Last year I quit my $80,000/yr industry job to go back to school and get my PhD. I want to go back into industry or into academia after my PhD. My husband and I sold most of our stuff, moved to Washington with our pets, he got a new job, and I am doing my studies. I am funded, like most STEM PhD students. I.e. my tuition is paid for and I get wages for my research. I moved to the university to study computational, synthetic, and systems biology. I.e. genetic engineering, protein engineering, immunoengineering, bioinformatics, things that mesh those two, etc.
Well since it's a PhD program, I have to convince a professor to take me long-term during the stay of my program. They will then pay for my tuition plus wages. My program requires and funds you to try out a lab before "locking into it" long term, and this is called "rotating." The department will fund you for two quarters of rotations, and then expect you to lock into a lab that you tried long term.
I thought I had everything arranged. I had my PhD offer, and my first rotation was in an incredibly famous lab that everyone else loves and says it's easy to be chosen to lock-in if you wish. So I do my rotation there, and found it very challenging. The lab was huge (80+ students, 40+ post docs) and I had never done any of the computational or experimental techniques I was learning. In the end, I delivered the results of my project, and presented on it. My PI, instead of offering to let me lock in, asked me to do another rotation to get a different perspective and new skills. So I depart his lab and choose another one in a similar field, understanding that I could come back, but he just wants me to learn a new lab for my own enrichment.
This second lab I begin in my second quarter. Long story short, things turned disastrous. My PI wouldn't talk to me or meet with me the entire time. The project she promised me never happened. And the chair of the department told me she doesn't have funding to take me long term anyway. So it was a waste of time, and after my dad died in December, I took a few days to grieve. The PI and her lab threw that in my face, gaslit me, blamed me for not finishing training fast enough (which was NOT my fault), and the entire debacle ended up in me getting deleted from the lab list and the senior lab member yelling at me and humiliating me in front of other students about how I have no idea how research works and that I'm a shitty grad student. So needless to say, I had to get my academic advisors involved, and then I had to leave the lab and look for a third lab.
By the time I was looking for a third lab, all the professors in my field of interest had already filled up with "lock-ins" from other students, and had already promised next year's positions to next year's cohort. In summary, I have reached out to dozens of professors, and none of them have funding or space for me anymore, all because my second rotation got fucked and I couldn't resolve it fast enough to slide into a new lab in time.
So I'm in limbo. My academic advisers assure me they will find me a lab, but they seem open to just throwing me into any PhD lab they can find. But I didn't quit my job and move across the country to study something I have no interest in (like tissue engineering or brain machine interfaces on primates). Regardless, we haven't been able to find any lab at all for me. They assure me I will be funded until I find a new lab as long as I can progress through the curriculum, but even this is complicated because I dropped the only grad class I was in this quarter because my second rotation professor teaches and grades it (and I don't trust her after the fall out). The only professor that could take me is waiting on a grant to be approved in March, which then means I could join in the Autumn, and until then I'm in limbo.
If I can't find a lab, I will have moved to Washington to do a PhD program where I can't do what I applied here to do because everybody is full. The limbo is incredibly stressful, and it's affecting my anxiety and depression. I'm in no control of the logistics that are preventing me from researching with the professors I want to.
I just needed to type this out and vent and ask for some advice.
If I end up having to drop my PhD program and go back into industry, I'll be devastated. I'll be okay, but I guess I am just wondering if anyone here has ideas on what I should do?
The PhD program has turned out to be much harder and worse than anything I expected, and for all the wrong reasons.
Has anyone else had trouble like this in their education? How did you overcome it? My first year of PhD school has felt like a waste of time.
I feel embarrassed if I have to quit and go back into industry. I feel like I will have let everybody down.
Well since it's a PhD program, I have to convince a professor to take me long-term during the stay of my program. They will then pay for my tuition plus wages. My program requires and funds you to try out a lab before "locking into it" long term, and this is called "rotating." The department will fund you for two quarters of rotations, and then expect you to lock into a lab that you tried long term.
I thought I had everything arranged. I had my PhD offer, and my first rotation was in an incredibly famous lab that everyone else loves and says it's easy to be chosen to lock-in if you wish. So I do my rotation there, and found it very challenging. The lab was huge (80+ students, 40+ post docs) and I had never done any of the computational or experimental techniques I was learning. In the end, I delivered the results of my project, and presented on it. My PI, instead of offering to let me lock in, asked me to do another rotation to get a different perspective and new skills. So I depart his lab and choose another one in a similar field, understanding that I could come back, but he just wants me to learn a new lab for my own enrichment.
This second lab I begin in my second quarter. Long story short, things turned disastrous. My PI wouldn't talk to me or meet with me the entire time. The project she promised me never happened. And the chair of the department told me she doesn't have funding to take me long term anyway. So it was a waste of time, and after my dad died in December, I took a few days to grieve. The PI and her lab threw that in my face, gaslit me, blamed me for not finishing training fast enough (which was NOT my fault), and the entire debacle ended up in me getting deleted from the lab list and the senior lab member yelling at me and humiliating me in front of other students about how I have no idea how research works and that I'm a shitty grad student. So needless to say, I had to get my academic advisors involved, and then I had to leave the lab and look for a third lab.
By the time I was looking for a third lab, all the professors in my field of interest had already filled up with "lock-ins" from other students, and had already promised next year's positions to next year's cohort. In summary, I have reached out to dozens of professors, and none of them have funding or space for me anymore, all because my second rotation got fucked and I couldn't resolve it fast enough to slide into a new lab in time.
So I'm in limbo. My academic advisers assure me they will find me a lab, but they seem open to just throwing me into any PhD lab they can find. But I didn't quit my job and move across the country to study something I have no interest in (like tissue engineering or brain machine interfaces on primates). Regardless, we haven't been able to find any lab at all for me. They assure me I will be funded until I find a new lab as long as I can progress through the curriculum, but even this is complicated because I dropped the only grad class I was in this quarter because my second rotation professor teaches and grades it (and I don't trust her after the fall out). The only professor that could take me is waiting on a grant to be approved in March, which then means I could join in the Autumn, and until then I'm in limbo.
If I can't find a lab, I will have moved to Washington to do a PhD program where I can't do what I applied here to do because everybody is full. The limbo is incredibly stressful, and it's affecting my anxiety and depression. I'm in no control of the logistics that are preventing me from researching with the professors I want to.
I just needed to type this out and vent and ask for some advice.
If I end up having to drop my PhD program and go back into industry, I'll be devastated. I'll be okay, but I guess I am just wondering if anyone here has ideas on what I should do?
The PhD program has turned out to be much harder and worse than anything I expected, and for all the wrong reasons.
Has anyone else had trouble like this in their education? How did you overcome it? My first year of PhD school has felt like a waste of time.
I feel embarrassed if I have to quit and go back into industry. I feel like I will have let everybody down.
