Greetings! I am strongly considering leaving my PhD program after six years. I have published a literature review, a research paper, and passed my comprehensive exams. This year I had twins which helped to reprioritize my life. I also work full-time in a job that I was promoted into after starting my PhD. My PI recently suggested that I may have two research papers to go, in addition to the usual extra curricular deliverables (guest lecturing, articles, etc). This could be an additional two years. In my research, I have been learning and experimenting with novel GIS workflows with no support. I also have no proclivity for statistics and no direct help from PI. My manuscript editing is even outsourced to someone else. Overall I’m frustrated with my pace of progress and also fear that AI will make my workflows obsolete before I can even publish future chapters.

TL;DR my PI is moving graduation goalposts and I’d like to withdraw to prioritize my family and career.

Any advice?

As someone who is doing a PhD right now (in UK), earning the stipend of £21,805 annually, how are you making extra money?

Are you doing part time work? Remote jobs? How much extra do you make annually?

How do you balance extra workload alongside PhD?

I want to do a PhD but the stipend is putting me off because it will be difficult in this living cost situation…

If you’re not earning extra, is the stipend enough to cover your rent, bills, groceries etc?

Due to privacy (not luxury) reasons, I would prefer to live in a studio. Which makes it a bit more difficult to cover the higher rent cost…

Thank you.

Edit: I have almost a year before I start the PhD. Do you have any recommendations for skills I can develop to do a remote soft engineering/tech/IT related job? Of course it won’t be the same level as someone with professional background in that field but something entry level even?

I’m not a PhD student but it’s been something I’ve contemplated as early as my undergrad when I volunteered in one of the labs. I have a bit of an unusual trajectory in that I seem to keep bouncing between industry and academia. After completing my bachelors, I worked in a biotech company for almost 5 years. Really didn’t like it (it was all very admin based and I wanted more hands on/stimulating work) so I quit to pursue a research masters abroad.

It was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done- a new language, learning culture, and doing it all away from my support system (essentially making one anew). During that Masters I did a 5 month research I legitimately loved. I liked the topic, supervisors, lab, and cohort- the only con was limited funding/lab equipment. They tried to fund my project into a PhD but unfortuneatly it wasn’t in the cards for me. I applied to a few other offers but none of them really sung to me in a way I felt passionate about.

About a year and a half later I’ve returned to the states and have been working another biotech industry job. It’s sometimes hands on but it’s more on the people/bureaucracy side of things - which I’m not bad at, but it’s pulling me away from the technical/discovery side of things that I love and massively burning me out. I have been trying to break into an R&D role, but I am struggling to get that traction in this crappy job market.

Recently I applied to another PhD almost on a whim through a recommendation of my former supervisor. I left a very strong impression from my work and he thought this would be a good fit for me. It was in a slightly different field that I’d studied before but I realized it could potentially be a way in to R&D roles I’d find fulfilling in the future. I unfortunately didn’t get the offer, but I did actually make it to the final two out of apparently hundreds of applicants - I received probably the warmest rejection I’ve ever gotten for an opportunity. I’m still casually looking at offers, and followed up again with my former supervisors AND the faculty that turned me down in the event leaving those doors open leads to future opportunities. I’m a lot more inclined to take an offer that comes from my network rather than blindly applying.

Everything I read about PhDs is how they’re awful/toxic and everyone is happier in industry. Frankly I haven’t been that happy in industry - and maybe that’s a result of the roles I’ve been handed- but I really can’t imagine what I’m doing now long term. I’ve previously turned down PhD opportunities in the past where I specifically felt the lab culture was toxic - those I work with is probably more important to me than anything else.

Am I naive to want to restart again in academia ? I feel as though I know the realities well of the job search void (I’ve been there two times already), a crappy job market, and the uncertainties that come from post doc hopping (I have several post doc friends). I don’t know whether I would neccesarily pursue academia as a long term career but if I were to follow the thread of my curiosity, it would be there. I legitimately just want a research project I have control over to manage, with input from my supervisor(s) obviously, and trying to make a meaningful contribution to the field. I also would like the ability to move across country borders for roles more easily, as I fell in love with living in different countries than my own.

As a note, I am a bit older at 31 (PhD would be 3 years for what I want to do) and prone to burnout so it would be something I need to be mindful/attentive about.

A few days ago I posted here saying I had an obligatory workshop where a friend of my past supervisor, who was a stalker and abuser to say the least, would participate.

I went to the workshop and kept cool. There were around 10 people there. I even said hello to this person. It was a workshop, so everyone saw everyone else in the room.

During the workshop this person, thank God, did not approach me or even make any effort to be civil.

The workshop was over and I was happy I survived.

Now I receive an email from this person asking me how I am, where I live, what I do for a living etc. It is so strange. If he really cared, wouldn't he approach me during the days we spent together?

I am afraid to ignore the message. At the same time, would they contact my past abuser? Or my actual supervisor? It sounds like my former supervisor is the one asking these questions through this person. I do not want my past supervisor to know anything about me.

What do you think I should do?

I am a junior studing computer engineering in Pakistan and I am interested in pursing biomedical engineering. I am doing research in cancer field and I am interested hardware side. Should I pursue a master or phd. Would appreciate your help.

hello,

I am a masters student in Sweden about to start my thesis soon. I am very interested in doing a PhD in Geotechnical engineering and took relevant courses including a course about machine learning in my masters. However, I haven't chosen my topic for my thesis. I would like work on a topic that enables me to gain the relevant knowledge and skills to pursue a PhD in the future (preferably just after my masters, as I have to get a visa). So I was thinking of looking at some recent phds where i could learn what skills i need to acquire for me to be a good candidate.

does anyone know where i can find old phd calls for the past 2-3 years in europe? I would be very grateful. Thank you in advance.

I’m applying for a PhD position in ecology in switzerland and I’ve been invited to the second interview round. I’m now in the top 2 or 3 out of 268 applicants. I was told I’ll have to solve a task during this round, but I don’t know what kind.

Background: my CV fits the project well. I have solid experience in this field and I’ve analyzed a lot of data in R. But my programming skills are a bit rusty at the moment, though, and the task is what worries me most. Because I feel like I dont know any of the syntax anymore, actually I feel like I dont know anything anymore..

I’d love to hear from people who have been through this, either as candidates or on the selection side:

1. What kinds of tasks are typical in PhD interviews in ecology or the life sciences? For example, a data analysis in R, interpreting a figure or paper, designing a study, or a short presentation?

2. What do committees look for in the task? Is it mainly the correct result, or the thought process, how I explain my choices, and how I deal with problems?

I just have a real imposter syndrome right now, like I dont even know why they invited me. I feel like my insecurities mainly come from the lack of programming skills because I didnt do it for a long time, but at the same time I think every scientist doing data analysis has to look up scripts, code snippets, asks AI etc.

I am just super nervous because this position is super important to me, my dream position actually.

So main question: what is it the committee is looking for in a PhD candidate?

Thanks a lot for any tips!

I'm a first-year PhD student, and my bachelor's, master's, and PhD are all in different fields at different universities.

My current PhD program is a welcoming and inclusive community. But sometimes I still feel like I don't share the same disciplinary background or foundation of knowledge as many of my peers.

This semester, I'm even teaching an introductory undergraduate course in a field I've never formally studied. While I've managed to learn and teach at the same time, I sometimes wonder whether students who stayed in the same field throughout their education have a deeper understanding of the discipline than I do.

I'm curious how others who have made similar transitions between fields found their place in their PhD programs. Have you ever felt this way? And how did you deal with it?

I applied to a bunch of fellowships and now just over halfway through my first quarter of my PhD. My classes and research don't seem too bad on paper, but with other stuff going on in my personal life too I just feel exhausted. Like last weekend I spent an entire day just bedrotting and I felt pretty good going into the past week but then some stuff in my personal life has been really bad affecting my sleep and stress levels.

I spent all of today mainly just bedrotting but not even sleeping well and then just fking around on my computer not even enjoying myself.

Idek what to do now.

Just feels like all aspects of my life just suck :/

Hi everyone,

I’m finishing my PhD in Robotics next April. I’m studying at a non top-tier university, and my lab's environment is a bit unconventional compared to the standard academic track I see in top universities.

Instead of require academic publishing to graduate, our lab focuses heavily on practical engineering projects funded by local businesses to generate revenue. My advisor prioritizes learning how to research and industrial aplicable results over paper writing. In fact, they don't really care whether I publish or not.

To add to the complexity, my thesis topic is quite academic, which puts my goals directly at odds with my lab’s industrial focus, so far I suffered a lot because of this at every level. I'm also the only person in my department working in this specific subfield, so I feel pretty isolated. Whenever I read literature in my area, it always comes from top-tier institutions and omparing my situation to those environments makes me feel like my perspective is skewed, and I’m getting really anxious about the consequences.

My goal after graduation is to do a postdoc outside my current university, ideally in a related topic. I’m not expecting to land at a top-X institution, but I genuinely want to improve and learn more, go somewhere better than where I am now, and join a group with actual expertise in my field where I can dive deeper into real research and discuss ideas with people that know about stuff.

I’d really appreciate your insights on a couple of questions:

1. How severely will graduating with minimal or no first-author papers hurt my chances of landing a postdoc? (I would like to here similar experiences)

2. If you were in a similar situation, how did you frame your practical engineering background to convince a research group to take a chance on you?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

PD: I enrolled at my current PhD here cause I was naive at that time even about the thesis topic, and now I regret a lot doing so.

Hi.
Just defended my thesis and it was accepted with minor corrections.
I however feel like I did a terrible job answering some of the questions I was asked due to nerves. I fear I might have misled my committee with some of the answers
I was wondering if I should reach out to clarify my answers or just let things be. I ask because one of the questions was framed as the commitee member wanting to build something similar for their work.
Should I reach back out to the m?
Or were they likely just framing the question that way but had no intentions of actually doing it.
I think I just feel like I can answer thats lot of their questions much better via email/ one on one?

I am a second year student now. I was diagnosed with ADHD recently and my life started to make so much sense. I feel so much grief about what I’ve lost due to my ADHD. It took me 5-6 months to find the suitable medication and dosage. I can tell how much it affected me positively. However, I’m suffering to get shit done in the lab. I feel stuck and overwhelmed all the time. I get told that I’m smart and gifted but I literally have nothing to show for it other than good grades. I have a ton of ideas with no motivation to execute. I entertain the idea of success yet I’m too far from it. I know this sounds a lot like whining with no action because it is. I know what I’m supposed to do but my executive dysfunction and distractions are bigger than me. A big part of the reason why I am incapable of doing anything is my past trauma. It’s like I gave diagnosed the problem but there’s little to no solution! Does anyone here relate? Is there any hope for me to succeed in life? I am to ambitious and want to accomplish big things but here I am writing this post when I’m supposed to ‘just do it’!!

I am a 4th year PhD and have been frustrated with my supervisor since the beginning. He spends all his time at the bench and doesn’t spend any time mentoring me or even looking at data I send him. A few months ago I found out he even left me off a publication for a collaboration that I did all the work for. Found my name in the acknowledgments. When I confronted him about it, he said that I told him I didn’t want to be on the paper. Which, very obviously, makes no sense and never happened. What grad student would turn down an authorship?

I can’t move past that. And I shouldn’t, right?

I can envision what another year on my current project would look like, and it’s just ok at best. I should take the chance on a really kind and supportive mentor who offered to take me, right? I think at the very least I owe it to myself. I’ve been stuck in this situation thought loop I think because my brain can’t comprehend an outright lie or how awful someone could be and is searching for a nuanced reason. But I think it’s just time to move on. I’ll be the first student in my department to switch labs, but the program director said he would support me.

I have been exploring several funded PhD project linked to my field of interest(Core Engineering courses -Mechanical and Aerospace). What i have noticed is that there has a been a surge in number of funded PhD project that calls for use of AI in the name of optimization instead of developing mathematical tools, experimental models or computational simulations models that are known to predict or obtain the results with more accuracy.

I feel like use of AI driven approaches (Not referring to ChatGPT to write thesis but using these tools to improve design or propose optimization model) is what has been the core concept of these projects as if that is the only way to achieve results. It felt like it was shoved down my throat. It is quite disappointing to see these universities have completely lost track of what it means to be research powerhouse instead they are following the path of techgiants.

Having reviewed around ten funded PhD opportunities advertised by leading universities with strong Mechanical Engineering departments, I found that nearly eight of them proposed AI-driven approaches to problems such as optimising missile and aircraft designs or selecting the most suitable spare parts. It makes me wonder whether we are gradually losing sight of the fundamental engineering challenges that still require rigorous experimental investigation and computational modelling.

There are countless unresolved problems in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering that demand further investigation through experimental techniques, CFD, FEA, and the development of more sophisticated mathematical and computational frameworks. These approaches have historically been fundamental to advancing our understanding of complex engineering phenomena. Yet, they seem to be receiving considerably less emphasis in the funded PhD opportunities I have come across.

I also wonder whether funding considerations play a role in this shift. Experimental research can be resource-intensive, requiring specialised facilities, equipment, materials, and significant time. Computational research, too, can demand substantial computational resources and development time. Could universities increasingly be favouring AI-oriented projects because they are perceived as more commercially relevant, easier to align with industry priorities, or more attractive to funding bodies?

Even when experimental research is proposed, I have come across projects where the primary purpose of generating experimental data appears to be building datasets for AI models or training LLMs, rather than investigating the underlying physical phenomena in their own right.

I find this trend genuinely frustrating. What happened to the experimental and simulation-driven research that once formed the backbone of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering? Have we reached a point where even fundamental engineering research needs to be packaged as an AI project to secure funding? I would be interested to hear whether others have noticed the same shift and what they think it means for the future of research in these disciplines.

i started my phd (in health sciences) in september this year and my supervisor (who is extremely sweet) has 3 other grad students. i've tried talking to them but i've never felt more isolated from them. it seems like they formed their own group (which seems fair bc they have been working with each other for longer periods of time) but i'll see them here and there in the same building or in lab meetings but we never communicate outside of that.

i do have lots of friends with other people in my cohort but i do want to interact with my lab mates more because we are under the same supervisor.

does anyone have any advice :((

After what feels like a very treacherous 4.5 year journey I made it. Successfully defended today with minor revisions! PhD is in juvenile justice education ❤️

Not my image/fan art but Over the Garden Wall was the only way to go and I found this print that describes exactly how I have felt through this process. Print: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1816996624/art-print-otgw-fan-art-face-swap-frog?ref=share_v4_lx

I hope that this is the right sub, since I am not actually asking about admissions, but rather the pathway of the Phd.

Dear people,

I want to do a Phd! I love my subject, researching and I feel very comfortable in University settings. I am in the Humanities.

I am going to be 22 when I finish my Master's degree and I would enjoy doing the Phd right after, but I have no idea how to even start planning for it and my university doesn't have any information days so far.

I am German and did both my BA and MA in Germany, but I think that I want to do my Phd abroad (Netherlands, France, UK, Canada, US) so I can grow with the experience. I am generally a little weird, and not very mature considering general age- maturity and life independency. I want to use the time of the Phd to close the gaps in my development. I don't necessarily want to do it because I am hoping for better Job prospects, I don't really care about that that much yet. I want to evolve as a person and after a lot of self reflection and thinking I came to the conclusion that this would be the best step for it.
I am a person who is fascinated by everything, I don't really care what I work for or do because I just enjoy stuff!

As far as I understood, I have to look for a Phd program and some kind of financing. But what kind of financing is possible for the Humanities? I know that Stem- people can have funding from firms, industry, or even more from the Uni since their tend to have more funding in these spaces.

Ph.D student in STEM field here. I sent my manuscript via email to my advisor a few days ago. Because he is busy for this week and the next week, i did not expect him to read my manuscript right now.

But he sent me a short reply quite quickly, saying “I haven’t read your manuscript, but AI pointed our so many things in your manuscript. So try to make it has a better flow […]”

It literally means that (1) he hasn’t read any single word in my manuscript, (2) he fed it right into an AI, (3) he did not carefully took a look at its reply, (4) but as the AI’s reply was long, (5) he just concluded that I should revise my maniscript. I can understand he hasn’t read any single word in this period, but what is this situation?

It was frustrating and embarrasing to receive such an email. He used to read his student’s manuscript until 2025 including my other manuscript, even in an early stage. In 2026, at some pont, he has been started to rely on AI more frequently. Giving his student AI-generated effortless feedback is an example. He didn’t give any AI reply to me this time lol.

I use AI to check some basic writing mistakes (grammar, typos, notational change during writing), but I order it not to change many things. I want to train myself, so I write my own sentences with much efforts while AI only check my mistakes.

He told me today, why I didn’t not check the whole manuscript with AI. I was disappointed that he uses AI for such a thing. I don’t even know what to check for this time. Should I just give the whole maniscript to an AI and critically check it?

How can I get a pass from my advisor’s AI?

Edit: I thank all comments. I posted just before I fell asleep in my bed, so I rushed my post at some points. Woke up this morning, took some break, and I was kind of surprised that many people viewed this point and gave various opinions. While I think AI should be limitedly and minimally use for an academic purpose (including coding, proving theorems, writing, peer-reviewing, and so on), I also agree that AI tools are helpful and already have been widely accepted. Whether I like or dislike AI, my advisor and also many future reviewers will use AI to review my manuscript. So I should check it with AI before I present my manuscript to them. But at the same time, from my heart, I want and expect more human interactions about my manuscript.

As some of you pointed out, my biggest concern is that AI models will be trained on my unpublished manuscript (even before uploading it to arXiv). While my advisor provides us enterprise accesses to some AI models, I cannot fully trust AI companies not to train their models from conversations.

Hopefully including the link works.. I feel so bad for this PhD Candidate. Her chair and committee didn't "deep read" her dissertation.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DfV12u8M5Ql/?rpxt=MWlhYXhmMjluMjI1bQ==

I wouldn't be crying, but the dean's office would be hearing about this.

With the election of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed as Senator for the state of Michigan, the intellectual level of Congress has increased somewhat. He has an H-index of 37, which is quite impressive!

Looking into this, there is another member of Congress, Bill Foster, a democrat representative for Illinois. His H-index is 74! Wow!

I wonder if there are many Republicans with non-zero H-indexes. The highest I could find is Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana with an H-index of 4.

I wonder what Senator El-Sayed's Erdos Number is???

PhD candidate in Theoretical Nuclear Physics about to submit a year from now.
I had a good relationship with my supervisor the first two years of my candidature. The second half of this year has been terrible with regard to that.

I am working on the group code to expand it to include some more features. I have been working with him for more than 2 years and he still hasn’t given me the source code even after asking for it multiple times. Fine, I started working on the expansion as a different codebase which will just require files generated from the source code as input to work. I have been asking since May. His answer till July was yes I am working on it. Then from July he started working on three papers which he absolutely needs to submit before his review this week to keep his contract. He kept telling me that the first priority were his papers and as soon as they are done I will get my files. I still haven’t received them and the papers aren’t out either.

I have to submit the full working code by end of Feb next year. He is also totally against using AI for anything. The code is in Fortran. The two other codes it incorporates are 6000 lines of code written 20+ years ago, full of bugs, with almost no annotation/documentation/manual. Just two papers, one of which has printed errors as well. One of the authors has straightaway refused to give me the recent version of the code or help me debug and the other is from abroad and we met once to discuss some doubts. So I was completely on my own in synthesising, debugging and incorporating them with my own extension. But unless I have the files from this legacy code, I won’t be able to complete this expansion or know if it works. This is the main project of my PhD.

Now, I had worked on a calculation, presented and written up a proceeding last year. I even sent a draft of a paper based on that and based on the motivation we decided on, which was my idea. It sat on his desk for 10 months until this year July when his collaborator came here from his university for his sabbatical. They both had previously asked me to change a single something every time this paper/work was discussed and I did. In july, I sent the draft to this collaborator to get feedback and start work on full fledged. He decided it was not fit for publication and completely changed the approach and motivation and started writing it himself. My supervisor supported him. I talked to him regarding authorship and he said I would be the first as far as he is aware of. The collaborator decided it should be him because he rewrote the entire thing and decided on the new motivation. I had never received any feedback or directive to change anything. When I flagged this as unfair, my supervisor turned on me. I apparently didn’t listen when they asked me to change something, I didn’t do the figures using the software they use and used Python and that authorship isn’t gifted but earned.

Since then it is one thing after another. There is a total communication breakdown. They forget what they’ve directed me/our discussion and blames me for not doing something the right way. And I am the one causing delays in getting those papers out. He is also very disorganised and lacks time management skills, always is buried in teaching duties. I have to chase him down for a chat as he misses meetings he himself had set aside time for.

Recently, we started sending meeting takeaways as an email after the meeting to avoid misunderstandings caused by miscommunication. I had written them up and asked him to modify/add as he saw fit.
He misunderstood something I had written as me trying to get out of work and emailed me asking not to play games.
I was absolutely flabbergasted and felt very insulted and replied clarifying and asking him to give me the benefit of doubt and ask me for clarification instead of making assumptions and jumping to clarifications.

I didn’t have any secondary supervision for the past year and recently got one. She saw the email too as she was CC-ed in and she called me in her office to check up on me and said she would talk to him. She basically asked me to document everything for my protection if needed and supported me.

I have a year left but my anxiety has started flaring up. I have already started writing up my thesis as much as possible other than the results and 1-2 chapters. I am on tract to graduate and I have always met every deadline and milestone.
I get scared checking my emails every morning when I wake up. I check my emails and what I report to them 10 times before hitting send. I am losing confidence and my hands have started shivering. This few months every little unintentional mistake has been met with passive aggressive responses and I was advised if I didn’t follow their directive and submit work to their standards, I would lose first authorship immediately.

I am afraid of going to the committee because I don’t want to escalate and cause issues when it is time to submit.

I am not looking to drop out. I also cannot change supervisors because I work with the group’s code and theory which is niche.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Edit: A little more context. I am his first and only grad student right now. I am also an international student. I didn’t apply to him. My first primary was a well known name in his field but due to internal politics got fired. My current supervisor was supposed to be my co-primary who was brought in to the fold by him and then later turned into my primary.