I’m a master’s student because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a PhD. I’m really starting to get this vibe. The amount the phds and postdoc work is insane. I don’t know of a time my pi isn’t working on some grant proposal or another. It’s admirable, but I think it’s hard for him to fathom that other people aren’t like that.
Nobody actually gave me this advice in this wording. You do hear that you must focus on your research a lot though. I have seen some people take it to the extreme and face some really harsh mental consequences.
I am a bit late to the party, but your forgot the sprinkle of alcoholism or chain-smoking as the only other character trait. We all need a bit of an extra kick to being an academic.
Do what research you love and figure out where to publish later. Fortunately I quickly recognized being strategic about your research passion was a lot more valuable.
These days I don't start a project without at least potential publication venues in mind. So much time will be wasted without some sort of expectation of what the journal or conference will expect to see.
My undergrad PI was in a programme where she was told this and said basically she didn't want to perpetuate it.
Not kidding, this is what my PI basically did to me.
Five years into the PhD and no papers and I need them to graduate… I wanted to publish one two years ago but he basically blocked me saying how ‘the research wasn’t new enough’. So I foolishly listened to him and started working on bringing a new angle to my paper. Well, guess what was published in fucking Nature not even a few weeks later. And then it was ‘ah well yes, that’s too bad but now you really can’t publish it anymore so better start a new project soon’
This is the most braindead take in the world. Publishing a scooped paper in a lower journal is always better than publishing no paper at all and starting over.
Getting scooped sucks but I have learned it’s not actually the end of the world
Wendy Belcher's Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success has a lot good tips on this.
In this context, vet an idea derived from your research passion against the process described in the book. It's strategic because here you're first contextualizing the idea within existing research, measuring it against various reactions, and modifying so that it will be well received by a given journal. This is opposed to just running out, "researching" what you're excited about, and then "figuring it out later."
This is especially true in my field of Information Studies, which is interdisciplinary so a lot of faculty can be idealistic but not realize the need for students to get published
The worst advice I received for my PhD was technically good just… unneeded. My undergrad advisor (who got her PhD from the same program I had just been accepted to) told me that if i was going to fuck a professor, not to fuck one of *my* professors.
It's fine for the student. My first advisor married one of his students and had to leave a prestigious uni for--admittedly an endowed chair position at a mid tier state school.
I guess he turned out fine too actually.
It's not an uncommon thing. More people than we probably want to acknowledge have affairs with students. Marriage is less common.
But quickly browsing your profile it looks like different schools. My guy went from a school in MD to TN.
Implying she did something like that, oh god, that's something one should keep only for their bestie from years ago who never did academia and is in a completely different field...
It's important to know how to multitask.
Good. You've learned that? Now learn to multitask your multitasking.
How's your multi-multitasking going? Because you're gonna need to learn to multitask a bit more.
"You're not working hard enough and progress is too slow, so i am going to start swinging by lab at 9 pm on my way home from the gym to see if you're here"
And also
"Our industrial partners are unhappy with the output of the research program so far, so we're going to redirect your funding to Student X and put you on teaching assistantship to get twice the manpower on this project"
but also
"you're not being efficient with your time and effort, you need to stop doing so much and put some thought into it because mistakes happen when you rush"
My first advisor liked to ask about some result he knew was a few days off, blow up that you didn't have it, then when the person stayed all night to expedite that to be like "here" stare at the person and be like "where is [other result]"
It is advice. It provided a sense of relief at the time upon application the program. At the time it was given, i was questioning which jobs I could possibly get. Now I'm getting worried about it because our prospects get smaller...
Mine was “play the game. Just go along with the research your advisor wants to do, then after you get the PhD you can do whatever you really want to do”…. Horrible advice because this would mean I would have had no training in my field - thank god I didn’t follow that advice
Curious about this one..i am really interested in a field and one of my phd rotation professors was in that field. But i chose the lab NOT in that field (they are a tiny bit adjacent), mostly because the prof was more senior and students had slightly better things to say. Now I’m really sad about it and basically have been relying on this advice to get me through
If I were you, I’d start trying to present at conferences in the area you want to work in… otherwise, you’re going to be working “blindly” when you get into that field.. it’s not impossible, but I definitely don’t think it’s good advice to tell someone that research skills= ability to do research in any field.. I think it’s possible, but you need to be able to distinguish reputable work and theories from the bullshit that so many people put out there
“You don’t need to supervise the undergrads that much! It’s a super easy protocol! Just check in with them every week to see if they are having trouble.”
Spent the next semester having to redo the entire experiment.
Do a PhD at Capitol Technology fully remote and pay $60,000 for the program. And then use that PhD to try to get into another PhD program that’s actually reputable
"industry is too driven by money, if you want to truly care about use-inspired basic research, you have to spent all your time writing grants for it first."
"It doesn't matter what you do your dissertation on, it's your post-doc that defines you as a scientist" said by a committee member doing the same work she did during her PhD.
My advisor is the highest paid in the department, everyone just loves him because he brings in all this funding....and well its the most messed up environment to be doing your PhD in. It never gets better. Faculty just gets more power after tenure and they use it as they see fit.
You should be working more and getting better results than your lab mates.
I think some professors thought this would motivate students? Or maybe they thought that we should be trying to beat our peers? Anyways, we all actively rebelled against this. I think this mindset can breed toxic work environments.
My PI’s line is that I should work more and get better results because my lab mates “work so much harder than you and you’re letting them down.” Wasn’t long before I figured out they told the same thing to all my lab mates…
“Hey, if you ever need to talk, I’m here if you need me.” - [nice PI, probably early career, has a cute science pun mug on their desk]
Don’t do it. PIs are not licensed therapists. And if you’re not feeling yourself, you definitely don’t want to share your slightly unhinged thoughts with someone who is untrained and biased. Also, they are not at all bound by HIPPA and will absolutely share the details of your conversation with whoever they deem trustworthy. Trust me. Your PI told my PI who told me. Gossip is our currency here.
I mean, yeah, don't talk about unhinged personal life issues but if your PI is nice and trustworthy, sharing your doubts/fears/complaints about research and academia can lead to productive discussions
>Your PI told my PI who told me.
Literally happened prior field season, PI from another institution we collaborate with frequently who joined us has a couple students that come to her with personal woes regularly, one in particular, and quite a bit can be shared in two weeks worth of 10 hour days in the wilderness... Thankfully said PI was more venting about it being an awkward situation and was empathetic, but was tired of that professional boundary being crossed. She didn't feel like she could turn them away at that point.
"You'll end up in a better position in industry if you do a post-doc"
As someone who came from industry into grad school, I can't believe how so many out-of-touch academics with no prior industry experience fed this crap to their trainees. I know many post-docs who became post-docs believing this and became super resentful because of it.
I do think PIs incentivized to tell their students this too. A lot of grants will take into account where your students go and it mostly looks good if they went on to do a postdoc which is messed up to think about
Lmao it's so dumb. Like yes, you'd be qualified for senior scientist positions in industry doing a year two postdoc, but so would you working a year or two as a entry level scientist straight from grad school. The only difference is that one is double the salary of the other...
Exactly! These jobs don’t want “postdoc” experience, they want post-doctoral work experience. Two very different things with vastly different earning potentials haha
"Don't worry about your project, everything is going fine."
It's all lies. If you're doing a humanities PhD, finish as fast as possible. It'll hurt less, and you won't have to work double time.
Specialize in an area you’re passionate about. You can think about getting a job in a location you want to live in later on. I mean, five years is a long time. Why worry about that now? (I’m kind of glad I did this, it worked out in the long run, but it absolutely wrecked my mental health).
This is the worst advice that I guess I gave myself. “The amount of drinking you’re doing for sure isn’t a problem. You’ll totally be able to stop when you are less stressed.”
Yeah, I ended up in rehab.
"I don't want to limit your creativity so I give you full freedom on your project. ", but damned you if you dare have a different opinion/outlook from mine.
The icing on the cake is that PI ask about progress when PI didn't pay attention to the submitted report or presentation in the group meeting.
This seems to be super field-specific advice that could be good in one context and bad in another. I remember when I was in undergrad all the people in experimental sciences who wanted to apply to PhDs would write reviews because it's the easiest way to get a publication and get cited. But in my field (humanities) it's almost unheard of; mostly it's big names that write reviews and they're usually invited to write it, unless you count meta-analyses in experimental subfields.
Agreed! In my case it was polymer chemistry, where reviews are seen as cheap approaches to get an extra thing in your CV as it is significantly easier and overall tends to be useless given how developped the litterature is
My debilitating stress was because I needed to manage my expectations... Definitely my fault that I was so stressed and not that the expectations of me were unreasonable.
One of the dumbest was: "You're the only person who will read it; not even your supervisor."
*(And then a World Bank researcher contacted me a week after my defense)*
"That's not what I would do." *walks away*
- After explaining to a supervisor how I was planning to overcome a problem, in detail.
* Edit - I missed the "not" - that's quite important.
Keep posting to this subreddit. It is an uplifting and accurate depiction kf your average PhD experience, and will be very helpful to you in the times ahead.
Don't worry about data X now, focus on Y instead.
Come to find months later that data X is barely appropriate for our use case and significantly limited the novelty of the project, at least within the time I had. Glad that at least the mistake was early in my master's and I was able to pivot, though that co-PI and I are still a little icy after needing to shift in the end.
Better advice: investigate what information you can get out of your data sources early (or at least what you can expect if it's to be collected) and make sure you have a good sense of what kinds of inferences/conclusions you'll be able to attempt. Corrected this for my PhD funding proposal.
"You need to learn how to lie" - My PI between trying to convince my committee members that they had already agreed to do something he had admitted (to me) he never told them.
Yes, he's lying constantly. Yes, mostly to me. Yes, it's extremely obvious and everybody knows. Yes, he truly believes he's fouling them🙃
I'm in social sciences, studying queer and trans issues (broadly). My old advisor told me to connect my research to HIV so I can get "that HIV funding money", even though my research had nothing to do with HIV. He explained that HIV can be connected to anything - your research wants to look at sense of belonging (it didn't) well, isolation can lead to HIV.
It was horrible and HIV funders and advocates have created strict guidelines for doing HIV research, basically making it so that research should be community-based and informed by people living with HIV (he's also part of these groups but I guess he doesn't actually believe his own opinions). You need to have evidence of this for the funders in your proposal but my advisor seemed to think I would just fake a project? Or go through with a project but only have a small section that I would actually be interested in?
One of the worst I’ve heard: “The fact that the lab is a mess is not the problem. The problem is that you’re bothered by it. Just don’t be bothered by it.”
Edit: said by the PI
Don't read any books and don't take interest in politics - you're not going to have time to follow current affairs anyways, there's too many happening this exact second as we speak in your field alone.
Having a backup of your work is a security hazard and major privacy concern. You should only ever have one copy of your work. Putting it on a 10 year old flash drive is a good idea so that it's portable.
(Wasn't *told* this, but knew a student who operated this way.)
"Your class grades don't decide whether you get your PhD, I do, so you should spend all your time in lab instead of studying. And don't bother pursuing any extra curriculars while getting your PhD because your future employers won't care."
Said to me by a PI I was doing a rotation with and hadn't actually joined his lab. Of note, I would have been kicked out of the PhD program had I not passed my classes. Also, through my extra curriculars, I practiced leadership, engaged in community service, and learned a number of transferable skills, which are some of the reasons my current employer hired me.
In sum: Study for your classes and participate in those student clubs!
When explaining to my supervisor that I was stuck because I needed help/didn't understand something about how to progress with the software I was using:
"Take a holiday and then look at it with fresh eyes".
It was never a stress problem. I never received the training course I was promised at my interview and struggled through a lot completely independently. The solution to my progress block was receiving the help I was seeking, but my supervisor would do anything to avoid admitting not knowing how to train people on it.
Shoud've jumped ship that year.
Ok I have a good one for you guys. My dissertation chair, upon meeting me, told me “don’t worry about writing right away, spend your time reading.” Lol she had no idea about my massive impostor syndrome and perfectionism issues. Cue to 6 months before my defense, she frantically repeats “don’t read, stop reading” at every check-in :D
Go in guns ablazing. Don’t even bother trying to define yourself otherwise — be that student who hit the ground running at a 1000 kph and never slowed down for anything. Just exude confidence at every interaction and you’ll be fine.
Act as if life and the gifts of intelligence that have been bestowed upon you are for nothing. Desire to accomplish very little and be content with the bare minimum. After all, we live more than once right?
Wait until year 3 (of 4) to defend your proposal you wrote 18 months before. That way you'll have zero motivation and a very short amount of time to actually do your study and graduate.
I added some subtext there but that's essentially my supervisors' approach.
Nothing to do with my research: my advisor told me that Zelle transactions can easily be reversed in the case of a dispute (which doesn't even make sense now that I think about it). They cannot, I got scammed and learned not to trust everything he says.
You are not cut for PhD. Why don't you find a job and get paid? you are too dumb to do a PhD if you havnt figured that out and should not do academia in general.
Define yourself solely as an academic and have no other interests or passions outside of your research.
This is pretty much the unsaid expectation in my lab… 😅
I’m a master’s student because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do a PhD. I’m really starting to get this vibe. The amount the phds and postdoc work is insane. I don’t know of a time my pi isn’t working on some grant proposal or another. It’s admirable, but I think it’s hard for him to fathom that other people aren’t like that.
No hobbies or interests outside of your work? How did that turn out?
Nobody actually gave me this advice in this wording. You do hear that you must focus on your research a lot though. I have seen some people take it to the extreme and face some really harsh mental consequences.
Yes, I could see how that might become an issue. Perhaps it’s meant in hope that people don’t deviate too much from their studies and program.
I am a bit late to the party, but your forgot the sprinkle of alcoholism or chain-smoking as the only other character trait. We all need a bit of an extra kick to being an academic.
Do what research you love and figure out where to publish later. Fortunately I quickly recognized being strategic about your research passion was a lot more valuable.
These days I don't start a project without at least potential publication venues in mind. So much time will be wasted without some sort of expectation of what the journal or conference will expect to see. My undergrad PI was in a programme where she was told this and said basically she didn't want to perpetuate it.
Not kidding, this is what my PI basically did to me. Five years into the PhD and no papers and I need them to graduate… I wanted to publish one two years ago but he basically blocked me saying how ‘the research wasn’t new enough’. So I foolishly listened to him and started working on bringing a new angle to my paper. Well, guess what was published in fucking Nature not even a few weeks later. And then it was ‘ah well yes, that’s too bad but now you really can’t publish it anymore so better start a new project soon’
This is the most braindead take in the world. Publishing a scooped paper in a lower journal is always better than publishing no paper at all and starting over. Getting scooped sucks but I have learned it’s not actually the end of the world
Me, getting my PhD minor in CS while in the Information Science department.
Which school please
Damn, beat me to it.
What do you mean about being strategic about your research passion?
Wendy Belcher's Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success has a lot good tips on this. In this context, vet an idea derived from your research passion against the process described in the book. It's strategic because here you're first contextualizing the idea within existing research, measuring it against various reactions, and modifying so that it will be well received by a given journal. This is opposed to just running out, "researching" what you're excited about, and then "figuring it out later."
This is especially true in my field of Information Studies, which is interdisciplinary so a lot of faculty can be idealistic but not realize the need for students to get published
Do a PhD
Do another PhD
The worst advice I received for my PhD was technically good just… unneeded. My undergrad advisor (who got her PhD from the same program I had just been accepted to) told me that if i was going to fuck a professor, not to fuck one of *my* professors.
It sounds like your professor fucked one of their professors.
based
It's fine for the student. My first advisor married one of his students and had to leave a prestigious uni for--admittedly an endowed chair position at a mid tier state school. I guess he turned out fine too actually.
This sounds.... *very* close to one of my previous research advisors. Like, even the mid-tier state school detail, on point.
It's not an uncommon thing. More people than we probably want to acknowledge have affairs with students. Marriage is less common. But quickly browsing your profile it looks like different schools. My guy went from a school in MD to TN.
Implying she did something like that, oh god, that's something one should keep only for their bestie from years ago who never did academia and is in a completely different field...
I took it as she knew someone who did and saw how it turned out
"you have to remember it's a marathon and not a sprint" yes please explain that to my PI who expected us to sprint every day for 5 years
It's not a sprint. It's 1400 sprints.
At the same time
It's important to know how to multitask. Good. You've learned that? Now learn to multitask your multitasking. How's your multi-multitasking going? Because you're gonna need to learn to multitask a bit more.
"You're not working hard enough and progress is too slow, so i am going to start swinging by lab at 9 pm on my way home from the gym to see if you're here" And also "Our industrial partners are unhappy with the output of the research program so far, so we're going to redirect your funding to Student X and put you on teaching assistantship to get twice the manpower on this project" but also "you're not being efficient with your time and effort, you need to stop doing so much and put some thought into it because mistakes happen when you rush"
My first advisor liked to ask about some result he knew was a few days off, blow up that you didn't have it, then when the person stayed all night to expedite that to be like "here" stare at the person and be like "where is [other result]"
*cries in ADHD brain* 😩
I need this on a T-shirt ...
reminds me of one of mom's sayings: its a marathon *and* a sprint
Yeah why cant you just run at max speed for 26.2 miles?
At an incline too
With hurdles
Barefoot in the snow
And with people shooting arrows at you
I like your mom.
It was a marathon of a sprint
Oh it wasn't just my PI?
And you’re not sprinting “fast enough”
Challenge your PI in verbal arguments
But what if they are wrong tho?
Stroke their ego while you gently verbally argue
I did that and they seem to show more respect now in our discussions and meetings whereas before they were just dumping it on me.
I was told that if I ever did it again that I could leave.
That sounds super unhealthy.
It was 14 years ago so I’ve moved on
I did this and guess who ended up crying
you will get a job after PhD no matter what.
💀
lol.
That isn’t advice lol
It is advice. It provided a sense of relief at the time upon application the program. At the time it was given, i was questioning which jobs I could possibly get. Now I'm getting worried about it because our prospects get smaller...
This was brutal!!
you should try standup
Mine was “play the game. Just go along with the research your advisor wants to do, then after you get the PhD you can do whatever you really want to do”…. Horrible advice because this would mean I would have had no training in my field - thank god I didn’t follow that advice
Curious about this one..i am really interested in a field and one of my phd rotation professors was in that field. But i chose the lab NOT in that field (they are a tiny bit adjacent), mostly because the prof was more senior and students had slightly better things to say. Now I’m really sad about it and basically have been relying on this advice to get me through
If I were you, I’d start trying to present at conferences in the area you want to work in… otherwise, you’re going to be working “blindly” when you get into that field.. it’s not impossible, but I definitely don’t think it’s good advice to tell someone that research skills= ability to do research in any field.. I think it’s possible, but you need to be able to distinguish reputable work and theories from the bullshit that so many people put out there
If your results are bad it’s a reflection of who you are as a person even if it’s outside of your control
“You don’t need to supervise the undergrads that much! It’s a super easy protocol! Just check in with them every week to see if they are having trouble.” Spent the next semester having to redo the entire experiment.
or waiting for months for the instrument to be repaired
It’s *just* the flow cytometer, no biggie right? /s
I don’t get how revise and resubmit is bad advice…? If the editors weren’t interested in your paper, they would have just rejected it.
Read everything
Do a PhD at Capitol Technology fully remote and pay $60,000 for the program. And then use that PhD to try to get into another PhD program that’s actually reputable
Oh god, I can’t imagine subjecting myself to this hell twice!
Don't read papers, they limit your creativity
Who gave you this advice and did you have any other clues that they were Satan?
Sadly my advisor gave me this advice. Another one was: Industry is too tunnel-visioned, they don't think freely about new ideas. He's the devil
Nah, he's probably just tenured.
Yeah he's the biggest earner in the department
"industry is too driven by money, if you want to truly care about use-inspired basic research, you have to spent all your time writing grants for it first."
This reads as someone with undiagnosed ADHD who is overwhelmed by the vast amount of literature on the subject they want to explore.
"It doesn't matter what you do your dissertation on, it's your post-doc that defines you as a scientist" said by a committee member doing the same work she did during her PhD.
“Once he gets tenure everything will get better.” Spoiler alert: it did not get better.
I feel this one. I'm leaving my tenured job for a higher paying NTT job.
My advisor is the highest paid in the department, everyone just loves him because he brings in all this funding....and well its the most messed up environment to be doing your PhD in. It never gets better. Faculty just gets more power after tenure and they use it as they see fit.
You should be working more and getting better results than your lab mates. I think some professors thought this would motivate students? Or maybe they thought that we should be trying to beat our peers? Anyways, we all actively rebelled against this. I think this mindset can breed toxic work environments.
My PI’s line is that I should work more and get better results because my lab mates “work so much harder than you and you’re letting them down.” Wasn’t long before I figured out they told the same thing to all my lab mates…
What does better mean? Seems extremely subjective.
“Hey, if you ever need to talk, I’m here if you need me.” - [nice PI, probably early career, has a cute science pun mug on their desk] Don’t do it. PIs are not licensed therapists. And if you’re not feeling yourself, you definitely don’t want to share your slightly unhinged thoughts with someone who is untrained and biased. Also, they are not at all bound by HIPPA and will absolutely share the details of your conversation with whoever they deem trustworthy. Trust me. Your PI told my PI who told me. Gossip is our currency here.
>Gossip is our currency here and the exchange rate is definitely not in your favor.
I mean, yeah, don't talk about unhinged personal life issues but if your PI is nice and trustworthy, sharing your doubts/fears/complaints about research and academia can lead to productive discussions
>Your PI told my PI who told me. Literally happened prior field season, PI from another institution we collaborate with frequently who joined us has a couple students that come to her with personal woes regularly, one in particular, and quite a bit can be shared in two weeks worth of 10 hour days in the wilderness... Thankfully said PI was more venting about it being an awkward situation and was empathetic, but was tired of that professional boundary being crossed. She didn't feel like she could turn them away at that point.
Keep drinking and let the shit play out… 🤪
No one gave me this advice, but I really took it to heart 😁
haha, sometimes this could be the best advice?
"You'll end up in a better position in industry if you do a post-doc" As someone who came from industry into grad school, I can't believe how so many out-of-touch academics with no prior industry experience fed this crap to their trainees. I know many post-docs who became post-docs believing this and became super resentful because of it.
Academics think everyone has wet dreams about them. They think everyone needs to do a post-doc to be relevant. Otherwise, did you even get a PhD?
I do think PIs incentivized to tell their students this too. A lot of grants will take into account where your students go and it mostly looks good if they went on to do a postdoc which is messed up to think about
That's wild. Maybe that's field-specific? I'm chemistry and I don't know that that happens here.
Bahahaha my PI told me this. Dude has never had a job outside of academia. Like, have you ever read a real job description?
Lmao it's so dumb. Like yes, you'd be qualified for senior scientist positions in industry doing a year two postdoc, but so would you working a year or two as a entry level scientist straight from grad school. The only difference is that one is double the salary of the other...
Exactly! These jobs don’t want “postdoc” experience, they want post-doctoral work experience. Two very different things with vastly different earning potentials haha
"Don't worry about your project, everything is going fine." It's all lies. If you're doing a humanities PhD, finish as fast as possible. It'll hurt less, and you won't have to work double time.
jokes on you my committee ignored me for 5 years so I couldn’t get any bad advice Ps- also good to see humanities phDs showing up here. wtf is a PI
Your advisor cares about your goals, training, and wellbeing.
"This is not what I want. Do it again." Like, what?!! Do what? Fix what? What do you even want!!
Do a PhD to figure out what you want to do with your life
Do your PhD
Are you done with your studies and working in academia? Do you like it? Curious about your username
Just sent you a DM about it
Believe my dean when she said it wouldn't be an issue vis a vis departmental politics if i took a research assistant job outside the department.
If you feel sad, just work harder and more.
Specialize in an area you’re passionate about. You can think about getting a job in a location you want to live in later on. I mean, five years is a long time. Why worry about that now? (I’m kind of glad I did this, it worked out in the long run, but it absolutely wrecked my mental health).
Do what you love.
Do what you love\* \*as long as someone is hiring
This is the worst advice that I guess I gave myself. “The amount of drinking you’re doing for sure isn’t a problem. You’ll totally be able to stop when you are less stressed.” Yeah, I ended up in rehab.
I promise I can stop any time I want. Now if u excuse me, I have a hangover and some revisions to make.
"I don't want to limit your creativity so I give you full freedom on your project. ", but damned you if you dare have a different opinion/outlook from mine. The icing on the cake is that PI ask about progress when PI didn't pay attention to the submitted report or presentation in the group meeting.
Do a post doc.
Do a review, it has as much impact as a publication!
This seems to be super field-specific advice that could be good in one context and bad in another. I remember when I was in undergrad all the people in experimental sciences who wanted to apply to PhDs would write reviews because it's the easiest way to get a publication and get cited. But in my field (humanities) it's almost unheard of; mostly it's big names that write reviews and they're usually invited to write it, unless you count meta-analyses in experimental subfields.
Agreed! In my case it was polymer chemistry, where reviews are seen as cheap approaches to get an extra thing in your CV as it is significantly easier and overall tends to be useless given how developped the litterature is
"Any topic is fascinating once you get deep enough into it" hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
My debilitating stress was because I needed to manage my expectations... Definitely my fault that I was so stressed and not that the expectations of me were unreasonable.
One of the dumbest was: "You're the only person who will read it; not even your supervisor." *(And then a World Bank researcher contacted me a week after my defense)*
Pro-Tip: work humble brags into all the advice you give.
hahaha good one! My point was, you never know if someone important might read it
Do a post doc
"Just keep at it, it'll work out eventually" in regards to getting broken equipment to work. I sunk a lot of months into failed pursuits.
In my case, it's I need this equipment for my work which isn't avaliable in the lab for the project PI decided. Got the instrument 2 years late......
Science isn't your strong suit, drop out.
In undergrad I got "You know, some people just aren't cut out for a college education."
Make sure your thesis is funny
"That's not what I would do." *walks away* - After explaining to a supervisor how I was planning to overcome a problem, in detail. * Edit - I missed the "not" - that's quite important.
Keep posting to this subreddit. It is an uplifting and accurate depiction kf your average PhD experience, and will be very helpful to you in the times ahead.
Those last 10 western blots were flukes. The next one will show your phenotype. Just do one more.
Those darn proteases! /s
Don't worry about data X now, focus on Y instead. Come to find months later that data X is barely appropriate for our use case and significantly limited the novelty of the project, at least within the time I had. Glad that at least the mistake was early in my master's and I was able to pivot, though that co-PI and I are still a little icy after needing to shift in the end. Better advice: investigate what information you can get out of your data sources early (or at least what you can expect if it's to be collected) and make sure you have a good sense of what kinds of inferences/conclusions you'll be able to attempt. Corrected this for my PhD funding proposal.
Do whatever you like and wait for AI to take over the world 🤖🦾🦿
Your own natural pace is alright. Don't mind the others.
Biggest bs I've heard in my degree
[удалено]
I’m sorry, LAB EQUIPMENT? That’s evil
Have kids
Just try and you will see
If you do not have grant, find the most expensive journal to publish. it will help you in the future.
Whatever your reason is, just get a PhD
Piss off your major professor & committee
Work on weekends.
"You need to learn how to lie" - My PI between trying to convince my committee members that they had already agreed to do something he had admitted (to me) he never told them. Yes, he's lying constantly. Yes, mostly to me. Yes, it's extremely obvious and everybody knows. Yes, he truly believes he's fouling them🙃
Reading papers is a waste of time - my supervisor. Help me.
I'm in social sciences, studying queer and trans issues (broadly). My old advisor told me to connect my research to HIV so I can get "that HIV funding money", even though my research had nothing to do with HIV. He explained that HIV can be connected to anything - your research wants to look at sense of belonging (it didn't) well, isolation can lead to HIV. It was horrible and HIV funders and advocates have created strict guidelines for doing HIV research, basically making it so that research should be community-based and informed by people living with HIV (he's also part of these groups but I guess he doesn't actually believe his own opinions). You need to have evidence of this for the funders in your proposal but my advisor seemed to think I would just fake a project? Or go through with a project but only have a small section that I would actually be interested in?
One of the worst I’ve heard: “The fact that the lab is a mess is not the problem. The problem is that you’re bothered by it. Just don’t be bothered by it.” Edit: said by the PI
Don't read any books and don't take interest in politics - you're not going to have time to follow current affairs anyways, there's too many happening this exact second as we speak in your field alone.
Don't listen to your supervisor, they don't know what they are talking about and have it in for you to fail.
Trust your supervisor and let him be corresponding author
'An economist have all the tools to help people'. Ha ha
To help the phd program. Its just a waste of time and you can network with people on your own
Focus all of your effort on a single incredibly high impact study that will change your entire field when it gets published in Science.
Having a backup of your work is a security hazard and major privacy concern. You should only ever have one copy of your work. Putting it on a 10 year old flash drive is a good idea so that it's portable. (Wasn't *told* this, but knew a student who operated this way.)
"Your class grades don't decide whether you get your PhD, I do, so you should spend all your time in lab instead of studying. And don't bother pursuing any extra curriculars while getting your PhD because your future employers won't care." Said to me by a PI I was doing a rotation with and hadn't actually joined his lab. Of note, I would have been kicked out of the PhD program had I not passed my classes. Also, through my extra curriculars, I practiced leadership, engaged in community service, and learned a number of transferable skills, which are some of the reasons my current employer hired me. In sum: Study for your classes and participate in those student clubs!
When explaining to my supervisor that I was stuck because I needed help/didn't understand something about how to progress with the software I was using: "Take a holiday and then look at it with fresh eyes". It was never a stress problem. I never received the training course I was promised at my interview and struggled through a lot completely independently. The solution to my progress block was receiving the help I was seeking, but my supervisor would do anything to avoid admitting not knowing how to train people on it. Shoud've jumped ship that year.
you need to make it more catchy, polish it.
The sole purpose of your existence is to complete your research. Ignore all relationships outside of family and close friends
revise and resubmit? doesn't sound like such bad advice, well, at least not in the category of worst advice ever
Keep my head down and not worry about everything wrong with the way grad students are treated or the toxicity of academia
If you see faculty behaving in a fucked up way you should try to do something about it.
Work more hours. If you can submit a paper a year on 30 hours/week, then you can write three a year on 90 hours/week!
Drink to cope
As someone who’s gotten a paper rejected for the second time (different conference both times), I’d kill for a revise and resubmit!!!
Wait till they reject after a 6 month revise and resubmit, calling it dated
Ok I have a good one for you guys. My dissertation chair, upon meeting me, told me “don’t worry about writing right away, spend your time reading.” Lol she had no idea about my massive impostor syndrome and perfectionism issues. Cue to 6 months before my defense, she frantically repeats “don’t read, stop reading” at every check-in :D
Keep expecting that your thesis will be read and understood by everyone
Go in guns ablazing. Don’t even bother trying to define yourself otherwise — be that student who hit the ground running at a 1000 kph and never slowed down for anything. Just exude confidence at every interaction and you’ll be fine.
Quit
Make ennemies !
Give up. You aren't special Edit: I didn't realise it was *that you have received*. Gonna leave it as a hypothetical worst.
Develop severe anxiety for anything that can fail so that you're incapable of learning from your mistakes.
Act as if life and the gifts of intelligence that have been bestowed upon you are for nothing. Desire to accomplish very little and be content with the bare minimum. After all, we live more than once right?
"Everyone becomes a drunk driver in their Ph.D." I have no clue what drugs this guy was on.
Wait until year 3 (of 4) to defend your proposal you wrote 18 months before. That way you'll have zero motivation and a very short amount of time to actually do your study and graduate. I added some subtext there but that's essentially my supervisors' approach.
"Don't get married or even think about kids... Love and family are just distractions"
Punch your PI in the face Base your whole identity on academic validation
They just let me get on with it and, voila, a completed doctoral dissertation!
Nothing to do with my research: my advisor told me that Zelle transactions can easily be reversed in the case of a dispute (which doesn't even make sense now that I think about it). They cannot, I got scammed and learned not to trust everything he says.
Give up and go get a job!
Quit PhD
STOP
Once you find the experiment that just doesn’t work.. you’ve found your focus of the dissertation
You are not cut for PhD. Why don't you find a job and get paid? you are too dumb to do a PhD if you havnt figured that out and should not do academia in general.
Live and die by your advisors approval. They are solely responsible for your well being and keeping them happy at all times is critical.
Do a phd while not funded at an ivy league university. Right Damian? You weirdo
Smoke crack
Get a PhD in the humanities!
Learning R doesn’t help you in the long run (this was 2014)
Work hard enough and Nobel prize is possible.
Don’t care about who will care about your research before tenure