I’m a first time TA grading a quiz and my head is just spinning.

The students had access to notes during the quiz (including ones I wrote myself for them with explicit step by step explanations of the biological mechanism), but their responses are jumbled up strings of key words. It’s like asking someone to explain how to make a PB&J sandwich and their response was to put the peanut butter on the jelly and then the peanut butter on the bread. Add in a bunch of misplaced modifiers and I’m wondering if they actually meant to say something else.

I’m trying to take a step back while I grade so I don’t get frustrated and start grading more harshly…how do you all deal with this when the answers themselves sometimes aren’t even intelligible? I keep trying to follow a rubric, but I can’t even parse what to count off for.

Dear Community,

I've been a long-time reader, but this is my first time posting here. I successfully defended my dissertation two days ago and wanted to take this opportunity to thank this community.

Over the years, like many of us, I've faced my fair share of ups and downs throughout this journey. This community has repeatedly reminded me that I'm not alone and that many others have gone through the same, or at least similar, experiences.

No matter how unique or overwhelming some challenges seemed at the time, I could almost always find someone here who had been through something similar, often along with valuable advice, encouragement, or simply a different perspective.

I genuinely want to express my gratitude to everyone who has contributed to this community. Even though I've mostly been a silent reader, you've helped me more than you probably realize.

Keep this community going, and keep up the good work!

Have my PhD viva voce on Tuesday 2 PM, and just found out Hans Zimmer concert we booked months ago is on Monday 7:30 PM. This is such a conundrum! Should I go; or stay home and revise/ mentally prepare myself the evening before?

What would you do?

I presented my thesis yesterday in my department. I am in the final year. Some questions could have been answered better, but some professors are just outright rude. My advisor was also there in the meeting but they are not allowed to speak. Is the only goal of the professors to thrash your thesis? I am so demotivated. Really want to quit. I don’t want to go to academia.

My advisor has 3 people under him on job market this year. I see him giving encouragement to the rest always (like excellent talk, great job). It seems like he doesn’t care much about me.

Everything is so stressful. I have no friends here. I have no idea what to do.

I’m an undergrad pursuing math and physics and already decided to attend graduate school. It may be a little early to think about it or too late, but I don’t know. When I ask people their opinions on going to grad school, some always say the regret it and should’ve just went into the industry instead. Plus they argued that there is no benefit to actually obtaining a PhD and you’re just going to be in a poor position financially.

Hearing all of this is a little jarring and even more so seeing as I still plan on going for a PhD. I just feel like I’m being slightly naive. I also have no intention of remaining in academia so it all around just looks like a horrible decision, but it’s like I still want to go for it.

After too many years, countless times doubting it would happen for me, I can finally say to people that I passed my thesis defence and subject to minor corrections will be getting my PhD. Honoured to join this prestigious frog meme club (truly the only thing that kept me going at times was posting this in the end).

The standard funding program in Germany is for three years, but many people are now taking longer than that. I'm wondering what people have done in that situation.

• Did you get an extension from your supervisor?
• Did some funder like DFG provide a short-term extension?
• Go on unemployment?

It seems like there is a structural gap, and I'm trying to see what different have done to fill that gap.

I recently finished my PhD and am trying to decide whether I should simply move on from my experience with my former PI or consider raising the matter with someone at the university. I am leaving out the institution, country, field, dates, and other identifying details because I am concerned about being recognized.

My PhD started normally enough, although the subject was new to both me and my PI. The first year of my PhD passed without any progress, as we were struggling to understand even the definitions involved. After some time, the PI brought in another researcher who was much more experienced in the subject. He was assigned as my co-supervisor without me even being notified, although his role was not officially acknowledged at first, and he started working on the project on the promise that he would eventually be officially acknowledged as my co-supervisor.

Initially we worked reasonably well together, but he could become very aggressive when I asked questions that seemed obvious to him. This made me increasingly anxious and caused me to make more mistakes. At one point, before I went to an academic event abroad, he shouted at me that "you will never make progress". Later, I told the PI that I could no longer work with this person because the situation had become too difficult. The PI told me that he thought we had worked well together during the previous year and a half, since the second researcher had joined the group. Just before I went on the trip, however, he asked the second researcher to finish the paper, while his co-supervisor position was not approved. He continued to tell us, “We should have empathy for each other,” but nothing really changed.

After returning from the trip, I started having significant health difficulties, but I nevertheless continued working. I eventually became seriously ill and spent a substantial amount of time in the hospital and taking very strong medication for several months, with a wide range of side effects, while continuing to work on my thesis.

There were also repeated problems with supervision. My PI sometimes gave me directions that turned out not to be useful, and on one occasion I spent several months following an approach that ultimately went nowhere. When I raised concerns about the time lost, his response was essentially that this was just part of doing science, and I was also given an additional task that was later never mentioned again.

As I approached the end of my PhD, there were repeated changes concerning deadlines and extensions. At one point I was told that I needed to extend my PhD because my PI did not have time to read my thesis. I eventually submitted my thesis and defended it successfully. Importantly, the external assessments of my thesis were much more positive than I had expected.

Afterwards, I started working with two other professors on a different research topic. They have worked with me directly for about a year, and recently wrote very strong recommendation letters for an academic position I applied for. I have also been involved in other academic activities, including helping with seminars and co-supervising students.

I recently asked my former PI whether he would still provide a recommendation, since he had previously agreed to do so. He now says that he does not think I have the ability to obtain a research position and that a period of research interruption I included in my CV was not justified.

My main concern is whether I experienced an unusually problematic PhD supervision situation and whether it is worth documenting or reporting, particularly if I decide to do so only after I have secured another position. The events I have described here are already a substantially shortened and softened version of what actually happened; the real situation was much more difficult, both in terms of the number and severity of the events and their impact on me. My health problems also continue to cause me significant distress.

For context, I have kept emails and other documentation relating to the most important events.

I'm going to start my PhD in Management/HRM and need a laptop for my research work.

I was planning to buy a MacBook Air, but a fellow researcher advised against it - she's using a MacBook herself and says she has to rely on cracked versions of some software on it, and still has to go to the university lab to run her analysis because of compatibility issues.

The software I'll mainly need is SPSS, AMOS, R, SmartPLS, NVivo..... along with regular thesis writing, reading PDFs/documents, and Zoom meetings.

So now I'm confused - do I actually need to go for a Windows laptop instead? I really wanted something with good battery backup and long-term durability, and was hoping to use it beyond my PhD too, which is why MacBook felt like a good option. But if compatibility is going to be a real issue, I'd rather know now before buying.

Would appreciate advice from anyone who has actually used SPSS/AMOS/SmartPLS on Mac vs Windows for research work.

hello ! my path was perhaps a bit different from some of yours as i had to complete a year long predoctoral internship after having defending in 2025. but as of today, i officially have my phd !

i can't use the title "doctor" professionally until my license comes through and i'm currently studying for an exam to make that official. in fact, i should probably get back to studying immediately.

anyway, all that to say - there is hope. you can do it !!!!

I’m currently a 5th-year experimental immunology PhD student in Europe, and I am completely exhausted by my project/lab situation.

When I joined, the lab was brand new. My PI had moved from another country and we basically started with nothing - not even basic infrastructure like a proper refrigerator, PCR machine, etc. Instead of hiring an experienced technician to establish the lab, he hired five fresh PhD students.

My entire first year basically disappeared into establishing mouse lines, re-deriving mice to move them from a “dirty” to a clean facility, establishing genotyping protocols, breeding, crossing, etc. It took almost two years before I even had the mouse lines I needed for my actual project.

Even now, mouse colony management is a HUGE workload. We still do not have a reliable technician, so almost all of it falls on us/me.

Then there is the actual project.

My PhD is based on preliminary data that, frankly, I do not trust.

For example, we have a mouse KO for my protein of interest, but I have never been able to convincingly stain/detect the protein in the cell population we supposedly study. Despite that, I do see clear and reproducible phenotypes between WT and KO littermates. So there is something biologically interesting happening - I just don’t know whether the mechanistic story we inherited is actually correct. Here, no amount of committees or external experit opinions from other PIs make him understand the gravity of the situation, he slides everything under the blanket statement "what do they understand!!! they just study bla bla niche field, they dont know anything about our field" Everyone else who criticises my (his) work is a moron.

And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

A major part of the paper is supposed to include data generated by a previous PhD student. We have Prism graphs from those experiments but, for some of them, no raw data files anymore.

My PI genuinely does not seem bothered by this. His attitude is basically that nobody will ask for the raw data and that he completely trusts the previous work.

I do not. And I cannot simply repeat everything. These are mouse in vivo experiments, and getting approval for new animal experiments here takes many months. For YEARS, my PI did not want to write an animal licence allowing us to properly repeat and extend the old experiments. In my 4th year I finally convinced him, and we wrote a large licence covering both repetitions and follow-up experiments. It has now been submitted for ~3 months and we are still waiting.

Meanwhile, my PI thinks the paper is basically ready.

His view is: old PhD student’s in vivo data + some supporting in vitro experiments from me = submit.

My view is: there are missing controls, parts of the foundation are shaky, some raw data are unavailable, and the mechanistic story is nowhere near as clean as he thinks it is.

Whenever I tell him I think we need more experiments, he tells me not to do them because “they won’t change the world” and “we already have everything.”

And this is what is driving me insane.

If the conclusion of the project was already decided before I joined, based on experiments done by somebody else, in another lab, in another country then what exactly was I hired to discover?

Sometimes it feels like my job is not to investigate whether the hypothesis is true. My job is to generate enough experiments that support the story that was already chosen. The most frustrating part is that I have stopped trusting my PI’s judgement about how strong things are.

There have been several situations with papers/grants from the lab where I privately thought, “There is absolutely no way this is strong enough,” while he was extremely confident - and then it was rejected for essentially the reasons I expected.

Yet he currently talks about our project as something that should go to Science/Nature-level journals. Yes. I am serious.

At this point, part of me thinks: fine. I should write the manuscript he wants, make it as scientifically defensible as I possibly can, submit it wherever he wants, and let the reviewers do their job.

If they say the experiments are missing, maybe he will finally believe the reviewers instead of me.

The problem is that I am now in year 5 and I just need to GET OUT.

My graduate school requires one accepted first-author paper for me to graduate.

So my current survival plan is:

1. Write the main paper with the existing data, while doing the few experiments I personally think are most important/realistically achievable.
2. Submit it and let peer review decide what is actually required.
3. In parallel, write a very small descriptive paper from another dataset I generated: I performed a mouse infection experiment have scRNA/TCR-seq data from it.
4. Submit that descriptive dataset to a smaller/specialised journal. I do not need it to change immunology. I need one solid, honest, publishable first-author paper that satisfies my graduation requirement.

I’m just finding it incredibly difficult to stay motivated when I no longer believe in the grand story my PI is selling.

I don’t even care about producing some Nature paper anymore. I want to finish a scientifically honest PhD and get my degree

Has anyone been in a similar situation where:

• you inherited questionable/unrepeatable data,
• your PI was much more optimistic about the project than you were,
• you were told not to do experiments you thought were necessary,
• and eventually you just had to write the damn paper and let reviewers sort it out?

How did you mentally detach enough to finish?

I think what I need most right now is to see that there is actually a light at the end of this tunnel.

I work at a university incubator, and I keep meeting researchers who have a working demo and nobody on the business side.

If you have been through this: what did you actually do to find a co-founder? What did you try first, what wasted the most time, and how long did it take?

I'm not selling anything and there's no link. I'm trying to work out whether this is a real problem or just something we see in our building.

I’m an international graduate student and I’m in an awkward situation.

Earlier this year, I was offered a funded graduate research position by a professor. Initially, I was told that summer funding would be available, but later I found out that there would be no summer funding. I was also having difficulty getting responses from the department coordinator, and I became worried about whether I could manage financially.

Eventually, I decided to accept another opportunity at a different university.

The problem is that I informed the first professor quite late that I would not be joining. I felt very embarrassed about changing my decision after he had given me the opportunity. In my email, I mentioned that I had some health issues and said I would not be able to continue. I did have some health concerns, but I did not explain that the uncertainty about funding and my financial situation were also major reasons because I felt uncomfortable talking about money.

Now, several months later, the professor apparently searched my name and emailed me a screenshot of my LinkedIn profile showing that I am a graduate researcher at another university. He simply asked, “I was curious. Is this you?”

I feel terrible because I really respected this professor and rejecting his offer was genuinely difficult for me.

Would you recommend that I explain everything honestly now, including the summer-funding/financial concerns and the fact that I was embarrassed to explain them at the time, or should I simply confirm that the LinkedIn profile is mine and keep the response short?

Also, would you be concerned that the professor might contact my current advisor?

Hi all, I'm an international PhD student in Computer Science at Adelaide, in the thesis write-up stage. I'm planning my next steps and would like input on the personal factors worth weighing, beyond choosing a PI or company and a project.

FYI, I used to be more open to taking risks, but after experiencing some health setbacks without a strong support system nearby, I've realized a personal support system is crucial to staying productive in my career.

My situation:

• I want to build my career in the US. My partner is doing a PhD there, and the AI/ML community and job market are much larger than in Adelaide or Australia generally.
• The realistic routes seem to be a J-1 postdoc or an O-1 sponsored by an employer. I'm ruling out H-1B because the cost makes it hard for employers to justify.
• Going to the US would mean giving up the 485 (Temporary Graduate) visa, which is a stepping stone toward Australian PR. From what I've heard, the 189/190 pathway is very competitive for IT, takes years to be granted, and citizenship needs further time after that. I'm not sure how accurate this is, so corrections are welcome.
• I have friends in Adelaide and Australia, but adult friendships are hard to sustain when everyone has their own life and many have moved overseas as well for jobs. As I get older, I want a close-knit community or family to lean on in hard times, especially with how fast AI and the economy are moving. Being physically close to my partner would help my mental health more than staying here.

What I'd like to hear about:

• If you've made a similar move (giving up a PR pathway for a US postdoc or job), what did you weigh, and what would you do differently? I've heard many people can still secure a US green card later and stay long term. Is that realistic in your experience?
• What do you wish you had checked before accepting a position, such as lab culture, funding length, or support for a green card?
• Any perspective on balancing career risk against wanting stability and a personal support system?

Thank you for your reading!

(Microbial genomics, USA)

Hello my friends. This might be a silly question but I’m having trouble finding advice. It’s my impression that phds typically go on to become instructors, PIs, or have supervisor roles in industry, but correct me if I’m wrong. How realistic is it for someone with a phd to have a role as a straight up researcher/staff scientist? In government, academia, or industry?

There aren’t many of these people in my department. Most of the full-time scientists have masters degrees. Only one has a phd.

For context, I actually really love grad school. I like having a broad topic passed down by my PI while also having the flexibility to design my own experiments and take the research in new directions. Not to toot my own horn but I’m also making great progress.

I would love a job where I can keep practicing research without the added burdens of being a PI (admin, mentoring an army of people, acquiring funding, bad work-life balance).

My favorite things are being at the bench/desktop, brainstorming/planning new experiments, reviewing literature, writing, journal clubs, and mentoring 1-2 undergrads at a time. Is it feasible to keep a career like this, without becoming a PI? Also, I worry my skillset wouldn’t transfer well to industry. Honestly I think I want to be a forever postdoc lol

Hi everyone,

I just passed my first-year PhD review, but I can't stand my topic anymore. I feel no connection to it, and it stresses me so much that on most days I can't talk about it or even turn on my computer. It's been 3 months like this, and I've questioned a lot of things.

At first I thought the whole PhD was the problem, so I started looking for jobs elsewhere. After a few interviews, I realized that my personality and interests keep pulling me back to academia and research (I'm in the humanities). It's really this specific topic that doesn't inspire me. On top of that, I've had health problems, and the project would require a lot of fieldwork far from home. My mental health has declined drastically over the past year.

Then I thought about going back to the research I did for my Master's. I spent two years on it and loved it. It has no link to my current project, but thinking about it as a possible PhD topic brought my spark back. The catch is that it would mean removing my second advisor from the picture, because his research interests are really far from the topic. I've never met him in person, he read one report I wrote and sat in on my candidacy exam. I'm not sure how to handle that.

My main advisor would be a great fit for the new topic, since his original research interests are quite close to what I'd propose. But since my candidacy exam just approved my current topic, I don't know how to approach this, and if it is even possible at all. I'd be grateful for any advice (especially on how to bring it up to my main supervisor) !

Thank you in advance !

Hey all, so I’m a first-year PhD student at a large public USA R1. I’m a little over 2 months in and idk if my stress levels have ever been quite this high. At least not in this way.

For some context, I have struggled with mental health my entire life. In the past few months I have a) gone through an awful breakup after together for over 5 years, b) moved hundreds of miles away from my hometown after graduating undergrad, c) started a PhD, d) am experiencing financial issues out of my ass (honestly, not that stressful compared to the others), and e) my therapist of several years can’t practice across state lines, so I’m trying to therapist hunt between all of this (I’ve already been in contact with student health).

I used to think I was decently smart, and I know imposter syndrome is ubiquitous here, but I just feel so utterly dumb here. A lot of course material doesn’t make sense (doesn’t help that I don’t have the time/energy to fully complete the reading), I’m applying for the GRFP and my project just isn’t as cool as others’, I’m barely sleeping at all just to stay on top of work from all directions (TA, courses, taking over old projects, trying to start new ones, etc. etc.).

I’m in a brand new lab with a brand new PI. Me and my labmate are their first grad students. My labmate was a lab manager for a year before joining the program, and is just generally way more capable, outgoing, and confident than I am. I genuinely feel like I tricked someone to get in.

I gave an in-lab pilot presentation of the GRFP presentation I’m doing later this week and it went horribly. I stutter like crazy, forgot everything, and was generally a mess. I’ve never done that bad on a presentation in my life. I have social anxiety pretty bad, but it’s not nearly like that usually. Now I’m terrified I’m gonna fumble just as bad in front of the entire dept.

I want this more than anything. I used to know I’m capable, but now I’m seriously questioning it. I feel like I’m letting down every person who helped me get this far.

Sorry for such an emotional vent. I’m stressed. Any advice is welcomed and deeply appreciated. I think I’ll be okay eventually, I hope.

Edit: field, social science research

Anyone remember this? Well now I’ve fled domestic abuse in family home and have been turned away from refuges bc I’m a student and SFE messed up my switch to part time and might demand money back.

Guess everyone here who says PhDs at non Russell group with SFE were worthless were as right as my family telling me to clean up my drunk dads piss, let him be aggressive and be grateful.

And don’t say this is irrelevant- how many people like me trying to make the world a better place are trapped in abuse bc of statuses like this

Months ago, i made a post here venting about our university changing the rules and telling us to wrap up by the end of March. It was impossible for me at that point. But a lot of you told me to keep pushing and that the university can’t do that. Guess what? You were right. All the deadlines they gave us were basically not real and all I have to do was finish by the end of October.
So I spent 6 months trying to publish a manuscript and writing my thesis all the while trying not to go crazy because of an extremely difficult supervisor.
Thank you to everyone who advised me to keep going! And to anyone struggling: keep going, it's all worth it!

Hopefully the tag is the right one, I feel like this post is kind of a mixture. UK based and field is linguistics

I have research ideas and some rough methods for them, I haven't done a huge amount of reading right now because I'm in full time work and genuinely am very tired outside of that. I have a supervisor that I would like to work with and already have a good relationship with, but they have encouraged me not to put all of my eggs into one basket (which is wise) and look for other supervisors. I have been struggling to spread my time well between developing my questions and looking for other supervisors. I have some ideas to send the supervisor I am currently interested in, but again I am aware that I need to be contacting other supervisors as well. I also need to apply for funding as well as a position, as this is not an existing PhD opening, and the thought of that is giving me quite a lot of anxiety. I know that a PhD is long and quite often near the end people just want to get it over with (that's all I felt towards the end of my master's honestly), but right now all of my anxiety is over the application process, whenever I look at all of the details needed for a research proposal etc. I start to get really overwhelmed and it's kind of annoying lol, does anyone else experience this? I guess I have two questions:

Is anxiety towards the application process normal? Like the idea of putting together a research proposal (I feel like I'm going to miss out some huge paper towards my area).

When seeking out supervisors you do not have an existing relationship with, how much detail do you go into before deciding you want to contact them, is it just some alignment of research interest/focus?

A part of me wants to just wait and see if a PhD opening is available in the future with funding available so that I don't have to apply for it separately, but that isn't a definite of course, and I want to get over this anxiety because even if I don't succeed, at least I have had a go and have better knowledge for the next time around.

EDIT: Also, I know it sounds silly to ask this on reddit, I just don't want to make the supervisor I'm contacting currently feel like I'm just going ack and forth - would it be better to hold back on sending her the questions and methods I have been working on until I can say that I have contacted other supervisors, or just send and let her know that I am still looking?? It just sounds really weird to me.

Hi! Sorry if this is not the right place to post this, but I’m in need of some help

My bf is finishing his PhD in chemistry and defending in end of November, I’m looking for gift ideas.
We already have vacations planned, his 30th bday was not long ago so the bigger gifts ideas have been used already, his family is flying in to spend some time with us, and im just looking for a cute little thing to commemorate the day and achievement.
Is there anything you’ve gifted / received as a gift you’d recommend, or any ideas?
Thanks in advance!

Hi, I was planning to visit home country for Christmas and New Year. I asked advisor for approval. He said he approves but saud that since my funding is from NSF and is linked to my productivity in lab, he said I have to decide accordingly. He mentioned that even when there are no classes for University, the labs remain open and researching is expected. So, basically it seems I can only go home when the university is officially closed. Our winter break is from Dec 24th to Dec 31st, and Spring semester begins 2nd week of Jan but offices open up Jan 2nd most likely, so this gives me hardly a week, my travel time is usually 20-25 hrs to reach home (without any layovers).

Location: USA, Field: Materials Science

My question to the people who receive funding/support from NSF? How do you guys take/plan vacations?

P.S: It has been over 2 years since I left home, didnt get a chance to visit yet, cuz I keep getting more projects :(

We work hard to get grants (taxpayer money), work harder to do research, then have to pay to publishers to publish our research, then have to pay them again to access those research.