pringles

Thank you all for writing. I have been trying to find a new advisor but at this point of the year most labs are out of funding. I am meeting a lot of professors but in the end everything comes down to funding. It just seems impossible to join a lab right now. Even if I decide to get out with a terminal masters, it is already too late to apply for jobs. Being an international student I will have to have a job when I graduate with a masters in order to stay in the US. If I decide to get a terminal masters I need to decide within a month, otherwise the application deadline will pass. I don't know if I should apply for the masters and take the risk and start applying for jobs or just wait out till next year to drop out. I will be wasting an entire year if I do so

I am a second year PhD student in a top ranked school. I had a really bad adviser and two years into grad school, he decided to kick me out of the lab. So this seems like this is the end of my graduate career. I am hesistant to start over again because I have wasted so much time. If I decide to drop out of the PhD program and get a job does anyone know how the visa situation works out? Is it even legal to do so?

I just talked with my director of graduate studies. I have time to find a new adviser till the end of this semester. However, people in my department usually join labs in december of each year. So most of the spots that are open in a lab during a year are mostly taken. That is why I am extremely stressed out. The research that my advisor did was pretty different and there is no lab that does stuff similar to what he does. So I will have to start from scratch. My life is so fucked up right now. Is switching in the 2nd year to a different lab a really bad idea? I think it will add two more years to my PhD which really suck and at this point I don't know if it is even worth trying to find another adviser. so so so stressed out.

I am finishing up my second year in graduate school in chemistry and I just got kicked out of my lab. I was in a physics heavy lab and my background is in chemistry. My advisor said that I did not have enough background to do well in his lab and fired me. I had a steller undergraduate record and I am in one of the top schools in chemistry. However, I really struggled with research in the lab I got fired from. It was just too much physics. I have already spent almost two years of my phd in this lab and I don't know what I should do now. I still want to continue doing research but starting over all again in another lab doesn't seem feasible. Since I am already two years in, if I start fresh it will take me a ridiculous number of years to finish my program. Since I am an international student, I cannot drop out right now without finding a job first and since application deadlines for a lot of jobs have already gone, at this point I don't think I will be able to find a job. I am extremely stressed out. Do you guys have any suggestions on what I should do?