I am really struggling with developing my first empirical research project. As my background is philosophy, I am not used to designing an empirical study. After much frustrating and digging in the literature on my topic, I found a philosophical analysis of existing empirical research on people's experiences related to my topic that I found super fascinating. I therefore wanted to ask, do you think it is a good idea to take an existing philosophical reading of prior empirical research and apply it to new empirical reasearch, already using it to shape the research questions and interview questions in order to expand on it, see if it resonates with people, match their experience, etc.? And in that case do I just asked participants about elements mentioned in that research but in a language that resonates with them? And how do I leave space to be surprised? My main supervisor is not in my field and does not know my method, so I can not really ask him and my co-supervisor will be unavailable the next month..

So a little context, I have done my bachelors in design and now about to finish my masters in design. I have done a few internships during my bachelors and joined masters programme in design immediately after. Now I will be done with masters and thinking about phd. My doubt here is, is it a good decision to directly go to phd or should I get some industry experience? I am interested in research as well. One of the ideas I’m currently looking into is uneven development theory, ai and design. Any suggestion is welcomed.

Edit: location - India

I am in my 4th year as a PhD student. I'm glad I decided to do this. I have learnt a lot and met many great people. My supervisors are doing a good job and I get a lot of praise and constructive criticism whenever I present etc.

But how on earth do I begin to reclaim the rest of my life? When I do not work (up to 40 hours per week, no more) or take care of our 8 month old, I do nothing. Between my dissertation and our baby, I simply have no time or energy for other things. I get 10-30 minutes here and there, which is not enough to work on the house, go see my friends, or get into a meaningful hobby. I am completely consumed by these two massive 'projects' I have taken on. I love my baby and I still care about my research project but there is no space left for anything else.

How do you deal? This is completely self-inflicted, do I just suck it up right now and readjust? And this is in a system where the PhD is a job so I have parental leave to look forward to when my wife had used up hers. But this year has been a struggle trying to perform well in two completely different worlds, both making me feel claustrophobic.

Yesterday I passed my defence and I’m now a doctor in mechanical engineering (ballistic field).

Yayyy~

Its been 4 months since i finished my defense and submitted my corrections.
My graduation is in December, yet i feel nothing at all.

Whats the matter?

Hi! I'm a third year PhD student from Spain, and I don't know what to do...

While I was doing my master's year I met my director, she immediately took me under her wing, I did my master's thesis with her, and we seemed to be on board about continuing to the PhD.

However, right at the start of my first year she fell down and broke her leg, which took her to a long term leave. She has just now returned to work, as per our last conversation back in June/July...

I felt like I didn't really want to bother her much during summer, and usially I tend to avoid asking her for too much because at the start of my first year and coinciding with her fall I needed her to electronically sign several administrative documents and I got the feeling I was bothering her.

The thing is that I understand it is not her fault, but the organization of the program hasn't tried to provide me any help either.

She has usually been taking about 3 to 4 days to answer to my mails. And we have only scheduled about 4 meetings in these past two years.

Last time she called me she said she was upset with one of her students because she had dropped her.

The thing is that I am still here, and she seemed to be very interested in working with me and being my director for my thesis when I was in the master's degree, but it seems like that has come to an end.

I emailed her in the first week of September giving her an update about everything I had done during the summer. I emailed her again last week to send her a draft of one of the parts of the thesis, I asked her a few questions.. But she hasn't answered.

I feel bad, I feel guilty because I don't know if I did something wrong, I feel discouraged and a bit disillusioned because I was really happy to have her as my director.

I don't know what to do, but she seems to not be there at all...

Hi guys,

As the title says, I recently started a PhD in Japan (at a top university in Japan), but I've now received an offer to do a PhD in Switzerland (not at ETH or EPFL).

I chose Japan mainly for personal reasons, but the lab and supervisor are both excellent at what they do, and my supervisor is internationally well-known in his field. However, the PhD is unfunded, so I need to apply for scholarships while I'm here. Yet, I can do part-time work that is well paid if the funding fails.

On the other hand, the PhD in Switzerland is fully funded, the department has a high citation count, and the professor who invited me is a giant in his field.

I'm a bit torn because, during the few weeks I've been here, I've really enjoyed my time in Japan. I've already established a routine, and I feel like I'm learning a lot and becoming more knowledgeable. However, during Japanese-only meetings, I mostly just sit there trying to figure out what's going on by looking at the figures. 

In Switzerland, though, I think I'd learn a lot more and probably publish more papers, buuuuut I also think the pressure would be much higher and somehow making my life more miserable.

I really don't know what to do. My family is also in Europe, so moving to Switzerland would definitely bring me closer to them.

How would you guys approach this decision? What factors would you prioritize if you were in my situation?

I had my viva this week, passing with minor corrections - and the corrections are some small tweaks to my methods chapter, which is a great outcome and I’m happy about that.

But I just felt hollowed out inside when I got called back in after deliberations and told the usual “Congratulations, Dr…”.

I realised during the defence about how insecure I feel about my thesis. When I was asked about plans for papers, I found myself saying how I was struggling to pull together a paper that had something novel to say on one of the core themes of my thesis. At which point, my external frowned and said that there was a lot of original contributions - I can’t believe they had to defend my thesis for me!

I wish I could get a redo of my viva. So many people told me in the lead up that I’d have a great conversation about all the interesting things I found in my thesis, but it was more of a grilling on why I chose certain theories and methods. We didn’t talk about the substance of my findings. I was told it was beautifully written, and I can’t help but look at my thesis from a different perspective and wonder if it wasn’t that interesting after all.

It didn’t help that my supervisor seemed pretty uninterested in debriefing about my viva afterwards. They waited an hour after my defence to tell me that they had some papers I needed to read for a project I’m helping them on, and put in a meeting the day after to discuss the project. I thought they were joking at first, but no!

I want to feel better about this all and to find a way to celebrate this big milestone, but I just keep ruminating on what I wish had gone differently. How do I put it behind me and actually feel good about it?

So basically I'm currently in the second year of a PhD in applied mathematics in one of the best universities available in south america for my research area. Recently I was given the opportunity of starting fresh in a new PhD project in Canada in a top university in a topic tangential to what I'm currently working, where I would have a much better environment and opportunities than I would ever wish for if I stay in my country.

The thing is, I'm not sure if it is already too late, I'm currently 26 and I already feel behind my peers, if I start over now I'm gonna be done when I'm 31 and then I don't know if I'll be able to enter and survive the academic job market post PhD.

I'm posting this here in hopes of hearing from someone who had similar experiences of changing/transferring from PhD programs or starting fresh somewhere else. Was it worth it? Did it had any bad repercussions leaving the PhD halfway?

Qualifying and Comprehensive Exams are both behind us now. Received some valid comments with regards to introduction and my progress for the final Project but I am confident that I will post another frog pic by May.

Frog pic: DingHuArt @RedBubble

I was just talking with the an important person in my department casually about my project. I don’t know if it was too late at night or if I was just tired but I said something so terribly wrong about my target protein and he questioned me directly and I was so dumb I just went along with it even though what I was saying was clearly wrong to even me. I just feel really dumb now and I feel like his impression of me is bad now. I’m in my second year in the US and I feel like I should really know better by now and should’ve communicated better what I actually meant. Anyway, it’s not like anything can be done now but I’m just posting here to get it off my chest.

TLDR: I finished a my PhD program in Accountancy and I feel like I shouldn’t have been able to do that if I have adhd.

Hi all, I finished my PhD in August (hooray!) after a long five dedicated years. However, since starting my full time position I feel like my focus has been horrible. To be fair, I feel like it’s gotten progressively worse over the last 10 years but not enough to be disruptive. My spouse has said for years they think I have ADHD (he’s an NP in mental health) but I mostly brushed it off.

Because my focus is getting disruptive, I’m consulting a doctor about it, but I feel like I shouldn’t have been able to do everything I’ve done if I had adhd and it just NOW being as bad as it is. Any personal experiences or advice appreciated!

How are you doing? What is your degree in? What is your day-to-day like?

I'm currently in my 5th year and life is just much different now than it was toward the beginning. Sometimes it's hard to believe it's even the same program I'm in. I've gone through divorce, the deaths of multiple family members, and much much much more. I hardly even feel like the same person.

The average duration in my program is a touch more than 6 years (it's an APA-accredited clinical psych program, but not the best-funded, so our students have to work external jobs a bit more in order to survive). I'm on track and everything is going pretty well, considering :) I just wanted to hear from other people who are super deep in and toward the tail end and their interesting anecdotes.

Blessings :)

I’m an upper year PhD student in STEM and I feel like I have lost my ability to speak or articulate my thoughts. My vocabulary is awful, I go into meetings with my committee and can’t get the words out. Everything feels like foggy. I know what I am talking about and I used to be able to argue points so well, but within the last 6 months I feel like my cognitive capacities have declined substantially.

I’m not sure what to do, any advice?

To give some context I’m working on this sensing technique since my masters days, I used to really like it. My major work was to design and fabricate the sensing platform for the real application (it could be anything from pharmaceuticals, pesticides, pollutants, Drugs etc). Even my PhD project was originally to design the platform and test it for potential real world applications.

Few things led to other and somehow I kept getting closer to detecting more real world samples (or close to real world samples). Past few months I was working to detect antibiotics in blood Serum, suggested by our clinical partner.

And I realised that the question was never how low you can detect, it was more about how reliably and reproducibly you can detect. And it’s almost impossible, With bigger sample sizes, more batches, more donors added, the measurement errors keeps on increasing. And we don’t have any reference methods in this technique. It’s very exploited everyone mostly make another platform- test some molecules- make a paper. Then molecule change, platform change or both change and it keeps going like that.

But I realised that it has no future in the real world applications. And my plan was to continue with this for one postdoc then work with industry closely to make the platform more robust and make my own company. Now I feel like it’s a very dead end road. And I might need to find another plan. It feels like my whole life was a lie.

I started my PhD last Fall at a really good public university in the USA, studying Electrical Engineering. It took me a while to find my footing. The first semester I got B's due to an unexpected medical emergency. The second semester I got an A in one class, and a C+ in the other- considered failing by my university (the professor was abusive and actively made fun of me for asking questions, I don't want to get into it, but it was a very toxic learning environment. I was not the only grad student who failed and- coincidentally- all of his students passed just fine).

So I've failed one class, I know that's not great, but I'm still well within the 3.0 GPA I'm expected to keep and the graduate advising office here has told me that as long as I keep that GPA, I will not be kicked out of the program or put on probation. An unfortunate setback, but oh well.

My advisor had arranged for me to work at government research lab over the summer to collect data for a joint paper between his lab and theirs. One week before I left, he informed me that he would no longer be funding my PhD because he 'didn't have the money'- he let me go and another student struggling with mental health issues. I didn't believe him, but I kept my mouth shut and hoped he'd 'find some money'. Of course he didn't (though I hear he has 3 new Post-Doctoral students in his lab this year, somehow I doubt that they're all pre-funded. He's not a good human being, to say the least.)

Point is, I still spent the summer working on HIS research- because that's what the government research lab was paying me to do. I have the data now and am working to get it published into a conference paper so I can move on from this awful experience and get crap done in my new lab. the issue is, the University advisor and my boss at the Government research lab keep moving the goal posts. They want more data taken, and more elaborate analysis techniques. And now they don't just want a conference paper, they want me to turn it into a journal paper (presumably because it looks better for them).

These people are not paying me anymore. I came out of this last meeting with them absolutely furious at their audacity and arrogance. Apparently this advisor didn't think I was good enough to pay for, but wants me to work for free for him. And all the while, I've got major projects brewing in my new lab.

I've told both the University Advisor and the Government Rep that I want to be done with this project. There's a conference submission deadline in early December, and I'm submitting to it. If they need more research done, then they can find someone else to do it. I have told them this directly and explicitly.

They're not listening to me. I've made a point not to share my data with anyone from the University, so that they can't publish without me, but I need to focus on my new projects. What am I supposed to do in this situation? Do I push for a conference paper against their wishes so I can finish? Or let them bully me into a full journal paper that will inevitably take much longer and require much more data? Or do I just drop this whole shitshow and keep the data for myself?

I’m in my first year of my clinical PhD program in the United States and I feel inadequate. I took my first ever midterm, studied like crazy despite being at a conference two days before I took it, and I was constantly going to office hours to ask questions three weeks before the midterm. I finally got my grade back and I got a 70. My professor said it felt as if I had put no effort into her exam and the reason behind my grade was because I didn’t write enough in our open ended portion of the exam. I got partial points for getting the question right but I got a good portion of the points taken off for not explaining enough. I feel so stupid and inadequate. Is it over for me?

Hi all, Im doing PhD in US as an international student, I had previously made a post about how my advisor got upset when I had submitted a paper without his appdoval to submit as he wanted to change few authors (https://www.reddit.com/r/PhD/s/QHkr9cd7oA).

As a result, he got very aggressive and condescending and said bunch of things, due to which im taking therapy.

Anyways, that issue has been dealt with, but I feel like ever since then, he has been attacking me for every small mistake I do. Today I was showing him a report on a different thing, which I had been sending him again and again as each time he keeps finding grammar error or image position mistakes ( I use grammarly by the way). He pointed out that I didnt analyze it properly and Im being lazy and its bad for my career as people will not trust my data. I have been working on this for months, I have data in gigabytes and even showed him a model for this, that he agreed with at the time, even explained stuff on white board about what I think is happening, all before that submitting paper fiasco. Now all of a sudden all my format is wrong, my model is wrong, people dont trust me, I am lazy, etc.

Indirectly told me I will loose funding if I go home during christmas(https://www.reddit.com/r/PhD/s/EPLcPL1R0k).

I really am on the verge of quitting but I have done so much hardwork and just getting a publication, I do not know I feel stuck.

This is the only place where I can probably share what is happening and with my therapist of course. But ya'll are my PhD family so I just come here to vent, feel free to give any advice, I dont seek anything in particular, just came here to vent.

Thanks for reading.

I'm deep in the throws of dissertation writing and defend November 6th. Edward doesn't only watch when you sleep, he watches when you cry over data, smash your keyboard, and throw citation manuals across the room. Get yourself an emotional support Edward 🤍

Hi all! I have a conference coming up where I’ll be giving a short ten minute presentation. My area is a bit abstract and niche to my specific field, but the principles are well established in an adjacent field. Because of this, I have to explain some pretty fundamental principles in a concise and understandable way, and in my experience, the best way to do that is with a picture. Initially, I tried to just look up open source figures online, but, they won’t be understood by my audience since they are all highly specific to the more established field. In other words, it would require me to give tangential context that would muddy the message and lengthen my already long introduction.

So, I’m trying to create the graphic on my own in PowerPoint, but, I’m at the point where I have to admit I’m not very talented at it. I have an image in my head but I just can’t execute. I think I could use AI to create something close to what I envision (I would cite its use of course), but, would that look bad or tacky?

Hey guys,

I will be attending this year AIChE in Minneapolis since Nov 8-11, if anyone is willing to share a room and cost then let me know. DM me ASAP bcz hotel price is getting high.

my phd buddiessss i need some help. at the moment, i am taking 2 courses and teaching one (assignments and 5-6 articles). i am conducting an eeg study and one side project. i am writing revisions to a submission. and having 3 regular meetings a week to discuss the projects. I AM PARALYZED😭😭 and can’t function because of all the stress.

i feel like even 12h work a day is not enough. how do you manage your time?

Have you ever been tasked with something completely impossible during your PhD or Masters?

And nobody told you it's actually impossible, so you've put some really extra effort for a prolonged period of time only to realize it's impossible much later on?

How did it affect you? What did it change in you? Why did it even happen in the first place? If it happened during your Masters, how did it affect your PhD? Share your stories.

I have received a rejection from a journal. Normally, I just move past it because academia is 99 percent rejection. But this one is different. The editor expected me to talk about a topic or argument I never intended to make. A simple analogy would be me talking about calculus, and the editor rejected because I did not talk about geometry. It is really frustrating because it was not judged based on its own arguments; he kept asking for geometry when it is not what the paper is about. Also, I noticed that even journal editors use AI to give comments that they are too vague to understand. I did submit to journals before. Back in 2020, comments were more straightforward and "human". Now, the comments are up there in the air. I cannot fully explain it. It is just like they are vomiting words of no meaning.

Ok the stupidest of stupid questions. Just started grad school. In undergrad I could get away with just bringing my tote bag to campus because I was just carrying my laptop + water bottle. But now I’m on campus all day so I need laptop + water bottle + lunchbox + bag of little hygiene items like concealer and tampons etc + book to read on the bus + notebook for class. Too much to fit in my silly little tote bag. So I’m thinking backpack. But I’m a vain motherfucker, I don’t want a basic black Jansport. I love the look of messenger bags, but I haven’t seen any big enough. Actually, I did see one big enough on Facebook Marketplace, but the seller ghosted me. Tragedy!! Anyways. I would like a cute backpack or bag of some sort that can fit my laptop, lunch box, water bottle, etc and all the miscellaneous accoutrement that naturally collects in a bag. Seeking suggestions, links, ideas, and pictures of your cute bags.

Automod wanted me to add my location and field. EU and Anthropology. But cool bags are universal I think