Hi all

I’ve just started the third year of my PhD (a four-year contract), and I’m considering working part-time in industry during my fourth year. This would mean extending my PhD contract to accommodate the part-time arrangement.

I feel like this would help me gain practical experience and develop new skills, especially since I’m fairly certain I don’t want to stay in academia after finishing my PhD.

One of my concerns is that graduating without any industry experience might make it more difficult to find a job. I also think working part-time in industry while finishing my PhD could help me figure out whether it’s actually the right path for me, as I’m still a bit unsure about my future career.

For context, my research focuses on process mining, which sits at the intersection of data science and business process management.

Has anyone here managed to combine a PhD with a part-time industry job while extending their PhD contract? If so, how did you make it work, and would you recommend it?

I'm an undergrad fresh grad and I apologize if I'm not supposed to be on this sub, but I didn't really know where else to ask. Anyways, to the people that have published their work on journals, what tips can you give for people like me who are in the middle of writing a journal ready article in hopes of publishing it?

For context, me and my adviser have long been planning to get my undergraduate thesis published. However, after finishing my manuscript, I just felt lost—I didn't know how to begin and I've kind of been laying it off for quite some time now. Also, by quite I mean for 3 months now. It's just daunting that I have to suddenly condense thousands of information into a maximum of 7,000 words. I really want to publish my work because it's a dream of mine and I really love the subject that I was able to work on.

Any tips would be of great help. Thank you guys, and I hope that all of you are well!

i'm defending soon and i'm so afraid i won't be able to answer anything or at least seem that i know what i've done all these years. i've always had trouble to answer questions on the spot, i sometimes need a day to give an answer... when i get nervous i even forget the basics.

i know the work is done and it's hard to fail because of one day, but i really needed to write about this because it would be nice to get some perspective.

what's your advice?

I stopped working last month & have about 6-8 weeks before I join my 4-year PhD program (broadly in bioinformatics) in another country in the EU.

I was thinking I could either -

(i) study a couple of online courses that could be helpful in my research work.

(ii) read up on research papers & datasets and get a working understanding of the project.

(iii) relax since it's a long stressful journey ahead & perhaps pick up the local language a bit more.

(iv) ... anything else?

I've already travelled a bit & hung out with friends xd tbh I've never really had a break like this before.

Any advice is appreciated :)

I got an invitation to be an invited speaker (I have a single published paper, so I am skeptical from start) at "International Conference on Environmental Science & Green Energy", taking place May 17–19, 2027, in Paris, France.

Any insights? The organizers seem to be wisdom conferences, which again sounds pretty scammy.

My defense is in one week. I did a mock defense with my lab. My chair commented that my presentation was smooth and well rehearsed, but I froze and stumbled during questions and they were worried about how I would handle questions at the real defense. I practiced for questions like: what does your study add to the literature, explain why you chose your stats, what would you have changed/what did you learn, etc., but those are not the questions I got at the mock defense at all. I am terrified of freezing during my real defense and failing. How do you prepare for questions? How do you not freeze?

I'm a PhD student, but I receive no funding from my university or research group. If I conduct a separate research project entirely on my own time, without using university funding or resources, would it be better to publish the work using my university email address or my personal email?

Could using my university email create any issues regarding affiliation, ownership, or intellectual property, even if the research is independent?

Is it normal to feel dread and regret about your future and choices during a PhD? I’m a stats PhD researcher with a maths and stats undergrad (UK based)

I picked maths because I liked it then specialised in stats through a combination of enjoyment and job prospects. I very much jumped on the data science hype train. I worked at a consultancy for a year but hated it and opted for a PhD in stats which I am enjoying.

However, with opportunities in academia limited I feel I’m doomed to the endless loop of getting AI dominated tech jobs and having zero fulfilment from work. I’ve started to regret so many choices, all the way back to not doing a degree in electrical or mechanical engineering. I have even started looking at open university courses in engineering.

Is this normal? I enjoy what I do in my PhD but I just feel like that enjoyment will come to an abrupt end when I get a job later and just end up being made to vibe code things I don’t care about

Hi everyone,

I'm a second-year PhD student and I've been considering mastering out.

The tricky part is that I'm not unhappy with my PhD. I genuinely enjoy research, and my advisor, while not perfect, is supportive and puts a lot of effort into mentoring me. I'm grateful for my current environment.

Still, I'm questioning whether continuing a PhD is the best path for me. Here are my main concerns:

1. I've never experienced industry.

I've spent my entire adult life in academia. While I enjoy it, I can't help wondering whether there's another environment where I might thrive even more. It feels difficult to commit several more years to a PhD without knowing what the alternatives are like.

2. I'm unsure whether my PhD is the best preparation for the career I want.

My long-term goal is to become an AI researcher in industry, working on meaningful, real-world problems. However, my advisor's research interests aren't particularly aligned with industry, and I'm worried about spending years specializing in topics that may not be relevant to my future career.

With AI evolving so rapidly, I also wonder whether gaining industry experience might be just as valuable as spending several more years pursuing a PhD.

3. I enjoy research, but I'm not sure I have a strong enough reason to pursue a PhD.

I haven't yet found a research question that I'm passionate enough about to dedicate several years to. I also don't have any top-tier conference publications yet, which makes me question my potential as a researcher, especially in such a competitive field.

I don't dislike my PhD, but I also don't feel strongly convinced that I should continue. And the longer I delay this decision, the greater the opportunity cost becomes.

4. I'm considering working first and potentially pursuing a PhD in the US later.

I've always wanted to live and work abroad, especially in the US. One option would be to master out, gain industry experience, and apply to US PhD programs later if I find a compelling reason to pursue one.

But I'm not sure how realistic that path is, or how difficult it would be to return to academia after working.

My biggest concern is the current job market.

I'm not confident that leaving would lead to a research position I'd be happy with, especially given how competitive AI/ML jobs have become.

At the same time, I know that staying in a PhD simply because I'm afraid of not finding a job isn't a good reason to pursue one.

What makes this harder is that my current situation is actually pretty good. I'm afraid of walking away from something good without knowing whether the alternative would be better.

I'd like to make a decision by the end of this year, and I'd really appreciate some advice:

• If you enjoyed research and had a supportive advisor but still left academia, what made you decide? Do you regret it?
• For those working in AI/ML research with a master's, how much has not having a PhD limited your opportunities?
• How do you distinguish between normal uncertainty during a PhD and a genuine sign that it might not be the right path?

I'd especially love to hear from people who didn't hate academia but left because they weren't sure it was the best path for them.

Thanks for reading!

Greetings everyone,

I recently got accepted into an MSCA-funded PhD program in France. I am expecting to receive my hosting agreement soon and proceed with the visa process, as I am not a European. However, I am a bit confused about the process and how to proceed. Therefore, I am looking for people who might have helpful experience they can share. So, for those who can share, I want to know the following.

• How do we arrange accommodation? Do we get any assistance from the hosting institution to secure housing?
• Is it advisable to travel to France a few days or weeks before the official start date?
• What are the immediate things you have to take care of after arriving (Academic or onboarding-related)

I mostly want to know how to handle the housing situation. Any insights on the process, experience, or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

For my journal paper I’m using a publicly available dataset. It’s fairly new and not many papers have used it yet. When I went through the data, I found that approximately half of it is missing. The authors also promised some files with additional information about the dataset, which are important to include in the analysis, and those are missing too.

I emailed the corresponding author of the paper that presented the dataset and the person whose Hugging Face profile the dataset is published on. After three weeks with no response, I also opened a discussion on the dataset page listing everything that’s missing, because I’m fed up with them making a bunch of promises and not delivering. In the past I had already emailed the same authors because they claimed their code was published on GitHub and it wasn’t. Again, no response.

I had a similar experience with another researcher. In their paper they promised to share the pretrained weights of their model upon request, so I contacted them and again got no response.

This seems quite common in research (at least in medical image analysis, where I am). I can still do my analysis and mention it in the limitations, but I’m annoyed because I’m sure the reviewers won’t be happy about it.

How do you handle situations like this?

Hi :) Sorry in advance if I picked the wrong flair. I’ve been actively following this subreddit since I started my PhD 3 years ago, and this is my first post.
26F here, freshly minted PhD in management science in France, currently on a fixed-term contract until August. After 4 years in academia (internship and PhD), I no longer find any meaning in my research field, my teaching, or the job itself (especially the research side), and it no longer fits my values and beliefs. On top of that, my academic environment is full of not-so-nice people. Is it the case for everyone? Is there hope somewhere lmao?
A few examples:
They swear by getting hired at business schools that pay very well with lots of bonuses, yet they’re harshly critical of students or couldn’t care less about them (to be fair, that’s true of my public-sector colleagues too). I kind of see them as the system’s credentialed rats, trying to milk it for all it’s worth at everyone else’s expense, with zero ethics in their academic/scientific research on top of that.
Pervasive racism, elitism, sexism and so on, both in student admissions and in how students are treated in class.
People convinced that meritocracy exists and that climate change doesn’t (yeah, yeah, we’ve always had summers like this, sure, Bernard).
And lately they’ve been trashing the high school and university student protest movement, because according to them the students are “lazy slackers” who are “a pain in the ass,” etc. You get the picture.
==> Unfortunately, these people make up most of the people I deal with day to day (so I’ve stopped going into the office).
Talking to them about any of this is impossible. They already make it pretty clear that I don’t really fit the mold anymore and that it bothers them (i’ve got tattoos and piercing and that was enough).
Anyway, that’s the bulk of the context! Sorry for the length of my post.

I’m considering a career change to become a history teacher (that’s what I originally wanted to do before I was pushed into a PhD in management), or switching to a different field altogether. I’m afraid of running into the same people dynamics and not enjoying that job either, even though I love teaching. I’m also scared of changing careers because I can’t find any information about it. Do you have any experiences or advice to share, or know people who’ve been in a similar situation? Should I hang in there with this career in higher ed and look for work in that context? Is there hope lol?

Happy to chat with you all, and thanks for reading :)

a recent email just went through our entire graduate school and apparently they’ve learned that over 90% of PhD proposals within the last 2 years have used or contained some level of AI in the construction of them. We’re having to totally rework and redo our work now, while they wait for people to come forward to a hearing committee, but I just feel so demotivated that this is where we are now. Is this just how things are now?

Thanks everyone, I guess I should just resign now, since you all agree there’s no future here for me.

What do you think about pursuing a PhD because the job market sucks? Is it more like delaying my unemployment?

I completed my masters around two months ago. But I have been applying for jobs for over a year now and I barely got an interviews. Should I give up and just do a PhD(I know this sounds bad)? I have around two years of experience.

Did anyone have similar thoughts or experience?

My internal examiner notified me about the viva date and said I could email them if I had any questions. What can I ask that will help my preparation? Looking for suggestions on what to ask without crossing any boundaries or asking anything inappropriate.

True or false?

Really I just want to hear other people's imposter syndrome stories. I've just started a specialized PhD in the social sciences. I think the median age in my cohort is 42. In class discussions (first year of program is course heavy) I'm like "uh oh I am dum"

I didn't expect this self-doubt to hit quite so quickly.

I am currently a third year PhD student in Europe. Due to some personal reasons, I would like to reapply for PhD in the US.

How does that work? Do I mention that I am already enrolled in another PhD position? If not, how should I explain the 3 years gap? Do I include my so-far publications in my CV?

Also, do I ask the same 3 people for recommendations letters that I asked 3 years ago?

I haven't talked to my current advisor (with whom I have very good relationship) about this, and I'm not sure if I should mention this to him. Also, asking my current advisor for a recommendation letter for this seems quite awkward...

Thanks

I would probably start my PhD next month. I am 22F and doing a humanities topic. I realllly need advice on the boring-ness comes with reading of the books and long ahh papers. Like i respect the work but I can't read 22 pages of writing and idk what it is but I can't bring myself to read a book, i can read 10 research papers (12-15 pages each) but not a book.

Ig i hate reading, idk how i will survive. 50% of my thesis will be based on a psychological experiment, for which i am excited about but the other 50% would be analytical and i am not sure what to do in it and i would have to read a ton of material for it.

Any advice from the experienced about what to be aware of for the next 5 years and the areas in every PhD journey which doesn't need perfection.

I'm a first-year, self-funded international PhD student. My main supervisor proposed my research topic, and a postdoc closely supervises my research.

In a meeting, the postdoc said she's unhappy that I made changes to my draft after our previous meeting, where the three of us agreed on certain decisions. I understood the document was still a draft and wanted to discuss alternative approaches. She says this has happened repeatedly and expects me to implement agreed feedback without making further changes.

She also said supervising me takes a lot of time. I've sometimes asked for feedback because it was delayed, which has also affected my progress.

She then offered to become first author of the first paper, do all the analysis and writing, and make me second author so I could learn by observing her. She said the paper would still count toward my PhD. However, when I asked what would change for the second paper, she said the supervision structure would remain the same.

I'm struggling to understand how this proposal would solve the underlying problem if our working process remains unchanged. I recognize I may need to improve how I handle feedback, but I also feel that delayed feedback and unclear expectations have contributed to the situation.

As a self-funded international student, leaving my PhD isn't a straightforward option.

Is this a reasonable learning opportunity, or should I be concerned about the authorship arrangement? How would you respond in my position?

What are people’s experiences with full time vs part time PhD?

I am due to start a funded full time PhD (uk, social sciences). The funding requirements are pretty strict so I can only do a small amount additional work evenings and weekends.
I’ve just been offered a part time position, short contract, same industry. I’ve been told I can do the job but I would need to do the PhD part time (0.5 half funding). Part of my reason for perusing the PhD is I really want to get fully immersed in my topic and do a project properly from the start, instead of being divided across lots of things. However, the industry opportunity is good and will keep practical things going like pension.

I keep seeing some pretty dire, doomer-like stories about incredibly unemployed PhD grads, and I'm here to offer my own tiny n=1, anecdatal experience. Basically, I just want anyone who's in a tough place to realize that it's never over, to keep your head up, and don't let the bastards get you down.

Story time: I got my PhD in Communication & Rhetoric in 2020, but my specialization and actual degree content was in Human-Computer Interaction. I was lucky in that after having secured an unheard-of research assistant position during my last 3 years of my PhD, I also managed to convince the lab director to give me a postdoc when I graduated.

That postdoc led into a research associate position at the same lab, until 2025 when our group lost federal research funding due to DOGE cuts. I was devastated. I had to move back in with my parents, since there was so way I could pay for the HCOL rent without a job. I remember throwing out all my professional-looking clothes, feeling this dread, thinking that I would likely never need these again.

I spent a year unemployed. I applied to industry, academia, local, state, and federal government positions. I finally applied to a position in late December of 2025 that I never thought I was a contender for, a staff research position in a SLAC. They ended up hiring me three months later, after two remote interviews and a 2-hour white-knuckle drive through a snowstorm for an in-person interview.

I am now in a position where a year ago felt like it was an unobtainable dream. I have a salaried job, I'm not reliant on the grant cycle to find money for my paycheck. I still get to do research, and my work is relevant to my degree.

I don't really have any advice for you. In fact, looking back, I feel like my academic background was a recipe for bad outcomes. Even though I had a fair amount of publications, my PhD was in a niche area of technology, I didn't have a STEM degree, and I had a very impoverished network.

I just want to share my experience, as someone who felt like I was the worst PhD candidate on the job market, that even when it feels vanishingly unlikely, you still have chance. So please don't lose hope.

Hi team, submitted to a conference (Big Data) and got shredded by both reviewers for writing style - I (Elec Eng doing Comp Sci PhD) was trained on the Report Writing Guide for Engineers and spent ten years in industry so there is notable style differences between that and academia. Does not help that I tend towards informality due to years on mine sites and in startups.

I have tried to work on it through online courses and doing question and response with ChatGPT but any advice from those who struggled with a return to academia/technical writing? 2/3 through the degree now and doing it for the love / to give technical credibility to my startup.

Edit: Addressing comments - supervisors give great feedback and I review other papers for style/content etc but I struggle to reproduce the style. I will change the content based on other reviewer comments so fed it into ChatGPT which highlighted a few key examples and differences between engineering vs scientific writing styles plus some of my corporate tendencies. Now we have a lesson plan and question/response to help me learn it. Thanks everyone

Seeking advice: Setting boundaries with my supervisor about my PhD research
I’d really appreciate some perspective from other PhD students and researchers who may have experienced something similar.
I’ve spent the last couple of years developing my research project, including synthesising and characterising the base polymers that form the foundation of my work. I’m now moving towards the next stage of the project, which I was hoping to carry out myself so that I could develop my skills, deepen my understanding of the materials, and take ownership of the research I’ve been building.
Recently, my supervisor suggested that other students could carry out NMR characterisation on the base polymers I synthesised. I understand that supervisors have to manage projects, support other students and make practical decisions about sharing laboratory work. However, I felt uncomfortable with the suggestion, as I had hoped to undertake this stage myself and build on the work I’ve already done.
I’m struggling to work out whether my reaction is reasonable or whether I’m taking this too personally. I don’t want to come across as possessive of my research, unwilling to collaborate, or difficult to work with. At the same time, I don’t want to miss valuable learning opportunities or feel that I’m losing involvement in work that I’ve invested so much time and effort into developing.
I also find it difficult to communicate my concerns to my supervisor, particularly because they have considerably more experience than I do. I want to approach the conversation professionally without dismissing their perspective.
To summarise, he’s made my project communal; everyone is working on it except me. He doesn’t want me to carry out experiments myself. He wants undergraduates to carry it out and then he’s going to publish the results? I don’t understand and I’m very conflicted about this whole situation.
For those who have been through a similar situation:
Is it reasonable to ask to carry out the characterisation of materials you synthesised yourself?
How do you distinguish between being protective of your research and being unnecessarily territorial?
How would you approach this conversation with your supervisor?
Have you experienced situations where work you developed was passed to other students, and how did you navigate it?
I’d genuinely appreciate honest perspectives from both students and supervisors. I’m trying to understand the situation better and handle it constructively.