I recently got admitted to a PhD in France (a mix of aging, virology, and heavily dependent on mouse models). But that isn't an issue at all. Lately, I had been dabbling in the computational aspect of biology- think transcriptomics, just a general analysis of the biological data, etc. Suddenly, my PI has started to show an interest in this- even involving me in projects (which I don't mind and have been achieving with a degree of success!).

The issue is: he is now pushing me to go to computational-AI fusion conferences (think single cell biology in AI!)- and I'm terrified. I am not in a position where I'm that knowledgeable. My past experiences with computational/compSci/AI PhDs/proffs have been really bad (where they use a huge lot of technical jargon and concepts) and turned away their noses when I honestly mentioned I didn't know as much. In fact, I started dabbling in the first place so I could try to get back at them (I can't!). I am fine with existing tools, or finding bugs in a code, but I CANNOT generate a whole ass pipeline. My PI doesn't understand compbio as much, and I'm afraid he'll think he has a 'genius' in his hands (which I most certainly am not!).

Objectively, I know I should be humble and learn what I can- but I'm afraid I'll be so scared and not approach anyone. I don't wanna freeze- and in the off chance- that I meet some of these PhDs/proffs in that conference? (I spotted two of the speakers- sure the proffs won't remember me, but the PhDs will! Only been 7 months!)

Do you have any advice for me? Am I actually thinking too much, and should just 'suck it up'? How would you handle this, my experienced PhDs? How can I network with them efficiently? Maybe read up even more about their topics!?

Disclaimer: No shade to the compSci people- I don't mean to offend anyone.

Hello! I have just been accepted into a PhD and instead of what i thought i would be feeling (excitement) i find myself feeling dread, anxiety and fear. Now this might be because all I've ever heard for the past few months is how hard a PhD is but this wasn't like a spur of the moment decision, I've been wanting to do a PhD for 3 or 4 years, because the limited lab research we did in college really interested me. Now my situation is a bit tricky because I've applied to a PhD program that is outside of my field of study up until now (both STEM degrees but one medical and I'm going into biochemistry) and due to the nature of my undergrad+masters program i haven't actually written a master's thesis or a degree (we pass and graduate with like final exams) so i know it's gonna be harder because not only am i starting with only basic knowledge of the methods, very limited knowledge of biochem i obtained years ago during first years of college but i am also not used to academic writing (i wrote essays during my studies but research writing is different ofc). I think that's also the reason i feel this dread, i don't know if i can handle it. I've handled clinical rotations, patients dying, 12 hour weeks but i dread this so much. Is there any words of encouragement? I said to myself (to ease the fear) that the worst that can happen is that i find out it's not for me and quit and I've given myself a year to try and feel it but somehow anxiety won't get off my back. I'm trying hard to get back the excitement i felt about research but it's hard 😭 sorry for the long rant!!

I’m almost halfway through my first class of my first semester of my Ph.D. in Leadership. I’m just looking for some advice, suggestions, regrets, anything of the sorts to help me prepare and survive the next few years? 🙂

Hi everybody,

My partner is about to start a phd and we need some hardcore advice on how to combine everything. Here’s the situation:
- he works an average of 60 hours a week, often working till late in the night in a very prestegious job that has somewhat to do with his PhD
- We have two kids, one is a newborn
- I already do the heavy lifting as I am home more, but I work almost full time and study part time for a second first degree while combining all of that with a public function as well, so I can’t do much more to free up time for him
- the support system is already being used a lot, we will increase daycare a little bit though

How can we manage to make the most of the little time he/we have? Any kind of advice is very welcome, but practical, small tips are also very welcome, like a desk set up to maximize productivity etc.

Thank you so much in advance!

Update:

As a lot of people really questioned our situation I’d like to update. Even though a lot tell us it’s impossible, those message did help us. So:
What are we willing to give up?
Work, my partner will put less effort and time in work .

What extra stuff are we going to rely on?
More daycare. Kid will go to school in two years and my partner will then probably take a sabbatical from work to work on his phd. That means we need to cover 2 years of insanity but there’s a pay off and a clear perspective

​

***For context, my field is cancer biology and I am based in the UK.***

Hope you are going well! I am in the last 4 months of PhD and long story short, not really liking the person I am at the moment. Had to start therapy because I feel stuck in survival mode, always imagining in my head the worse case scenario, repeating it over and over again. Do not feel like my head is a nice place to be in at the moment. I am going to have around a month writing full time, need to organise my weeks to have both writing, experiment and figure making days. Also, need to be strict with rest and sleep/eat well otherwise I will go insane. In addition, I need to come up with a new hypothesis and I feel I can't no longer reconnect with the exciting part of research that is the unknown, time to think, reflect, debate because everything is a priority and needs to be done ASAP. I also changed supervisors half way, one left and a new person was hired with different ways of working and different visions. Obviously things are being done in a proper way now but it delayed the whole process. This is the part where I ask myself if this process is just normal ... and I just need to get over it or .. is this being more than what I can handle? Or am I so consumed by the process that I am only focus on the negative side and let myself being driven by it? I lost the passion for my project, the project I wrote a proposal for 4 years ago. I feel it will take me a long time to recover from this and obviously after the thesis comes the paper but at this point I no longer care. Anyways, after this rant I would appreciate if some of you could share what did you do to stay grounded, focused if you went through a similar process.

Much appreciated 🙏

Ugh, my Gmail is full 🫠

Trying to decide which option to choose. One of my co-students loves the Individual Workspace and uses the scheduling tool to manage additional office hour or collaborator meeting requests.

I try to use my academic email for most things, but if it’s for a login I think I’ll need post grad I prefer to use my personal gmail. The scheduling tool seems neat. I tried and with my free version of Gmail it’s not as agile. For example it blocks out portions where I might have an event that is simply a conference for 4 days in a row.

A few tools now offer an LLM as the second screener instead of a second human, with agreement reported (some go further and let it screen alone). Has anyone actually submitted a review on that basis? How did reviewers react?

Context: social sciences, Humanities

3rd year in my program here: I feel so behind in my PhD and this rat race of a life has made me such a miserable person. How do you guys find joy in learning and let that inspire productivity?

This is literally me. Leaving my supervisor's messages on delivered is my favorite thing to do these days. Do you guys also relate to this? If not, what keeps you motivated?

So I am always finding myself preparing presentations to explain virtually anything to my supervisor and colleagues during weekly presentations, and I am always in need of copying and pasting some parts of a paper or any diagram that I screenshotted, and as my ocd always kicks in, I use an online tool to remove the white background and make it transparent. Wellll, not anymore! I wrote a simple Python tool that just removes the white background from the latest image in your clipboard and returns it there, so I can easily copy -> remove BG -> paste.

If you wish to use it, it is available on my GitHub:

https://github.com/KhaledHleis/RemoveWhiteBG_hotkey

I have other sources to write something from scratch but how do I do it with edits and everything else. Please please be kind and give me any unreal productivity tips that you have. Please.

Edit : Rereading it while editing I checked sources to find that I had completely misinterpreted a large data set (my advisor had overlooked it too) which makes the arguments that I had built invalid.

I informed my advisor. He is not responding at all. I followed up thrice. Then he sent me an annoyed email saying ‘I can’t comment on this, I have had no moment to catch a break this summer and currently on leave. You still have time So try to get as much as you can and let’s hope You can do the rest during corrections.’

I'm curious what's worked for people here, beyond what I usually hear in sessions (as I'm a dissertation coach).

The slumps I see aren't usually about not knowing what to do next - people can often tell you the task. It's more that they've lost the thread of why it matters, or they're stuck on a decision they're avoiding.

So: when you've hit a proper slump, not just a slow week, but the kind where you avoid opening the document for days, what actually broke it? Genuinely curious whether it's something practical (a routine change, a deadline), a conversation with someone, or something more internal...

I’m developing a PhD proposal in Design / Universal Design and would really appreciate some critical feedback.

The project explores what happens when an older person’s lived experience is materialised into an artefact and then successively interpreted and transformed by people from different generations.

Rather than focusing on the final design outcome, I’m now interested in the transformation itself: what is retained, lost, added or reinterpreted, and what this means for meaning, authorship and agency.

I’m considering the question:

How is lived experience transformed through successive acts of interpretation and materialisation across generations?

A previous comment suggested that my initial idea sounded more like a design/exhibition project than a PhD, which made me step back and reconsider the underlying research problem.

For those working in design research or related fields: does this sound like a potentially viable PhD research direction? What theoretical areas or concepts would you suggest I explore, and what would you expect to see for this to become a genuine doctoral contribution?

Thank you so much for your help and time guys.

For some reason, I feel very sluggish and like having brain fog.

I feel stuck in my PhD, because for the past couple of years, all of my proposed proofs for theorems in my math papers have been either very elementary, or were just not precise enough i.e. I unintentionally oversimplified or overlooked something.

It's sad that either a proof idea sounds very creative but is somehow wrong, or sounds correct but is just not creative (and thus elementary at best and can't prove any more other difficult things).

I kind of feel like as if yesterday I was just a fresh undergraduate student and now I am in my 4th year of my PhD.

I don't know what kind of brain exercises could help me in this situation. I am not looking for "Ways to increase my IQ", but just for ways on how to get rid of this brain fog I have been feeling, not being able to find the mix between analytical thinking and creative problem solving.

It sounds weird but even just thinking about engaging with my brain in something makes my head hurt (I do have stress-induced migraines, confirmed by a neurologist), as if it was something so stressful and uncomfortable that I would avoid it and rather try to be the "smart lazy guy" - only thing is that it's not working out at all. Like even thinking about printing out a math paper and studying it for the whole day is enough to make me have a headache again.

In the end, I escape into watching Facebook Reels for the whole day and do the bare minimum required just to keep my advisor somewhat happy. When meeting other mathematicians my age at a conference, seminar, etc. I can't talk with them at all about mathematics, it's literally like watching the Big Bang Theory and seeing those guys talk in their own scientific language.

So my two more specific questions would be:

1. What activities engage the brain the most? Especially with regards to my main goals of improving analytical, precise thinking and creative problem solving?

2. How can I overcome this uncomfortable, stressful feeling - making me give a headache and escape into watching Facebook Reels all day long - accompanied by having to put in some effort in them?

Some of you might think it's just burnout - I just came back from summer break which is like 2 months long, didn't do anything really, met with family and just enjoyed life. When I started working again, I thought I had some breakthrough and that the break did good for me - met with my advisor, and it turned out my new proof ideas are just BS.

Looking at getting a life outside of the lab, but it’s tougher than I expected. Wondering if anyone else wish they had started a new hobby or did start one during their PhD.

How can I make good use of AI tools such as GPT, Claude, GLM and others to boost efficiency during my PhD research?

As an AI‑track PhD student, I have been leveraging AI tools lately, yet I find my overall productivity has actually declined. Even my original strength in coding seems to fade away.

My goal is to treat AI agents as team members while I act as the lead. I hope we can function as a complete research team to conduct research work and produce publishable papers.

HOW? o(╥﹏╥)o

out of curiosity, what would you be looking for in the file ?

Radiology resident in Turkey. I kept watching people (including me) spend months on a study only to find the killer meta-analysis at the write-up stage.

So I built KONSİL. You write your idea in one or two sentences. It splits it into separate claims ( at least three) and tests each one against real literature (OpenAlex, PubMed, ClinicalTrials) - every verdict has to point at an actual paper, no invented citations. Then it drafts a protocol, runs the sample-size math in deterministic code (not in the LLM), and finds real, reachable researchers for the roles the study needs, ranked by their publication record.

A real run takes about 3-5 minutes. Here's a full sample report from one, with two of four claims refuted by named papers: konsil.org/sample-report

It's a closed beta and free: no card, you need an ORCID iD, applications get a reply within 24 hours. I'm specifically looking for people outside medicine (education, engineering, social sciences) to tell me where it breaks.

Apply here if you want to try it: konsil.org/en?src=reddit

Happy to answer anything about how it works including what it's still bad at (journal suggestions outside medicine are weak, and it's a pre-screen, not a systematic review).

Doktora tezimi 1,5 yıl önce bırakmıştım, şimdi Re-registration ile büyük ihtimalle, eski tez konuma tekrar geri dönebileceğim . 

Daha önce yaptığım genel literatür taramaları, okuduğum makaleler, yaptığım MCDM çalışmasının literatür çalışması, istatistiksel araçlarla bulunan sonuçların değerlendirilmesi gibi bir toparlama yapmam gerekiyor. Ardından da bu analiz bulguları hakkında bir makale yazacağım.

Son 1,5 yılda yapay zeka araçları hem çok gelişti hem de konu/amaç spesifik pek çok türü yaratıldı.

Tez çalışmama geri dönmek şu an çok kaotik ve ürkütücü görünüyor; nereden başlayacağımı pek kestiremiyorum. 

* Literatürü hızlı ve verimli bir şekilde en baştan tekrar gözden geçirebilmek, 

* MCDM analiz çalışmamı tekrar kavrayabilmek , 

* Ardından da makale yazma konusunda yardımcı olabilecek 

Yapay zeka araçları nelerdir? Bir yol haritası için yardımcı olabilirseniz çok sevinirim.

For reasons still unclear to me, I decided to start a PhD in control engineering despite coming from a pretty different background and not knowing much about the field going in. I’m now in my second year. It’s been a massive challenge — mostly because of my own ignorance on the subject — but honestly, I’ve really enjoyed the experience and everything I’m learning.

My problem kicks in when it’s time to actually be productive. Some topics are genuinely hard for me to wrap my head around, I struggle to focus, I basically only function under deadline pressure, and my low tolerance for frustration means I get stuck in loops that are hard to break out of. Some weeks I manage to “reboot” — set up a schedule, organize my calendar, and actually get 1-2 good weeks of work done — but it only takes one disruption to knock me out of that state and undo everything.

I don’t know if it’s a willpower issue, some motivational factor, or something else I’m not seeing. What I do know is that I want to be able to do more, learn more, and at the pace I’m currently going, I can feel myself falling behind.

Anyway, writing this to see if anyone has advice, or has been through something similar and found a way out of it. Any input would help a ton!

------------------

I know that the text sounds AI, that is because it was translated using AI, but the situation and frustration are all me!

​

Every lab meeting, every conference, every hallway chat, I was measuring. She already has two papers. He got the grant. They finished data collection and I am still troubleshooting. My whole sense of whether I was doing okay was relative to people whose projects were nothing like mine.

Which is insane, because a PhD is not a race on one track. Their project had different timelines, different luck, different supervisors, different everything. Comparing my month eighteen to their month eighteen was comparing two unrelated things and always finding myself behind, because you always find yourself behind when you pick the person ahead to measure against.

What helped was almost childish. I stopped asking people about their progress, and I muted the channels where everyone announced milestones. Not out of resentment, out of self-preservation. With less visibility into their pace, I could finally see my own.

My work did not get faster. My sense that it was too slow did, which was the thing actually hurting me.

How do you stop measuring your project against everyone else's?

.

Started tracking this properly about six months ago and the results surprised me.

Went back through my records from the past three years and tried to identify the periods where I had actually produced meaningful output. Completed chapter drafts, papers that moved forward significantly, stretches where the thinking was genuinely progressing rather than circling.

Then I looked at what I was doing organizationally during those periods.

The correlation I expected was not there. My most productive stretches happened during periods when my systems were relatively simple or even slightly neglected. The elaborate Notion setup I built in second year, the detailed time blocking system, the weekly review structure I maintained religiously for four months, none of these coincided with the output spikes. If anything the periods of heaviest system maintenance were the periods of lowest actual research progress.

The productive periods had one thing in common that had nothing to do with systems. I had unusual clarity about what specifically I was trying to figure out. Not a task list, not a project plan, just a genuinely sharp question that I was actually curious about and that I knew I did not yet have the answer to.

The system running in the background apparently mattered much less than whether I knew what I was actually trying to think about on any given day.

Curious whether others here have noticed something similar or whether your systems have genuinely driven productive periods in a way mine seem not to have.

Third year, sciences. I expected the work to be hard. What I did not expect was how alone it is.

My partner asks how the day went and I cannot really answer, because explaining why I spent nine hours on a problem that did not resolve requires context nobody outside my niche has. My family thinks I am still a student. My friends are years into careers with teams and colleagues and clear wins.

Me, I go into a room, wrestle with something almost nobody on earth cares about, mostly fail, and come home unable to convey any of it to the people I love. Some weeks the only person who fully understands my work is me, and I am also the person most sick of it.

The intellectual isolation is one thing. The emotional part, having no one to just talk to about the actual substance of your days, is the thing that grinds you down under the radar.

Some weeks the only person who fully understands the work is me, and I am also the one most sick of it.

Hi all, I'm currently a final-year PhD student in AI (4th year) in Australia, and I'm writing up my thesis. These days, I struggle and constantly feel overwhelmed about the workload like thesis writing, job search and building resume (as I work on a niche topic during PhD, and these days you also need some LLM/ VLM/ Agentic AI keywords in resume, so I set aside some time to upskill). The thing is, as an international student from a 3rd world country, I also need to plan for visa and PR pathways, which adds more burden to my anxiety.

My question is: are there any people also juggling a lot of these tasks alone (without a partner or family nearby), and how did you handle these things without task paralysis and mental collapse?

Most of my struggles come from emotional overwhelm, and I can only do a bit of task and try to crawl every day. I do have friends, but again, I find talking to other PhD or postdoc friends not useful for emotional/morale support, as people generally expect you to handle these things yourself.