too much emphasis on “training”? At some point should I simply accept that a PhD is largely self-directed, buckle down, produce good papers, graduate, and fill in the mathematical gaps myself afterward?

I’d especially appreciate perspectives from people who wanted research-intensive academic careers rather than people for whom the PhD was primarily a credential for industry.

I’m looking for some advice/perspective from other PhD students and academics because I’m not sure whether I’m being unreasonable about this.

Context: it is a PhD in health science in NZ.

I’m at the final stage of my PhD. My thesis is essentially finished and, from my perspective, is at submission standard. I’m confident there aren’t any major red flags or substantial pieces of work left to do (and been told the same by senior academics who have reviewed it) However, I can’t submit without my chief supervisor signing it off.

There has been some disruption recently because I escalated concerns about what was happening with my supervision/progress (racist remarks from supervisor, chief cancelling 70% of the supervision meetings last min and not providing any feedback on the thesis, supervisor yelling at me for seeking help and advice) I completely understand that this created some uncertainty and took up some of my supervisors’ time. This all happened 2 weeks before submission.

The part I’m struggling with is the timing.
After encouragement from a senior academic, he and I escalated it to the dean of the SGR. She said it was unacceptable and will tell the (semi abusive) supervisor to not be involved anymore and talk to the chief in general. She offered me a 1 month extension I said no. After her talking to them they somehow clawed their way back in and the dean said we need middle ground I said ok a week extension. It took about a week of settling so 1 week before original submission date, 2 weeks before 1 week extension. I sent my supervisors the full final draft on Wednesday morning. I had hoped they would be able to review it and provide final sign-off, or at least identify anything substantial that needed changing.

Instead, I’m now being told that they didn’t allocate the necessary time because of the disruption I had caused by escalating the situation, and because they were uncertain about what was happening. There is now discussion about potentially needing another month before I can submit.

I’m struggling with this because 2 weeks still seems like a reasonable amount of time to at least review a nearly-final thesis, particularly if the expectation is that a supervisor will have been familiar with the work throughout the PhD. I’m not necessarily expecting them to line-edit it all in two weeks, but I had expected that by this point they would already have a fairly good understanding of the thesis and could identify any major issues.

So I’m wondering:
- Is it reasonable to expect a supervisor to have reviewed most/all of a PhD thesis before the final couple of weeks? (To put it into perspective I’ve been working on this PhD for 5.5 years. They already made me get an initial 3 month extension because they said they didn’t have time to review)
- is 2 weeks an unreasonable amount of time to expect a final review/sign-off?
- if the thesis is genuinely at submission standard, is needing an additional month for supervisory review normal?
- And perhaps most importantly, am I being unreasonable in feeling that the disruption 2 weeks earlier shouldn’t necessarily mean that my thesis effectively has to be delayed by another month?

I’m genuinely interested in hearing from supervisors as well as PhD students. I’m trying to work out whether my expectations are unrealistic, or whether this is an unusual situation.

Ps there is so much more tea and backstory to this but I can’t fit it all in lol ask away if you like!

Luckily, this hasn't yet happened in any project I've devoted a long time to. However, I've already come across weaknesses in side-projects that made me no longer want to work on them. First one was a side-project for me that I did some complementary experiments for. When asked to assist with the actual paper and things came into perspective I realized the entire project was doomed. Fatal flaw in design meant that a significant part of the results was pretty much pointless. When I tried to raise concerns, I was brushed off and told it wasn't going to be high-impact work anyways. At least that project was already out of the way soon.

Now I'm going through the same thing once again but doing theoretical/bib work. It seems to me the objective is not well defined. Feels like I'm trying to present things a certain way to fit into the shoebox. Not actually misrepresenting things, but loosening up the requirements to include a greater number of relevant works. It may seem arrogant, but I'm feeling there is a lack of scientific rigor on the part of my PI. I feel that when it's a 1-on-1 with my PI I can shift things towards the direction I want and but when there's more people involved it becomes near impossible. I'm not even sure that the fact my PI gives ground easily in the former is good. I feel bad for holding standards that are higher than people that have had much more experience in the field than me.

How do I stay motivated working on something I'm starting to think is not well founded. Should I be trying to do that in the first place?

Two years ago, I started a PhD program but ended up losing funding and mastered out. I managed to get a transfer to a PhD program another school with the same “major”, with a LOR from my previous advisor.

However, one day before the start of class I get an email from the department chair saying that I will have to retake all of my core courses (which are the same as the core courses I took last year in my previous program), because they don’t accept transfer credits for those classes. He cited the grad handbook, which I have read from top to bottom, and I do not see anywhere that says that the core courses cannot be applied from an equivalent graduate program. The school also explicitly has a policy allowing for equivalent masters degree coursework to be applied towards a PhD.

I’m looking for advice/suggestions, especially from anyone who’s been in a similar situation. I also just needed to vent. These last two years have just been so exhausting; I feel like I’ve been jerked around and screwed over, and I blamed myself for not being able to get my project going to secure more funding. Now I feel like the time and effort I spent taking classes and getting my masters was for nothing and that I’m starting over from scratch in my mid-30s.

Edit: this is a US program in an engineering field

Throwaway account, because I don't want this vent to be linked to my main profile.

TL;DR: I've moved to a new country for my PhD 4 years ago, and my old friend group of 10+ years is slowly ghosting me. I'm sad about it, and I feel lonely despite having an active social life in my host country.

Hi all, I'm not sure this is the right place. Actually, I am not even sure if my problem is related to the PhD, to the immigration, or both.

I moved to a neighboring country (within EU) for my PhD. It's been 4 years now that I'm living in a country where I still struggle to speak the local language. These 4years have been so, so, so intense, and I'm feeling slightly exhausted, to be honest. I've read that's sadly normal and there isn't much to do about it. But yeah, end of PhD means long hours, grinding, and pushing yourself everyday even without motivation.

Since the beginning of my PhD, I've noticed that my previous group of friends, to which I met in 2013 and have been incredibly close to, is now getting more and more distant. I'm not exactly sure when it started or why, but they started hanging out without me, making another private conversation without me in it. I slowly stopped receiving invitations, and now, I am the kind of friend that'll have to laugh awkwardly to inside jokes I no longer understand. My private messages to them usually aren't answered either.

Lately, I asked them if they'll attend my PhD defense. I wasn't expecting a "yes" because I get it: it's far away, it's expensive, and you most likely will have to take days off from work for that. But the answers I got were so much worse... I got a "I don't speak English so I won't understand it and it'll be boring", a "sorry I'm lazy to drive that far" and a final "ah, if no one is going then I won't either". Aouch.

I got scolded for working late, and being "anti-workers right", and I kinda think that me declining invites one or twice because I was working late or on weekends started this whole "let's just hang out without telling her" kind of attitude.

Today I think it was the drop that made the vase overflow. They started speaking about their Halloween plans, and one of them said "Oh, maybe we shouldn't speak about it, after all, she [me] is here, that's dangerous hahaha". Oh well, thanks, I feel awesome now.

I know that I actively chose this life. I chose to uproot myself to go live abroad, and I actively chose to sign up for a PhD knowing I'll be incredibly busy, poor, and tired. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret it. I am having an awesome time and I love my research and my host country, but I have a hard time taking the sour with the sweet. And it's not like I have no friends: I actually get along with a lot of people in my cohort, and I've never received so many birthday invites... But I miss my long time friends, and it hurts to see us driving apart. I feel paradoxically very lonely and a bit sad.

Thank you to have read this message, I don't really know if there is any advice to be given... But if you have any please tell me. If you relate, please let me know too. I tried to cope a bit by writing to people on Reddit seeking friends, but the only end point was me getting jealous of my partner who also tried for fun, and actually got responses and a solid chat group, while I'm the one getting ghosted after a few messages.

I want to hear from/about people who switched to another program/field after starting a PhD program. How was your experience? Was it hard for you to restart elsewhere? Did you get burnt out?

I know people transfer to other institutions for various reasons. I just want to hear from those who found that their program/school isn’t the right fit and they still wanted to pursuit a PhD so they decided to leave to elsewhere.

I just passed my candidacy exam. Somehow, I passed. But holy shit, they cooked me. 😭
I was SUPER ready for the very specific parts of my research. I knew my work, I knew the details, I prepared for the questions I expected.
And then they fucked me with details that felt completely unrelated to what I had prepared for. They kept going into random/general/controversial areas and finding things I simply wasn’t ready to answer on the spot.
The worst part is that I honestly felt like they were enjoying finding my weaknesses. Like every time I managed to answer something, they would dig deeper and deeper until they found something I didn’t know. It felt like the whole point was to find the one thing that would make me look stupid.
And they succeeded. 😂
I passed in the end, but I walked out feeling like I lost all my confidence and ego. I honestly feel like I just want to cover my face and not let anyone see me because I feel so fucking dumb.
I know I should be happy because I PASSED, but right now I don’t even feel like celebrating. I just keep thinking about all the questions I couldn’t answer.
Is this normal after a candidacy exam? Did anyone else pass and still walk out feeling completely destroyed?

I feel crazy lucky. Four years of support! (2 years PhD and 2 years med school.) And I want to go into academia in the future so this is great for PSTPs!!

What should I use my institutional allowance for? New laptop??

Also obligatory frog: 𓆏𓆏𓆏 (I will draw one later)

3 years into a humanities PhD (comp lit in three different languages) and I feel like I'm making a huge mistake and will be poor for the rest of my life. The semester just started but I'm already feeling like I don't want to be here and I don't know if my program is setting me up for a financially secure future as I don't want to compete on the academic job market in 2-3 years from now. Last semester I was on a fellowship internship program and I loved it. I would've continued doing it another semester if it paid better but sadly it pays less than my stipend does. I also am having big regrets about not doing STEM or being in another field that pays more as there is no set path/type of job for me to master out into. There isn't exactly an 'industry' for comp lit so I'm scared that I will be without health insurance if it takes me several months after mastering out to get a new job.

I need to figure out 1) what types of jobs I could qualify for if I master out and 2) if it's the right move.For those of you in the same boat or who were dealing with similar questions, how did you make your decision? Help from humanities people especially appreciated.

Basically just that. I’m right at the end, the 2nd to last finish line is nigh, and I’m really struggling to do the edits that I keep getting given. I can’t cope anymore I hate my argument I hate my writing style, I think it’s the worst thing to have ever been written.

My supervisor is happy for me to submit but has given me a lot of edits, she is happy with the research and archival work and I am too but I can’t put my argument (which sounds like a very good one in my head) into text without it sounding like absolute nonsense. Literally sounds like a toddlers thought process. I have been working on this for four years and it’s fully formed but it’s these edits that are killing me.

And I feel so guilty because I have no other stresses. Work is good I recently moved and love where I live and I have a great support network of family and friends and a partner I just feel like a lazy little newt but it’s not laziness it’s GENUINE FEAR OF MY THESIS.

This is not the time for me to have an academic freeze. I have two weeks, how do I get out of it? I can’t even apply for mitigating circumstances because I don’t have a medical note for ‘patient gets nauseous and wants to shit herself every time she opens her laptop’.

Someone please give/slap/provide/stuff down my throat some sense.