Hate my PhD.

AlphabetCards wrote: »

Time to revisit this thread!



Well, since I've finally left this particular programme, I can finally answer this. I hope that this helps prospective PhD students to focus their thoughts, and ask the right questions at interview time! And hopefully some of you will get a laugh out of this. This partially documents 'The Nonsense' and only scratches the surface!

Basically, my supervisor was behind a lot of the nonsense. He was always present but rather lazy. He would come into my office/lab every few hours and if I was talking to someone - even on academic matters - he would ask me why I'm not working. If I was in the library writing up, he would email me to insist that I did it at my desk and not elsewhere on camp. I struggled with this initially, but I'm ex-military so this kind of nonsense isn't new to me so I went along with it. A pal I started with found this rather odd, so he started wondering aloud about the upcoming three years with this supervisor. The weirdest thing happened around this time. Myself and my pal were at lunch when a rather senior figure from a foreign civil service sat with us, and told us that two of his colleagues had been masters students of our supervisor. He warned us that they had been asked for money, or else their masters theses may not 'pass'. We had no reason to doubt this man given his standing.

One day in the tea room, I made a passing remark about my time working as a builder/labourer. This was a mistake! Over a few weeks I was regularly cornered, as he outlined how 4 different builders had run off with his money, and that his extension wasn't finished, and that the roof was leaking. I figured he was a difficult customer, and I finally witnessed it whilst sharing a car en route to a conference. I heard him speak to his builders on the phone. His wife would ring him whenever the builders took a tea break and he would in-turn ring the builders and tell them to get back to work... he spent most of these calls berating them and calling them 'dishonorable gentlemen'. I was beginning to understand why they stopped turning up. One day after this died down, he kept me in his office for a few hours, outlining what needs to be done, and I helped him cost it up. He then requested that I do this work over a number of weekends, for free, and that he might cook me dinner as payment... When this conversation started he described it as 'hiring me' but eventually it became 'you can help your supervisor'. He was so disappointed that I wouldn't do it for free, got in a huff and asked me to leave. Like a petulant teenager, he ignored me for a few weeks, which was a lovely bit of peace and quiet! At this point, I started documenting EVERYTHING.

I'll talk about academic matters. In my case this supervisor had got funding for a PhD in a rather niche area of chemistry - an area my centre had no experience in - so we lacked a lot of the instruments and facilities for handling and characterizing anything that was prepared or synthesized. That was my fault for not thinking this through when I was initially researching the position... I was a naive but enthusiastic student! He routinely parried off my ideas and requests for purchases/paperwork, so I was frequently left unable to complete any work for weeks on end. God forbid I go to the library in this time, he continued to berate me for not being in the lab, despite having no paperwork signed off to allow me to work, or in some cases, no reagents. Eventually I got to work with the help of my co-supervisor who was in every sense of the word, an utter bloody saint.

Work went well and eventually a head of group at my centre put me forward to present to rather select group of experts, and it went brilliantly - I made great contacts and even during the lunch breaks I was sitting down with people with three decades experience in the field and making out plans on back of napkins, such was the excitement in the room! The following weeks were great for communicating with these folk, but my supervisor got wind and insisted that all communication went through him. I could sense the impending nightmare! Being cc'd in those emails was painful as he used every excuse to stop talking about the joint paper, in order to extol his virtues and accomplishments; he insisted on trying to get funding from them in every email. Eventually they stopped replying. Same happened when an oxford-based spin off offered to help me out by taking me in for a few weeks so that I could prepare/analyse/characterise my materials and receive further training - despite the fact that they were offering all this FOR FREE he insisted on creating a debate to secure more funding from them. Eventually they stopped replying to us both. These were just two instances where my efforts were completely undermined by him. I drove on, I really wanted this PhD so I just got my head down and cracked on.

Around this time my pal got badly hit in a lab accident, and since he was already dubious of this supervisor and his methods (that resulted in this explosion) - he left for another uni. I probably should have gone too... Spending weeks doing safety paperwork to their meticulous standards is bad, but when your supervisor comes in and shows you 'the real way' to do the work, one should smell a rat! He managed to get an international student who brought funding with him, and all of a sudden my ideas that he had parried off had become the foundation of this new students work. He had essentially written a proposal based on a document I emailed to him in month three, outlining my proposed stages, papers, outcomes et cetera. My co-supervisor approached me and told me that this happened, and that he would act as a witness if I wanted to pursue it officially. I was a broken man by this stage so I started applying for jobs.

The good news - I applied for a lab tech job in a rather prestigious uni, and one of the professors on the panel offered me a PhD instead! Myself and my co-supervisor resigned on the same day, and we've documented The Nonsense. It'll be hard to leave the other staff behind who have been nothing but lovely for the whole time, but hopefully the remaining students there will have a better time than those of us who have gone before.

Black Swan wrote: »

From a cost-benefits perspective, they did not feel that 4 year degrees, masters, or doctorates were worth the money or time, and that alternatives with practical training, skills, and experiences were more valued.