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redsfan2014

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  1. Hello! I am an archaeology/earth sciences grad student hoping to one day specialize in geoarchaeology. I know there aren't a lot of the programs for geoarchaeology in the U.S. I have never actually met any other students, undergraduate or graduate, who are also wanting to go into geoarchaeology. So if you love archaeology, geology, and everything in between, where are you studying? What are you studying? How are you studying? What is your favorite color?! Just kidding, but I'll share that mine is green. My fellow future geoarchaeologists - share your story!
  2. Is it possible for you to switch advisors? Finding a different project and/or advisor could help you finish your program if your current school does in fact require you to pay back a large amount of money. It sounds like you have legit reasons for no longer working with your current advisor, particularly since he plagiarized your work. I am kind of in the same boat ( a program that wasn't anything like I thought it was going to be, horrible advisor, etc.) and I had to make some changes. I am not working on exactly what I thought I would be in grad school, but everything started to work out once I switched projects and advisors. It is unlikely that your advisor and program will be making significant changes any time soon, so you might have to decide what you are willing to change in order to make the situation better for you. As for the educational standards, if it really is that bad and you are extremely unhappy then it may be in your best interests to transfer to a different school. However, if you end up having to pay back your current school, even partially, it will not be worth the move if it means you go into serious debt.
  3. Hello! I am an archaeology/earth sciences grad student hoping to one day specialize in geoarchaeology. I know there aren't a lot of the programs for geoarchaeology in the U.S. I have never actually met any other students, undergraduate or graduate, who are also wanting to go into geoarchaeology. So if you love archaeology, geology, and everything in between, where are you studying? What are you studying? How are you studying? What is your favorite color?! Just kidding, but I'll share that mine is green. My fellow future geoarchaeologists - share your story!
  4. I think it is something you have to talk with your supervisor about. There are advisors/supervisors that will never let their students put them as an author on a paper, even as second authors, when they contributed significantly. There are also advisors who will put their names first on a paper after a student came up with an idea, conducted all of the research, wrote the whole paper, and presented at conferences...by themselves. I have even heard of reviewers who are added as an author to a paper if their reviews are significant enough to the paper. It varies and should definitely be something you talk with your supervisor about before you submit your paper. I am co-authoring a paper with my undergraduate research mentor. I did all of the research, helped design the conference poster, and helped developed the thesis/methodology when he just mentioned his project to me in passing. He is doing all of the writing, and he is the one who is a tenured professor with a great reputation in our field. I was astonished when he put me as second author on our paper. Maybe it was because I did the work as an undergraduate, but I felt like writing the paper should be what constitutes authorship. If you did practically all of the work, especially the writing, and you just kept your supervisor updated, then I say you should get first or even sole authorship.
  5. Thanks to all of the replies. I forgot how long the original post was, so thank you for reading through it! Update: It's been about a month since I switched projects and advisors, and I am more convinced than ever that I made the right choice. I am so much more interested in my new project and I have (so far) a very productive working relationship with my new advisory committee. I do agree, however, that I shouldn't have been so timid when I first began my graduate program. I believe the whole problem stems from that. I ended up emailing him back and explained a little bit more in depth about what was going on concerning the project. I told him I shouldn't have worked on the old project for as long as I did because it wasn't fair to him or the archaeology site (sometimes archaeologists get very attached to their sites and talk about them like this - we're weirdly nerdy). I got some of my backbone back by telling him that I do in fact want to succeed in graduate school, but that would only happen if I follow the research path I am actually interested in. My email didn't go into much detail about my depression or other related things because my old advisor gossips too much with his favorites and I don't want my personal business spread around the department. My counselor and I did talk about this whole thing after the fact, and she told me he also must have "kind of lost it" in order to have responded like that. Apparently, I unknowingly struck a sensitive nerve. I guess we had more in common than I realized. He just replied "well, if that is what you want to do..." and asked for all of my lab keys back. The passive aggressiveness has continued, but it has not seeped anymore into the course where he is my professor. I would never tolerate something like that for long. My former advisor has done some things lately that I think are meant to be passive aggressive toward me but nothing too upsetting. He has gotten more possessive, like mysteriously putting all the equipment on lock down and changing electronic door passwords for vague reasons. It feels like he is cutting me out or pushing me away, but I am perfectly fine with this since it doesn't prohibit my research at all. Every time I pass him in the hallway, I just give him a genuine grin because I no longer have to work under him : ) In sum, I have learned a lot in graduate school but I have learned the most from this whole situation. I made mistakes, tons of them, but I think I have gained insight that I didn't even know I needed. I am 10 times more confident and focused than I was before. No one, not even a tenured professor, can try to convince me that I am a failure when I know I am not. Learning how to work with people different than you is very important. Even more important is knowing when you are in an unhealthy situation and doing something about it.
  6. Here's the situation: For part of my first semester in archaeology grad school, things with my advisor seemed fine. I thought we had similar research interests and I looked forward to having his feedback for when I began my thesis research. The program is a very tight-knit group predominantly composed of students who went to the same university for their undergraduate degrees. So that meant almost all of my fellow grad students had been working with my advisor for years and knew each other very well. I was one of the few "outsiders" coming into the grad program, but all of the grad students were nice and welcoming so I felt like this wouldn't be an obstacle for me. Yet...I couldn't help but notice that my advisor had a little "club" of students that he favored. It wasn't like he gave his club more funding than the rest of us or anything like that, but he appeared to be very dedicated to only those students who were in the club and he no patience for those who were not. It took me a couple weeks to realize that his club all had similar research projects concerning archaeological sites where my professor was conducting his own research. This isn't unusual at all and it is very common for grad students to connect their research with an advisor's existing research. But due to the size of our program, grad students had only two options for a thesis advisor: one other professor (famous for being uncommunicative) and my advisor. I didn't select my advisor because he was the lesser of two evils. In fact, one of the reasons I applied to my graduate program was because I had similar research interests as my advisor. He was very supportive of my research goals at first and seemed to listen intently to what I had to say. It was almost as if I was actually in the club. I am not a follow-the-crowd kind of person, but because I was the new kid I didn't want to make too many waves by being assertive or high maintenance. I had the impression that graduate school was about doing the projects my advisor told me to do and having the discipline to organize and carry out the work on my own. So when my advisor started being pushy about a project he had in mind for me at one of his archaeological sites (despite the fact he said I could work where ever I wanted to) I agreed to make it my thesis. My advisor and I both wanted the project to apply a specialized technique. I wasn't too enthusiastic about the project site, but I wanted to show that I was a team player with flexibility. After some initial tests, I became skeptical that the technique would answer research questions I had about the site. The more and more I researched, the more I came to hate the site and my entire thesis project. But my advisor kept pushing. He started twisting the project to where he practically redesigned the whole thing. I told him the results were inconclusive. He said I wasn't focusing hard enough and that I needed to take ridiculously larger samples. I couldn't make sense of anything he said, and I don't think he understood (or listened) to anything I said. He responded to my questions with apathy and every time I left a meeting I felt like I had just gone to battle with a stone wall. It was exhausting. I was supposed to be doing a lit review over winter break, but every time I tried to start my stomach would get all in knots and I lost all of my ability to concentrate. I should probably note that I have been struggling with depression for most of my life. I am on medication and therapy, but sometimes it gets out of my control. One of those times was when I was at my breaking point with my thesis and advisor earlier this semester. I felt like we had major communication problems and were just plain incompatible. Our first meeting after break began with me being unprepared, continued with my advisor tearing all of my ideas apart and providing pieces of information that would have been useful to know months ago, and ended with me in tears. My depression had worn me down and I didn't get bounce back from it for several weeks. I deserved the criticisms I received, but I was too afraid to tell my advisor that I hated my project. During our meeting, he looked at me with such disgust that I became extremely uncomfortable in his presence. The few days after our meeting, he started making passive aggressive comments in class about how some students weren't surviving grad school and couldn't handle failure. Failure. That was the last straw. I knew I had to switch projects and advisors, but I didn't want to come to my advisor about it until I had a sturdy back-up plan. Luckily, a project crossed my path thanks to the other professor (Dr. Email-you-3-weeks-later) and a new professor who was just hired by the program. I did some background research for several weeks and I became very enthusiastic about potential for my new project. It took a while, but I finally got the gumption to tell my old advisor that I had found a new project with a new advisor. I kept it simple and respectful. My old advisor greeted my news with his typical apathy and said it was fine if I switched advisors. I sent him an email thanking him for his help as my advisor and apologizing for wanting to switch so suddenly. The anger he hid during our meeting showed up in his response email: he told me he was disappointed in me, that I couldn't take criticism and that I was running away scared. He said I had wasted his time (true) and that I wasn't doing the heavy lifting required of being a graduate student (very false). At the end of the day, I needed to change projects because I picked it for the wrong reasons and hated it with a passion. I needed to change advisors because we didn't communicate well, were hardly on the same page, and I was sick of all of the game playing and politics. But if I tell all of this to him, I risk 1) disrespecting him, 2) making my life even harder seeing as I have to take his classes until I graduate, and 3) elaborating about my private life and medical issues to someone I don't like or trust. Should I tell him the whole story? Should I let it go and move on? He sees me as a traitor but he also gave me a few days to "reconsider my mistake." Should I suck it up and go back to working on that project just to get my masters? I am young, stupid, and hopelessly out of my depth. Help!
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