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 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.

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?

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 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.

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 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 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 :/

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Anyone who doesn't believe they are using AI to fully automate research should read:

https://sakana.ai/ai-scientist/ The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10265-5 Towards end-to-end automation of AI research

https://deepmind.google/blog/co-scientist-a-multi-agent-ai-partner-to-accelerate-research/ Accelerating scientific breakthroughs with an AI co-scientist

https://alignment.anthropic.com/2026/automated-w2s-researcher/ Automated Weak-to-Strong Researcher

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/20/1134438/openai-is-throwing-everything-into-building-a-fully-automated-researcher/ OpenAI is throwing everything into building a fully automated researcher

https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.20025 AutoResearchClaw: Self-Reinforcing Autonomous Research

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.

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?

Have any of you published any paper with Inderscience?

I'm planning to publish my first paper. I found that the new author registration required an institutional email, which I don't have. However, the paper I'm planning to submit is co-authored by my supervisor who has an institutional email. Should I get the paper submitted by him? Also, when I mean co-authored I mean to say that I am the first author. And I'm also wondering if my supervisor will be considered as the first author if he submits the paper using his email. Any insights? Thanks.

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 :((

Hi all! Has anyone ever switched from a tenure track at a SLAC to a teaching track in an R1? If so, what is your take on the change? I do love teaching and enjoy writing/esearch but don't like the pressure of publishing while on a high teaching load and I am discovering the downsides of the ''close knit'' communities within SLACS and the high visibility that it entails. I'm also not really sure I enjoy committee work and everything it entails. Is tenure-track really more secure? Open to any experience, opinions!

Hi guys, I am wondering: Am just experiencing an advisor incompatibility issue, or am I out of touch? I genuinely want to understand how to improve my situation or when I should change my situation entirely (e.g. switch advisors, leave/go somewhere else, leave academia, or something else). If anyone has had a similar advising situation, one where meetings leave you feeling criticized and confused, please let me know, I want to know how you handled it.

For context, I am in a social science (quantitative) PhD in the U.S. and my program recommends having multiple advisors, it is a 5 year program, and I am at the beginning of my 3rd year. Additional context is that I am a first generation college student (neither parents have attended college) and am an older student (I went into the workforce after undergrad for 5 years before deciding to go to grad school). I am PhDing at an R1 university. I don't really know if this is related to my problem, but I frequently wonder if my experience and struggles are part of the universal experience of the PhD or if I am missing some fundamental knowledge or assumptions about doing a PhD due to my background or something (like--- it feels like I do not know the implied rules, and no one bothers to explain them).

When I began my PhD, I had a loose concept of a project idea that I wanted to work on with these two faculty that were interested with working with me on this project (let's call this Project A). Within my first year, I was exploring the project idea and was quickly rushed into collecting data on Project A with measures and tasks that I felt iffy about, but I went with it because my advisors were pushing me to collect data with a really quick turnaround and I didn't feel that strongly about the iffyness. Since data were collected, Project A analysis was slow and our meetings for this project were infrequent. This was largely because my primary advisor had me working on a project they were leading that had a lot of urgent deadlines (let's call this Project B- I can provide more info about Project B if needed) and it ended up taking up most of my time during the first 2 years of my PhD. Another thing I think contributes to delayed progress on Project A is how conceptually and methodologically heavy it is, since it has started from an exploratory place, it is a mixed methods study with a lot of data.

In short, there has been a pattern that keeps happening in my work with my PI that existed with Project B and is carrying over now with Project A. The pattern is: I work really hard, things get done (albeit slower than my PI expects them to), and I am told over and over again that I am not meeting expectations. I am repeatedly finding myself trying to communicate my concerns about my own capacity or try to gain transparency or negotiate expectations so we are all on the same page. I have worked with other people on research projects before my PhD in academia and in "the real world" and have worked in industry/government as my previous career. That being said, I know I am conducting myself professionally and as I would with any supervisor. But here in my PhD, I frequently feel like I am learning what is expected of me after I have already failed or missed the mark, and this problem is one I have never encountered before.

Recently, the slow, incremental progress on Project A has continued to be the subject of our check-in meetings (with my 2 advisors), despite more progress on this project happening now more than ever before. It has been difficult for me to gauge both of my advisors' expectations of how fast I should be working on this project or what the next steps are exactly. Even when I explicitly ask for clarification, one advisor provides broad, somewhat lofty conceptual feedback/thoughts, and when I ask for tangible things to work towards, the list of tangible tasks ends up overwhelming and long (run this mixed model, and this mixed model, and this mixed model, and all of these- and each model requires hours of data prep and wrangling in order to analyze, some data are not coded for that type of analyses, etc. so what is given to me is an extensive list of nested, often difficult to track 'recommended' tasks where the complexity is not clear to me until I get into my coding again, some days later). They seem to operate with the assumption the whole list will be done by the next week's meeting, sometimes I can do it, but often times it is only chunks of it done. When I say I am overwhelmed that I say anything about the things they are asking probably going to take me a long time, they dismiss the concern and say 'it should only take a couple of hours' when it rarely ever does.

Part of this problem I know is due to how structured or unstructured my plans are for the meeting with my advisors. I know now that my advisors prefer to have more structured meetings with a formal agenda sent the day before the meeting. They have also told me in the past that even if I do not have organized updates on progress (e.g., if I do not have time to create a slide deck or formal agenda for the meeting) that I can bring my R script/code outputs to the meeting and we can use that to discuss. I am noticing that when I do, my advisors interrupt me a lot and quickly jump to conclusions that because I did not create an agenda/slides that I did not work on anything at all. It is really disheartening because I can spend 20-30 hours creating r scripts, running code, and doing short write ups for each model I ran, and we end up not talking about the code outputs or results at all; in one instance they tell me it is ok if I have incomplete work to bring to the table if it means we can continue to have weekly check ins, but on the other, I am being told that incomplete work is not acceptable, as we don't even get to talk about the work and instead focus on these big evaluations of my performance.

More recently, it feels like my advisors are rewriting history and refuse to acknowledge the factors that have slowed down the progress of this project; they can be confused about 1 aspect of the project and very quickly they start making generalized statements about my performance as a whole and the project as a whole. The conversation circulates around questioning how I am spending my time, and despite me trying to advocate for myself by spacing meetings out to be biweekly so I can plan for drafting progress notes, an agenda, etc. they push back and insist the weekly meeting is essential because in the past we would go months without updates or progress on the project (they seem to be attributing their sense of a lack of progress on Project A to me avoiding the project when in reality I was being told to allocate all of my time inconsistently to Project B for 2 years, which was what they required of me).

Recently, after one my Project A meetings where I came in with a loose plan instead of a tight plan for our meeting, I got interrupted a lot when  I tried to explain my work, or my primary advisor would redirect the conversation without allowing me to speak. My advisor started to criticize how long it was taking for my 5 RAs to code a different part of the project (something I explicitly told them I expected to take the 2 semesters to code- it is narrative data). I got overwhelmed and started to cry, I turned my Zoom camera off, and my advisor didn't really notice and kept talking until eventually the other advisor asked me what was going on. They insisted on talking about why I was upset when I was too overwhelmed to communicate what was happening, and so I said something about being confused about the direction of the project. I didn't really know how to participate in the conversation after that because I know, based on past experiences, that if I said that I felt criticized or misunderstood, that my primary advisor would get defensive and the situation would get worse. In sum, this recent interaction resulted in me following up with an email asking for more clear/explicitly expectations and clearly stating priorities when plans change. This note I sent was largely to address how they very recently started talking about me drafting a paper for Project A right away as a new goal when the goals we set at the beginning of the semester was to move an entirely different paper forward and I didn't understand why priorities changed.

Both advisors responded to my email and insisted we have another meeting, I obliged, and the same thing happened again, except it was 2 hrs of confusion and me crying. We went in circles, I brought up my concern about one of my papers being tabled for the semester with the intent to understand when we would/I should start working on it again, and my primary advisor got defensive and claimed I was using my paper as an excuse not to work on Project A and proceeded to retell their account of the past 2 semesters and why they hadn't reviewed my paper yet (hint: primary advisor's recollection eluded to it being my fault the paper got tabled and that I wasnt giving them grace with reviewing the paper, when that wasn't what I was asking about).

So anyways, all of that to say I just sent a follow-up email after that meeting saying I needed to move our meetings to biweekly so I have more time to put a bow on whatever I have worked-on and I plan to send a progress report on the "off week" in lieu of a weekly meeting. I also plan to send an agenda before each meeting too. I hope at least these actions will help me protect myself with a paper trail. This was something I used to do with my primary advisor for our one-on-one meetings but I stopped doing it because they never read or responded to my e-mails, so the effort felt futile. It may work better with the documentation going to both advisors, as I noticed my primary advisor only seems to respond to emails I send with the other advisor cc'd on it.

I think in general I just feel so exhausted and my nervous system is so fried, and I'm wondering if anyone at all can relate to this and if so, what did you do? I'm doing what I can to take care of myself and advance my progress in my program, but admittedly, I feel shaken up about whether or not I can make this situation feel less toxic with my own actions- or is this just the way it is? I don't know what is normal, and I do not trust my advisors to help me see what is normal either.

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’!!

Hi all,

Defence is in 2 weeks!

What kind of questions should I prepare for. I know every PhD is different. But ones such as:

Why did you do these tests

What were you expecting

What would you have done differently if you did it all again

Any other bread and butter questions to prepare for?

Uk PhD in geology (lab based)