The Graduate

Thanks for the tips. I do find it hard to socialize with new people in new situations since I tend to be naturally introverted and shy. One thing that definitely makes it harder is that there is a "gap" between me and my lab mates. For example I am quite young in the lab, a lot of them are older even into their 30's, married, and just interested in much different things than I am. I do try to interact though, it's one of the things I'm working on. I know that a huge part of being successful in this field is being able to network and socialize, even though scientists are "notorious" for having bad social skills

Yea I wasn't trying to "avoid" him by sending in the progress report. I sent it to them all, and if I knew he wanted to look it over I would have done it for sure. The thing that gets me is that it's not like I'm trying to do these things, they just unfold by themselves.

Yea I think so too. I know it isn't a terrible start, but like I said my future is somewhat in my hands. I guess one thing that really got to me was that I sent in a progress report before a committee meeting to my committee members. He e-mailed me right away saying he wasn't happy about it since he didn't get a chance to make corrections. He then sent me a bunch of corrections and comments some of which were blunt, but that's just the way he is I guess with others too. I know you need a backbone to take the criticism, but things just haven't been going my way lately. Simple experiments not working for a month or two, almost broke, eating milk and oatmeal for supper. etc etc. But such is life.

Join the club I guess. I know how you feel and I'm going through exactly the same thing. Luckily I'm done my course work, but my project seems to be going nowhere and the results I get are mediocre. For the last 2 months the simple experiments that I did everyday just stopped working, literally just stopped working at all and I have no idea what the hell is going on as I've kept everything the same. I feel terribly incompetent, as though everyone else is grinding out results and publishing, while I'm just struggling to get the simplest thing to work. On top of that I have feelings that my PI doubts me and thinks I'm incompetent. He also said I have communication problems and almost didn't accept me as a PhD student because of it. To make things worse, I moved away from home, from all my friends and my girlfriend. I'm in a new city and haven't made any new friends, and I'm in a long distance relationship. I'm going broke and live in an empty apartment with nothing but a mattress, a small laptop desk, and a chair. I can't cook, nor have time to, so many of my meals consist of milk and oatmeal. I would be lying if I said I'm not completely miserable. But I am hopeful things will get better. I think this is just something all grad students have to go through. Grinding through experiments that don't work, resolving conflicts with your PI, and finally getting some kind of balance in life. Cheers hopefully things get better for us all

Alright so I'll keep this short, or at least try to. I'm a year and a half into the grad program, started in Masters, but am switching to PhD. I'm in a big lab (40-50 people at one point, but now ~20-25) and my PI is quite renown, which is really intimidating to me. I get really nervous around him and seem like I lack confidence. He said I wasn't communicating well with him for the first year because I wasn't making an effort to contact him and set up meetings and that he wasn't sure if he wanted to take me on as a PhD student if I didn't fix it. It caught me by surprise since I'm a quite and more reserved person, and he never said anything to me about this up until a year into the program. I tried my best, set up a meeting to discuss my project, tried to talk to him more. I got a scholarship which I guess helped out, and he said that he would take me on as a PhD student. I don't know if I'm being paranoid or not, but I feel like he doubts me somewhat. Anyone in a similar situation or have been? I really just want to have a good working relationship, I'm not trying to be his friend or anything. It's strange, because I feel like my entire future rests in his hands since he will be writing my letter of reference, and that makes me feel uneasy since we got off to a not so great start.