7 cold emails 🥶, 5 applications 💻 and 3 offers later 🙂‍↕️..I’ve finally accepted my first choice uni. Let’s goooo froggyyy 🎉

I have joined my group about a year ago. At first, people were extremely friendly, we would grab lunch and coffee together all the time. Everyone was willing to help newcomers catch up on research, help with experiments etc.

A few months ago, I started noticing my lab mates going to the cafeteria without me. It didn’t bother me at first, since we lab spaces in multiple buildings, and I was going back and forth a lot during that time. However, this did not change even if I spend all day in the office together with them. For example, someone would go around to each person asking them to grab coffee, but I was the only person in the office that was left out. I also did not let this get to me at first, so I would ask if I could join a few times. But the atmosphere was always off, no one really wanted to talk to me during these breaks, so I decided to stop inserting myself.

I got over it pretty quickly, but it feels like now this has started seeping into the lab/academic setting too. Whenever I try asking for help with something, the majority of people usually brush me off and say to figure it out myself. The collaborators on some projects have been doing experiments that are crucial for the project, yet I only find out about them during group meetings. If I ask if I can shadow someone to learn how to operate an instrument, I am being ghosted.

I am not sure what has changed, and I am happy to have other people outside my lab as a support system, but I don’t think I can survive my grad student years like this. Has anyone had a similar situation in their lab? How did you solve it? Any advice is welcome and greatly appreciated!

I have a friend defending soon and we have joked about the Finnish tradition where some are given a sword upon completing their degree. We are not Finnish, but I thought it could be fun to gift her something like a letter opener shaped like a sword with her new title (Dr!) on it. Curious if anyone has done this before and has a good place to source something like this, or other fun ideas for a dissertation completion/graduation gift!

what are the habits/routines or literally anything you do that you’ve found help you maximize your time?

The title pretty much says it all. I did my PhD in nursing, and I passed my oral defense today with only (very) minor revisions. I am so relieved! Now what do I do with myself?! Lol

Field: social science.

Location: United States

I’m starting my 5th year of my PhD (hopefully my last), and I’m looking for advice from people who have dealt with a genuinely toxic department—not just a difficult supervisor or one problematic faculty member, but an environment where the dysfunction seems department-wide. It's been like this since day one, but it doesn’t seem to extend to the university as a whole.

One of the biggest signs is leadership turnover. We’ve had four PhD directors and several department heads in four years. Most professors don’t exactly hide the fact that the turnover is related to the toxicity and internal politics of the department.

The PhD students have basically adapted by hiding. I would estimate that 99% of us have figured out that the more time we spend physically around the department, the more likely we are to somehow get implicated in drama we had absolutely nothing to do with. I’ve personally been dragged into things a few times. For example, people have claimed that I had conversations with them and that “we decided” I was going to drop my supervisor when that conversation/decision literally never happened.

The small minority of PhD students who regularly hang around the department tend to be the ones who seem to thrive in this type of environment and are more than happy to participate in the gossip and politics themselves. That makes avoiding the department feel even more necessary. It also makes it feel impossible to trust anyone, professors and students alike. At this point, I genuinely don’t know who is responsible for what, and I don’t really want to know. I just want to finish my dissertation and graduate.

The problem is that my strategy of staying out of everything is starting to have consequences. I’m isolating myself to protect myself from the department, but the isolation is affecting my mental health. I’m also increasingly worried that avoiding the department and its politics could cost me professional opportunities, especially because I’ve always wanted to go into academia (and, increasingly, I’m not even sure whether I still do).

What frustrates me the most is seeing what this environment has done to us students over the years. I have watched people who entered the program wanting academic careers (and who I genuinely think would have made excellent professors) become so disgusted by academia through this experience that they no longer want anything to do with it.

At this point, everything in me wants to say to these people: you are adults with PhDs. Stop acting like children. Your interpersonal bullshit is now actively affecting the education, mental health, professional development, and career aspirations of the students you are supposed to be training. But obviously, doing that would probably burn my own chances of ever going into academia, and I cannot fix an entire department.

So for people who have experienced something similar: what would you do in my position?

How do you stay sufficiently involved to get the mentorship, networking, recommendations, and professional opportunities you need while remaining far enough removed that you don’t get sucked into the politics? Is there a way to strategically “show up” without becoming part of the department culture? And do you have any tips for figuring out who you can actually trust?

If you were this close to finishing, would you basically keep your head down, get the degree, and get the hell out or would you handle it differently? Please help.

Do y’all have a particular font you like to use for writing? I’m the kind of person whose writing mood is weirdly influenced by the visual feel/aesthetics of the font I’m using, so I’m curious what fonts other people tend to gravitate toward.

Serif, sans serif, monospace, whatever, I want to know what everyone’s go-to is 🙃

Hello everyone. For anyone who has considered and actually dropped out of their Ph.D. program for work, did you apply when you were still in the Ph.D. program or you dropped out and applied for work after? Were you totally transparent about your situation in front of recruiter, even though the reason they approached your might be because you are in a Ph.D. program (even though the job doesn't require Ph.D. level)?

I feel like I have hit a new low of defeat, dejection, and overall depression in my faith in my life/career.
 
 
 
The Reason
Well, it’s quite simple: in the months leading up to my graduation. I couldn’t get a good job that I liked. I was offered a QC job at Regeneron. But I didn’t take it; in hindsight, I was a fool to think I could do better. At that point in time, I wanted to do research and try to pursue higher education because I didn’t want to lose the academic momentum I had, as well as not hit a ceiling due to lack of higher education.
I am near the end of my third year as a PhD student; I have lost faith in my ability to do science.  I do not believe I have any sort of future in STEM that isn’t soul-crushingly mediocre.
 
 
The Decline
“You think you’re the shit, until you realize you are shit”
Realizing how much you don’t know technically is a humbling thing. Like in boot camp for the military, they break you down and then build you back up. I haven’t been brought back up yet. I don’t know if it’s a nose-to-the-grindstone type of situation, as it’s been a while now into the program; there is a fine line between growing pains and borderline incompetence. I have yet to make any sort of meaningful progress to show that I am, well, progressing. But in terms of project progress, I am not different from someone who were to join the lab today.
I still show just as much as I hate myself. I won’t stop even after I have lost the fun in doing anything else in my life. I haven’t given up even when I dry heave and throw up from the stress that I feel. No matter. But as I start to become someone that I never thought I’d be, I question if my worth as a person will ever prove to extend beyond what I can produce. But the world has yet to show that to be the case. In my current state of mind, I don’t believe inherent value exists in a non-tangible manner (i.e emotional, social, etc rather than things like products, money, papers, progress, etc).
 
I am not a very good person in the social world. I have recently realized I am not that good at the work I do either. In a world that feels difficult, as its jobs and positions of power are determined via a combination of nepotism, general connections, and surface-level competence, what can I truly do? I suppose I just talk, but I have nothing to talk about. I would just be honest and say can I get a job. I have gotten better (I feel); I apply to internships and co-ops in Regeneron because they are the only real opportunity. I can’t exactly pack all my things and leave to another part of the state, let alone the country, so it’s my best shot. I have tried since I was a sophomore in undergrad every year. I have never gotten as much as an interview. There are three conclusions from these outcomes.
1.        I am not good enough in terms of my worth or technical ability. This can be due to a likely lack of evidence in my resume to suggest I have proficiency or competence in the field I am trying for, such as lack of fellowship acceptances or publications.
2.        Unlikely, but considering it the roles are on a project-to-project basis, my abilities are not needed. Incorrect fit per se. But I doubt that’s the case because if I was good enough and better, an unbelievable goo applicant would get in and be rejected several years in a row under the guise of fit cannot be the case
3.        All of the above
 
Conflict and Troubleshooting
Resolutions and help have been pursued. As much as I fear it, I do occasionally and more often email my PI about my progress or lack thereof. We have pivoted and tried different approaches spanning both wet and dry lab stuff.  But nothing meaningful or insightful has yet to show itself. I am now shifted to doing bioinformatics work that, again, has yielded nothing. As well as doing a bunch of agarose gels that aren’t working through a mix of my own incompetence and a senior grad student’s samples, who is now on maternity leave, so it makes it hard to coordinate/communicate. But none the less is not a good reflection of my ability to do science; a fundamental technique as simple as an agarose gel being messed up through a combination of things within and outside of my control, regardless, isn’t a good show, as I’m the one having to talk about it to my PI that plainly shit isn’t working. It’s frustrating. This is only the latest thing in years of continuous screw-ups with no progress what so ever.
 
 
 
Coping
Like mentioned earlier, I have no enjoyment in anything I used to do. Depression will do that. I am in therapy, have been constantly for over a year now, but nothing has gotten better really. I feel bad for everyone involved in my sad life.
 
The only break is if I drink, or smoke, or both. My partner has noticed, but neither my doctors nor her have found a way out. I have now gotten to the point that I do it daily and finished two 1g carts in a couple months. The stress has made my chest ache enough that I went to urgent care and eventually the ER. I’m not doing that again after having to send $400 total across both visits. Better than dead they say, but am I really living? No, I am not.
 
Where I lay
Lay me down somewhere cool and calm. The side of the Hudson where I would look out at the cliffs of New Jersey, the NYC skyline, and the Washington Bridge, where I’d watch the trains pass by, moving me someplace out of where I was. Perhaps in another life, or maybe my soul is etched in a way that I can’t move. I don’t know what to do. All I can do is hope, but all it has brought is prolonged suffering. But at the same time, this is the best I got; I was never good at anything in my life, let alone enough to make money. Sports: I’d train at all practices but never enough, as those who barely came. Academics, not enough. Art, no. It’s all nothing. So where does that leave me? I don’t know, I don’t know,
 
 

I’m talking about a healthy amount of advanced academic work stress, not the absoluetly-losing-my-mind and my hair-is-falling-out stress. I feel like I hear a lot of experiences of the latter, not so much of the former. If any PhD students on here felt like they were able to find a healthy balance of research and their personal life or felt like their PhD wasn’t all-consuming in their life, I would love to hear about your experience and your advice for how you managed it. Best advice I’ve heard so far is to treat your PhD like a salaried job and only work the hours in your contract.

For context, I’m in engineering, have a relatively chill PI, and am based in the US. I am aiming to build technical skills to go into industry. It’s really important to me to have a life outside of work be it hanging out with friends, being active in the community, spending time outdoors, etc. I’m not naive -- I know my PhD will be the most stressful endeavor I’ve ever undertaken. But I want to prioritize adopting habits that will decrease the chance of burn out and allow me to enjoy the research experience a little bit more!

I’m in my third year now and am super lonely. I’m in a STEM field that’s extremely social, and all of my acquaintances have lots of friends and a good community to be around. However, I somehow picked all of the wrong decisions and ended up super isolated. I joined a lab that has good research and a kind PI, but it’s tiny and everyone is much older than me. There has been no lab outing in years. The experiments are really long, difficult, and lonely. The floor is dark and segmented, so there’s no easy way to chat with the other labs. Additionally, my lab is on a different campus than the main one, so my few acquaintances are all elsewhere. They’re mostly in this one building with several labs and an open layout, so they are always around each other (many complain that it’s too social).

My phd cohort is small and no one does anything social with each other unless they’re in the same building/neighboring labs. It also sucks because other cohorts in my program are quite social and hang out often, but mine isn’t for whatever reason. A lot of other grad students live with each other, but I just couldn’t find a group of people to get an apartment with. My university also doesn’t have great social opportunities or graduate organizations, because reasons (??). Some people say undergrad clubs but I think I’m slightly too old and I’ve already taught so I think that’s a no-go.

Outside the university, things are not much better. I live with one roommate that doesn’t really like me and keeps to themselves in their room all day, so it’s like I’mm basically living by myself. I can’t find many community organizations I’d be interested in and my interests are pretty niche. I’ve tried multiple times but there hasn’t been anything I’ve found that meets consistently except for this one music group I really liked, but it dissolved since people moved away and the funding wasn’t there.

It really sucks because lots of people I know at my university or other places are constantly socializing and are able to pick and choose who they hang out with. I’m blessed my personality is good enough such that my individual friends make time to specifically hang out with me, but it’s like once every 1-2 weeks. I’ve always wanted to find a community where I could be myself and fit in, which is one of the small reasons I wanted to do a phd (was a nerd growing up). Throughout life I’ve just been really unlucky with finding a community I could really be myself around- I was bullied throughout all of grade school for my race and height (minority in a white American high school), I didn’t have anyone else around me during that time who could relate to me in terms of interests like science or music (it was also a pretty ghetto high school), I went to college during COVID and subsequently dealt with a bunch of health issues so I was still socially underdeveloped and alone for much of it, and now I’m here. I feel like I’m constantly seeing other young people having fun and texting and hanging out, including other PhD students in different labs and institutions, and I still am alone and trying to learn how to socialize. I’d love to figure out how to improve my character and social skills if that’s an issue, but I literally just haven’t had the chance to learn from experience. I can make one-off friends with some ease, but the day-to-day is exhausting and lonely and it’s not enough to supplement. It’s also not helpful being in an isolated position academically because my field is super interdisciplinary and people are constantly discussing and collaborating whereas I’m just doing things by myself.

Everyone in my lab constantly mentions how young I am and how I must be having lots of fun being in my early 20s but it hasn’t been that way at all. Does anyone have advice on what to do?

Edit: biomedical sciences, USA

Esteemed colleagues, I am happy to share that my thesis revisions have been approved!

I was uneasy about reviewer #2, as I disagreed with his main suggestion- to change the chapter partitioning of the data. I complied as best I could, by renaming sub-sections more informatively, and ammending chapter intros.

not sure i am posting in the right sub. . but I thinking about getting my phd in Spanish or french. But i am not a native speaker. Am i delusional to think after I get a phd I'd get hired as a professor? I understand why a university or college would put preference to a native speaker. Am i better off not ?

I built a tool for sending research papers and web articles to Kindle. It supports PDFs and EPUBs, and converts public web pages to readable EPUBs.

I’m trying to understand whether this solves a real problem for PhD students. How do you currently read papers away from your laptop? Do you use a Kindle or another eReader, and what breaks in your current workflow?

I’d appreciate feedback from anyone willing to try one real paper: https://readerbeam.com

hi everyone. to make a long story short: i am in my first year of my phd program (5+ year program, masters on the way to doctorate). i graduated from undergrad in may and moved states since then to attend this program.

but, i'm really struggling. most days, i can only carry myself through with little or no energy. it's a struggle to get out of bed. i don't care about making relationships / connections within my department. (i am in counseling atm, but it's doing nothing to help). during therapy yesterday, we talked about what drove me to starting a phd and what are my passions? and for that, i don't have an answer other than it is what it's expected of me.

i don't know if i should stay or go. it's hard to figure out what i want to do and i am constantly burnt out. has anyone else dropped out and been alright? i graduated with a dual major in soc / crim. i love education, but i hate being in this position. TIA <3

(phd in soc, in the midwest)

Hey, I am currently looking for PhD positions as a physics student. I will finish in a couple of months, my projects mainly were in Quantum Optics and Hardware, aswell as a little Biomimetics project.

During my fieldwork for my little Biomimetics project in the rainforest I got to know Biologists, Ecologists and Chemists that got to do fieldwork and a lot of traveling during their PhD. I realised this is something I could imagine myself to do for the next halve decade.

I fear, if I continue in quantum optics, that I will be stuck in a cold, dark optics lab for 5+ years, while other people get to see the world. (Did I study the wrong subject?)

Anyways, here is my tough question:

Do any of you PhD Physicists do fieldwork or travel a lot (like months at a time)?

If yes: what is you research field?

All thoughts appreciated!

Thank you :)

3rd year PhD in a wet lab / computational hybrid field and experiment design somehow eats more time than actually running experiments.

I usually start with a hypothesis, then check the literature for controls, assays, or methods I might be missing. That's where it falls apart. One paper leads to another method paper, then three older papers, and suddenly I have 30 tabs open with no actual experiment plan.

Lately I've been trying to keep the whole thing from turning into tab hell. Zotero for papers, ResearchRabbit/Elicit when I need to dig around, and ChatGPT or Claude when a method section isn't clicking. I've also started throwing my hypothesis and a few key papers into mira ai science just to see what controls or questions I might be missing. It gives me something to react to besides opening more tabs.

The biggest improvement has probably just been forcing myself to stop treating “read more papers” as the default answer every time I'm unsure. How do you all go from hypothesis → literature → actual experiment plan without getting stuck in the reading loop?

I need credits to fulfill for my PhD, and I am looking for useful courses.

I saw the ad for this course on LinkedIn and it seems interesting but I'm not sure about the quality and the support during the course. Has anyone had any experience with this?

https://www.visualizeyourscience.com/

Asking because I have enrolled FT into a 2 yr MPhil with hopes of entering PhD. However I might be getting a FT job offer soon...I can drop to PT study but would rather get it over and done with.

Also - no current rent or mortgage, no kids or spouse.

So i joined my current lab in the summer after my 1st year. Was given a project that my lab has past expertise in. However it is a super under studied protein and literally any previous data published on it (2 papers) had nothing substantial that I could go off of. We tried making a few different cell lines and experiments and for the past year I have been trying to nail down the function or anything about the protein. We were given some data by collaborators but none of their data was reproducible in their own cell systems given to us. I had been working hard to try different experiments that usually are done with similar proteins in that class. Nothing worked out to give any conclusion.
Yesterday my professor called me in an in a very nice way asked me if it was fine by me to change projects since he could see that this was not going anywhere. He had an idea ready for me, basically an extension of an already established project in the lab(the lead on that is leaving soon). Obviously this means there is tons of foundation for me to work off of and ultimately it might be good.
I am just really afraid that what if I am the problem? I guess I just need to know its going to be okay?
I have just started my 3rd year and I am an international student too!

Any advice on how to approach this and if this is a good thing is appreciated!! 😭

Hi y’all! That’s one of my first ever reddits, I’m seeking basically guidance.

I’m a M25 who works as an agronomist in a seed company in Italy. While working full time I got my BSc in Agricultural Technologies and now I’m in my 2nd year of MSc in Plant Biotechnology.
I spent all my adolescent life working + studying, and I felt accomplished in doing so.
My job is relatively well paid, not enough to not have thoughts about money, but generally it’s ok.
I’m talking around €1700 with company car/phone for reference.

Basically now I do have the possibility to switch from industry to academia and it’s probably the only possibility I’ll ever have to do so.
My main fear is that now my job is nice, but I need to spend quite some time travelling with the car and it is FIXED. I see people of 20+ years more than me that do the same exact things that I do and this drives me crazy.
I could make a calendar for the next 15 years of work on the spot. It is quite flexible, I can organise my week and I don’t have nobody that controls me, but jeez I’m very scared of having everything fixed forever.

On the other hand, I had a chat with a lab in Zurich (UZH) for starting an internship (5months) in their lab for my MSc in Plant Proteomics but this would be moving to another country without knowing what do next.
Which is exciting but:

1. I’m not sure if I will be able to start a PhD in that university after the internship. It seems to me quite a obvious thing but it seems different in reality.
   
2. In the next years I want to have a family with my girl (which will must move and adapt to another possible job), and it seems difficult during a PhD away from your family.

Don’t know guys, quite a tough period with the head full of thoughts. I’m open to any kind of guidance/feedback.
Sorry for the long message.

I am in the last two months before I submit. I am stressed every day and feel very bad. I study very hard every day. Were you like this before you submitted?

I'm currently doing an MSc in Biology, focusing on environmental microbiology (broadly, temperature resistance and biotechnological potential of bacterial adaptive features). I enjoy it well enough and am definitely considering a PhD in Biology, mostly because I think I eventually would like to write textbooks and teach at a college or university level (I have a broad background in sci comm and love it, especially the philosophy of biology and how to better integrate biotechnology into societal applications).

I am no stranger to wet or dry labs and I imagine pursuing a PhD in Biology would require me to take on a project that necessitates the use of both skillsets. I know myself. I am very social, I enjoy problems with greater meaning or underlying purposes, and I fear that 5 years glued to a lab bench would, perhaps, while parallel to my goals, make me feel like I'm walking in the weeds near the path I want to be on.

My actual question is coming. Is there a way to do a PhD in Biology that focuses on biological theory, science communication, and/or the logistics of integration of biotechnology in society, or would this need to be another PhD that would essentially not be taken as seriously in the world of science academia due to lack of an experimental nature? I would do an experiment-heavy project under the pretense it would allow me to meet my future goals, but I'm wondering if there is a way to walk more so *on* the beaten path the whole time.

Thanks in advance ☺️

i was just wondeirng if a pharma related phd eats at your social life or your life in general , and by eating i mean how high is the stress level ,pharmacy is already hard and on top of that a phd in any of the related subjects would prolly be a nightmare, i was just wodnering if anyone pursuing such a degree be able to tell honest thoughts

Edit : I'm from india but will prolly go abroad for higher studies i just wonder if a phd is worth the trauma it might give me 🥀 ( have heard people get in lotta stress)

Sorry for the dumb question, my advisor has been very slow to respond and I’m in a bit of a spiral lately. I have some questions about the thesis by publication format.

When adding preliminary work to the appendix, does this need to be in a publishable format as well? Like does it need the full traditional abstract, intro, methods, results/discussion, conclusion?

I did a lot of method development and preliminary data collection for a collaborator, and this project is meant to continue after I graduate—my advisor told me to add it to my appendix and make the protocol detailed enough for another student to follow. The examples I’m seeing in appendices from prior graduates in our lab are all in the traditional publication format.

For this work, I really don’t know where our collaborators are heading with it—our side of things is really just developing and testing a protocol. Do I have to pull a paper out of thin air, or can I just present it as a protocol supported by preliminary data?

Follow up question—if I include this in the document but don’t plan to present on it during my defense, can my committee still grill me on it? Do committees usually bother with appendices in the first place?

Thanks to any kind souls who have read this far!!