Geologizer

I obviously don't know your whole situation, so perhaps take this with a grain of salt. It sound like you and your adviser have very different ideas about where you are, and what your roles are. Your adviser sounds like he/she is being perfectly reasonable to me. First, your adviser and committee members have a ton of other things that they are doing. I wouldn't automatically jump to "they don't care about me" if you don't get the ideal timely and inspirational response from them. Second, your adviser sounds like she is pushing you to work on an aspect of your project that she thinks is crucial. Perhaps what she's doing is trying to steer your attention and discouraging distractions/procrastination by not providing a ton of feedback on other things. This leads into the idea do having conflicting ideas about eachother's function. Grad school is different than undergrad research, and her function is not to hand-hold but to guide. The "what is the purpose of this meeting" question could be a function of that. Perhaps her blunt personality is not a good fit for your learning style, but it seems like she's expecting you to be more independent and take ownership of your research. Also, it does seem like you're distracted with PhD programs to me, and perhaps she's getting the same impression which is contributing to her shortness. After all, you are still supposed to be working on your current project, and are having a lot of trouble progressing it. Ref letters and discussion of what to do after could be, again, a function of her trying to keep your attention focused. I'd say devote your time to the experimental stuff and that could go a long way to fixing the situation. Maybe this perspective is helpful and apt, maybe it's way off.

In my experience it is, in fact, that easy. To some extent, I would argue that it may be more or less expected. For example, geology has a particular emphasis on building a diverse background. Not so much in terms of focusing on many disciplines, but exposure to different places and ideas. As the saying goes, "the best geologist is the one who's seen the most rocks." I see that you're a geochemist, so you may or may not be as field oriented, but the point I think is still valid. Moving around will ensure that you aren't "indoctrinated" by one school of thought, experience different labs - each has it's nuances even if largely the same, and ultimately the broader your experience the better you look on a resume - especially for industry. Furthermore, the the break from a Masters to a Phd is sometime used to "refocus" your research now that you probably have a better idea of your interest than when you were coming from undergrad. Of course, if you're sitting in a top lab and the adviser and research is a good fit, moving just for the sake of moving is silly in my opinion. I've had quite a few "should I stay or should I go" conversations with multiple professors, and really I've just parroted back what every one of them seemed to agree on. Hope that helps

I also met all of my POI at AGU and talked to them all on the phone and such before applying, so I've been ignoring the few results that are reporting interviews - basically operating under the assumption that it's an unnecessary/redundant step in my case. Unfortunately, those are really the only reports so far. Ideally that would just lead to an ahead of schedule admit response, but that's probably wishful thinking and the foil to that isn't really an appealing prospect, haha. Also ignoring that for now. Will post a profile after I start hearing back