St Andrews Lynx

I don't think you are morally obliged to stay in the course on behalf of your students. Professionally, maybe: but not morally. While it might disrupt their education for a few weeks having their TA quit and getting a replacement, missing a TA/adjusting to a new one for a maximum of a few weeks won't ruin their grades. On the other side of the coin, just how much use are you going to be to your students if you try to continue until the end of the semester...but suffer a major mental breakdown? Wouldn't it be better for their sake to be taught by somebody who actually wants to be in the program? I think that talking to a university counsellor would be a good move - especially to understand what happens if you decide to drop out when you still have the TAship. Look after yourself before anybody else. (There might be a middle ground - you continue teaching until the end of the semester but withdraw from your courses, research, etc - you don't know until you ask).

It might not be a bad idea to talk to a university counsellor/therapist, though. If it's getting to the stage where you're internalising a lot of poisonous sentiments, are scared to check emails and dread meetings, then something drastic needs to change. That doesn't mean your advisor is "right" and you're "wrong", it just means looking after your mental health and trying to avert anything worse. I'd also take steps to look for a new advisor. Be polite but firm to the DGS about how your are a bad fit with your current PI. If necessary start collecting documentation - email conversations, notes of incidents/remarks.

I'd try not to take the comments personally. The students will all probably have different ideas what a "reasonable" evaluation score is, some will be saying [i hate everything about you] out of their own frustration. I reckon that most of them won't be viewing their evaluation as a useful tool for helping their TA to improve, nor will they necessarily put a lot of thought into how they score you. Regarding the 'ArrowFletch doesn't seem to care how well we learn the course material' comments. There might be something in your attitude that the students are viewing as apathy/impatience/distance (especially if more than one student is remarking on it). The way you talk to your students and deal with their problems is something that can be modified, but you first need to figure out what's really going on.

Skip class. Ask the person you usually sit beside for a copy of their notes or to grab an extra handout for you. Classes only happen for a couple of semesters and are a minor component of grad school: choosing a PI/group is something you have to live with for 5-6 years. I'd also go ahead and drop by the lab. All you need to say is "Hi, I'm interested in joining your group and have a couple of questions about working for Professor X. Are you free just now?" Most grad students like the distraction of talking to someone. It's even easier if you were in one of their group meetings ("Hi, you met me on _day..."). Tell them that you're still undecided and confused about which group to join, then ask for their advice.

My experience of grad school to date is that it isn't about finding time to do something...it's about making time. Make the time to visit the labs and talk to the students there. Ask if you can join the group members for lunch. Request to sit in on their group meeting. Ask other older grad students in your program what the gossip is on those two groups - everybody will know if there is some. Also take the time to sit down with a piece of paper and suss out what it is you want from your PhD. Are you an independent person who would get driven up the wall by a hands-on PI? Is it important for you to be in a group that publishes regularly, or do you not want that stress? Think about your past research experiences - what were the things that worked and what didn't (if say you worked in a small research group, did you enjoy it?). Also accept that you aren't going to make a perfect choice of PI & group. No one will. It's about deciding what you value most: the relevance of the research to your previous experience, the personality of the PI, the group dynamics, etc.

There's no guarantee that you won't become disillusioned with the next subfield, especially after spending a couple of years involved in generating research for it. Even worse, the new PI might turn out to be a jerk, your new project might end up going nowhere, etc. I would try to avoid switching subfields. Most people end up hating their dissertation/research at some point during grad school, after all. Alternatives include: (i) Offering to collaborate with this other PI you're interested in. That way you get exposure to a different subfield without having to completely discard your last 1.5 years of research. (ii) Try to concentrate on the bigger picture. There is a reason that people are conducting research in this particular area. Think about applications of the research, how it relates to real-world populations. Use your imagination if necessary. (iii) Talk to your advisor or other grad students and say that you feel disillusioned with your research. Ask for their advice. Just leave out the "...and I'm considering switching fields" part. Most likely they will empathise. If you get on great with your PI then this shouldn't be a difficult conversation.

If you advisor was invited to present then I suspect his conference registration fee would have already been paid for him. So I don't think you should pay the $300.

If you're eating a lot of fruit & veg then your energy levels might be low because your body is missing out on the vitamins/nutrients it needs. Make sure you are getting enough iron. Bananas are great for boosting my energy levels. If you want to eat pizza, then maybe buy in some smaller, thin-crust ones that have ricotta instead of mozzarella.

Out of all the problems you can have in grad school...a class that's too easy is one of the better ones to have! Talk to the professor privately in person. Try to request additional readings/problem sets - come across as enthusiastic about the course rather than being critical of her teaching. If the course is a pre-requisite for anything, say that you're concerned that the course isn't preparing you for Class X. You don't want to come across as a jerk! Any week you delay in raising the problem will just be another week of feeling bored in class. I doubt you want that. I'd also ask the other students in class how they're feeling about the course. I can think about several experiences of my own where I thought a class was easy...only to do badly in the final exams/assessments because (i) I wasn't taking revision seriously enough (ii) I'd actually completely failed to grasp the complexities right in front of my face. That's a worse case scenario...but worth being aware of.

My personal opinion would be that if you can leave...do it now, rather than later. It doesn't sound certain that he'll get tenure at this rate (no publications, external funding or successful PhD students), which means that in 2-3 years time you might have to leave his lab anyway. Leaving a lab isn't a great sign - but I suspect the alternative might be worse for you.

I think if you want to take a stand against the hierarchy/status quo like this...you probably shouldn't be in academia. 'Cause the whole thing is built upon a rigid, pre-defined hierarchy. In the sciences, the PI is the boss. In the majority of physical sciences, the PI has their name amongst the authors as convention. The error & unethical judgement thing I don't believe is that big an issue in the physical sciences - in most scientific fields it's all about reporting new reactions or syntheses, not making controversial statements. If a paper has serious errors in it, then the peer reviewers just reject it. The feedback on the rejected manuscript goes back to the corresponding author, who is nearly always the PI. No one other than the corresponding author will get questioned on the manuscript/article, worrying that the first author might get "blamed" isn't really an issue.

I've seen a couple of folk I know wearing earplugs in a shared work space. I think it's perfectly legit to do so - some people like music/noise in the background when they work, others find it disrupting. You can say it's because you find noise in general distracting while you work - that way it doesn't have to be about the other person at all.

I'm an international student from the UK. So, I feel for ya.

I'm going to make a controversial statement. Sometimes it is a good thing to drop out of a program. The numbers of people going to college are rising, the prices are rising...and at the same time the 'value' of an undergrad degree is falling. Where once it was perfectly acceptable for young people to take up a trade, nowadays college is viewed as the be all and end all. Society judges you a success or a failure by whether you attend a university and get a degree. To be blunt, college-level learning isn't for everyone. Kids end up taking the wrong degrees (engineering instead of liberal arts, or vice versa) either because they don't know what they really want to do...or their parents "strongly recommended" they study it...or they don't realise there's a mismatch in their interests or abilities...or they just aren't suited to academia full stop. I don't think the possibility of some freshman dropping out because of an F-grade on their paper is something that a TA should be afraid of. Nor does it mean that you're failing in your duty of "helping people succeed". You've just not got to confine personal success to an academic setting.

I would say "Read enough to be able to contribute meaningfully to the discussion." No doubt as you progress through grad school you will be able to skim-read and pick up enough to talk confidently about the book by that approach...but that's a skill you develop over time, which also requires a thorough grounding in the field (starting out, you probably don't have that yet). If your colleagues all read the texts completely - I think you're going to have to as well if you want to be able to contribute at their level. Unless there's a Sparknotes for your book (...which I"m guessing there is not )

I did my TA grading last weekend. It was super exciting...when I got to the end of the pile... ...But at that point I rolled into bed since it was 10.30pm on a Sunday night. I'll often head over to New York or Philly on the weekend - it's nice to get away from college-ville.

Can you send out a mass-email to your students, politely reminding them that the material they will need for the exam is covered in the lecture notes/textbook Chapter xx/etc and that if they read the notes but still have a problem they are free to contact you? It would take up a helluva lot of your time trying to answer everybody individually by email - I don't think you need to do that for them. .

I also don't think that you going easy on them is going to help those students be good, successful scholars in a long term - when it comes to harder courses the standards will be more exacting and there won't be any second chances. It is better that they learn how to do things right the first time when they're still starting out.

Hahahaha! While I'm kinda sorry this entertaining, suspenseful thread has reached its conclusion, I'm glad you finally got sorted with at least one of 'em. Enjoy!

I personally didn't think you were bragging by including information about your institution or the NSF grant in your profile signature. Just be careful - if you identify your department, university of study and that you are on a particular fellowship...well, it won't be hard for people to identify you. Though there is a significant difference between saying that "MA students are discriminated against here" and "I feel like I'm getting discriminated against here". Or even "I feel like I'm getting discriminated against here" and "I'm suffering culture shock here". It's hard for people on the Forum to help out if you can't accurately tell us what the real problem is. If you feel that the problem is one of culture shock, then maybe hold back on the questions and try to observe how the natives behave. Is there a way that East Coast students phrase their questions that is less direct/more formal than how you usually do so? Do Ivy League academics expect to be addressed in a specific way that is different to their midwestern counterparts? (I know from experience that choosing the wrong option from Professor, Dr. or [First name] can cause academics to bristle - and that the preferred term of address varies between regions. So it might be something trivial that you're unknowingly getting wrong.) * From what you've said it does sound like there is a gap between your expectations of how you should be treated and what the professors think is acceptable, most likely based on regional norms. When you remark "I expect to be treated with common courtesy" - it is entirely possible that the professors are giving you what they consider to be "common courtesy at an elite institution on the East Coast". It is also plausible that what you considered "presumptuous" - a professor casually suggesting that you drop the course - might to her have been a helpful suggestion (I mean, sure, if you are running into difficulties within the early introductory stages of the course, it is not completely unreasonable of her to suspect that you might really struggle with the material once you get into the harder concepts later on). * For me as an international student, the best way to deal with culture shock in a new place is to at least try and meet them halfway (rather than rejecting the new culture entirely). If people commonly wear suits for class...maybe dress a bit smarter in your own daily "grad school" wardrobe? It's also about taking a step back and thinking "Does their remark *really* mean what I assumed it must mean?" 'Cause an awful lot of the time...it doesn't.

The more important the professors, the more they will have to be rushing between committee meetings, classes and appointments. If their budget meeting over-runs by 30 minutes they aren't going to leave said meeting early just to see a grad student who is booked into their calendar; nor are they going to want to be late for their next meeting or lecture by getting held up by a student in a corridor or at an appointment. It isn't nice, but it's a fact of academic life. We grad students are quite low down the academic pecking order, especially if we aren't actually in a professor's research group. In the first anecdote you cited, I wonder if you'd have had better luck sending an email to the professor with your question and if it really needed to be addressed face-to-face in an appointment. (It sounded like a Yes/No kind of question - will your course align with my research goals of x, y, z? - so she may have felt as if you were wasting her time) Another difference in their treatment might be down to the difference in expectations between undergraduates and grad students. As an MA student the onus is on you a lot more to work stuff out for yourself, be independent and to some degree make your own decisions about what aligns best with your research goals - that is perhaps why the professors prioritise helping out the undergrads and appear curt with you.

That I think is mostly true. In the UK & a lot of European countries you do your undergrad & Masters...then start the PhD, jumping straight into full-time research with no coursework. In contrast, American science PhDs have a "in-built" Masters in their first two years. I imagine that if you obtained a Masters degree in the USA then went abroad to do your PhD that the end result would be the same. If you have the bug for going abroad, then maybe wait until you have your PhD and get a postdoc somewhere exotic. That's quite a common thing to do.