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Dear all, thanks for the further responses. I have made some progress with this matter. This morning I sent an email to my supervisor, as I had completed all the tasks she had set me after yelling at me on Friday. We had agreed to discuss them yesterday, but we didn't get around to it. I was fearing that it was going to be a repeat of last week, so I decided just to explain that I'd done all of the stuff she had asked and had a few questions. I didn't mention discussing a plan for improvement, as I hadn't decided on a strategy yet. Today she ignored me all morning (except for frowning at me as she passed me in a corridor), but eventually I did get called to her office. I was feeling very nervous as I was worried she was going to be hostile towards me, but when we sat down I just got on with discussing my latest results and she warmed up a lot. She seemed pleased with my work, I asked some important questions, and she taught me some useful stuff. She actually seemed in a better mood than "usual" i.e. before Friday's incident. I'm hoping that she's seeing that despite my faults (which I agree, I need to work on, and I resolve to do so), I'm not a terrible student. We discussed our paper that we're working on, it sounds like in the next few days one of our overseas colleagues will have finished putting all of the different sections together and we'll have a kind of prototype version very soon. She said she would be going away at the start of next month for a short while and I offered to deal with communications with our colleagues abroad and get on with proofreading and editing the paper, which she said she trusted me to do. Given that this meeting went a lot better than I thought it would (sometimes when she's in a bad mood she berates my results before seeing them, before being convinced that they are good when she does see them, she didn't do that this time), I didn't bring up a "plan of action", although part of my plan was to do so. I didn't want to spoil what had been a great meeting by returning to the less pleasant discussion we had last week. I don't know if this was wise or not. I'm still considering asking her about what I need to do to improve. For the record, I did say very sincerely at the end of my telling-off last week that I really am sorry, and that I intend to make amends, so she knows that I want to improve my faults. In any case, things are much, much better than they were 24 hours ago. I'm now less convinced she's trying to get rid of me for ulterior motives, although I'm still not sure how she will take the news if it does turn out that I might need to take a not inconsiderable amount of time off ill if my medical issue turns out to be moderately serious. I know after today's meeting pretty much what I need to be doing research wise (I'm meeting one of our postdocs tomorrow who is going to give me a little tutorial on a new type of calculation I need to do), so I hope to bring some new results very soon. I don't know how the rest of you would view this: I see it as a positive, as it tells me that she at least appears to be willing to move on from the idea of me being the bad guy, just as much as I'm willing to be more astute with my organisation. This seems a fair compromise to me. But perhaps there would still be some value in discussing the problem face-on. I don't really know. Thanks again for all the advice, feel free to comment.

Dear all, thanks for all the responses (obviously I've been working today and not had a chance to read all of them until now). I appreciate the honesty from all of you, it's helpful to gain a perspective on this. I agree, I have screwed up, there are some things I need to work on. I didn't speak with my supervisor today (she said we would do on Friday after the aformentioned meeting, to discuss scientific matters, but didn't arrange to speak with me), so I'm considering sending an email tomorrow morning asking to talk about it (as I don't want to be accused of wasting another week) and I'm considering asking if we can just go over exactly what the problem is and how it can be solved in a completely unemotional and rational way. Still, I'm not sure if she will just view this as further insubordination. Yes, I'm very cross and upset about this, but deep down all I want to know is where it all went wrong. I think I may be safer just trying to work out what to do myself and not give her any further excuses. I'm resolving to arrive before 10am to avoid any further lateness issues, and I'm going to be careful to notify all relevant parties if I am indeed unable to attend work. For the record though, when I was unable to show up on Monday, I arrived at my flat very early in the morning and didn't fall asleep until 8:00am. My flat doesn't have an proper internet connection at the moment, so I've been using the city's free wifi network (dealing with Spanish telecoms companies is a nightmare), but the free network only operates from 9:00am until midnight, it's switched off throughout the early morning. As I don't have a telephone, there would be no way for me to contact my institute, unless I woke up especially at 9:00 to send an email, which would not really suggest that I was in a bad state. I know, it sounds like an excuse, but it is the truth. I strongly agree with the comments that part of the issue is that I see myself as a student while she sees me as an employee - I guess as a grad student you're both in some ways. I didn't have any problems at all with my Masters supervisor, he managed to be an excellent scientist and a generally approachable guy. I do think though, espcecially with a topic like computational chemistry, the more student-esque, less rigid framework is better - you actually can work from home without any disadvantage if you have an internet connection, and it's a more efficient use of computational resources if people are not all trying to use them at the same time. In fact, we have this problem in our office - because we're virtually forced to be in working 10 till 6 at the very least, the cluster is really busy during the day. If you go on at the weekend or 2:00am, it's much better. If we didn't have a rigid schedule, then people would, I think, more naturally adapt to work at times that suit them and the cluster queue around the clock, and we'd spend less time sitting around in the afternoon looking for other things to do because the cluster is full. Just my opinion, and that of my Masters supervisor as well, as he very much promoted this kind of approach so we weren't all competing for resources at the same time. On the matter of my supervisor being cruel, I know I'm upset about this, but she does have a serious reputation as an unpleasant person. Ironically, before this event, I'd be the one saying "come on, she's not that bad!" when my colleagues and friends were complaining about how she behaves, as up until now, apart from the occasional comment about lateness, we got on pretty well. Now I'm totally with them, having been given the full treatment myself. fuzzylogician, she did deliberately keep me off the mailing list to the conference coordinators. Her actual words were: "I sent an email to the conference organisers on behalf of all of the others who forgot, except for you", takes a half second pause, and carries on. I know, the other suggestions that she wants me to suffer could be in my imagination, but it's hard for me to understand why she would exclude me from the email, when she was prepared to do it for all of the other who forgot. Anyway, I'm going to try to mend my ways. Whether it should be me or her who should be changing, it's irrelevant, as this is the only way that I can "win", if you could call it that. I still feel that she hasn't really addressed this in the right way, though. She even admitted (months ago when we were on good terms, if we actually were), that she would probably get more out of me by working with me rather than against me, so deep down she knows that I would respond better a firm chat rather than a surprise yelling-at. But it is true, I need to improve some aspects of my work life. Thanks again for all the help and advice, it is much appreciated. Feel free to add anything else, I'll ask again if I have any further questions or requests for advice.

Thanks again for your responses (thanks also to the new reply). Apologies if I appear to be trying to explain everything away, I just want it to be known how things are. Of course, I am not under obligation to explain anything, but I need to explain what is the case and how I feel about it to get useful information. I understand your point, she cleary sees these points as being related - perhaps they reflect some of my less noble personality traits. I can be forgetful, and I can get very wrapped up in my work to the point of neglecting admin duties. But I hope you may agree, if people were only judged on their negative qualities, then there wouldn't be much hope for many of us. I am very passionate about science, I work hard when I'm at my desk (even if I'm there a minute later than I should be) and I try to be helpful and accommodating to my colleagues. I've spent a fair amount of my time away from my research to help other colleagues, and there have been times when I have been accommodating to my supervisor when she has been what you may term irresponsible. For example, there have been more times than I can count when my supervisor has arranged to meet with me, either forgotten or not bothered, then came to my desk and said "oh, can we meet tomorrow". My response is always "sure, no problem". I don't think it is unfair for people to consider both good and bad points of other, especially when we're talking about lives and careers. Let me clarify my language: when I use the words "childish and cruel", I am not referring to the objections my supervisor has to me - of course it isn't childish to expect students to be in on time. To suggest as much, Rising_Star, is absurd. That is entirely fair, I reiterate, I accept my failings. What is, in my opinion, childish, is deliberately complicating things for me. Do you not think that it is childish that my supervisor excluded me from her message to the conference organisers, when she was happy to act on behalf of everyone else? I also think it is childish to ignore somebody and not to inform them of imminently losing their post. Like my supervisor allowing me to go on holiday and then spend a week working, thinking that there was no problem, before delivering this news. Adults inform each other of their problems with each other in a fair and frank way, and they certainly don't delay it to cause maximum harm. I think it is fair to say it is cruel to lead me to believe that there was no problem and that we would be simply discussing my work, before suddenly starting to yell at me Rising_Star, thanks for your comment, I appreciate that it must be frustrating for students to arrive at your classes late - of course, this means you have to repeat yourself. But this is completely different. My supervisor usually spends the first 30-60 minutes of her day chatting with other professors and reading her emails. My work is pretty much independent of hers, apart from when we meet to discuss it, usually in the afternoon about once per week. I am not trying to justify being late, I agree, it is a problem I need to work on. But I hope you can appreciate it is very frustrating to me that all of the effort I put into bringing fascinating new results to the table (and there are rarely times when I haven't made significant progress between weeks) is disregarded because I didn't happen to be in the office while supervisor was chatting. Thanks again for your helpful responses, if there is anything else I can clarify, do let me know.

Thanks for the advice. I agree, I've not been perfect. There are some things I need to work on. The problem I'm having is how she is dealing with it. On the matter of lateness, I have been late a few times due to carelessness, however, the majority of the time it has been because I have woken up feeling unwell. Personally, I think it's better to hurry up to the lab a bit late as soon as I feel well enough, rather than taking the whole morning off, calling in sick etc., which is what I'm now considering next time I wake up feeling ill. But the problem I have is that I have no idea of what counts as "late" or not, she seems to make it up as she goes along, as my anecdote about the two different outcomes when she saw me arrive at the same time as her demonstrates. The fact of the matter is, that she isn't exactly an early bird and doesn't have an regular arrival time (she turns up somewhere between 10:00am and 11:00am everyday), so to say I should "arrive before her" really is a bad criterion. I'd feel much better if she just gave me a time she'd like me to arrive by, but in doing so she would have to admit she is "late" everyday, as it would inevitably be quite some time before she has arrived, and she wouldn't want to do that (especially given she is always the first one to leave, at 6:00pm exactly, when students stay as long as they need to). She has warned me about lateness before, but what I object to is the rapid escalation from a warning to being threatened with termination. There are definitely a few steps in between these two disciplinary extremes. I think she clearly decided she wanted to do this to me when I returned from my break, I'm just insulted that she "hides" how she feels about this until after I've taken a break just to make me feel bad. If we had a full and frank discussion before I took my holiday, I would have delayed taking a break and got my act together. On the matter of the conference discount, again, it's my fault for forgetting, that I accept, what I don't understand is why she deliberately excluded me her message asking for the discount for all of my other colleagues who have forgotten. This has only cost her money because she chose for it to cost her money. It's an invented bad outcome to an existing problem, which she could have solved (like she did for everyone else) or I could have solved with a brief reminder. As for the results, this is the usual mode of business - she's normally got a full schedule and usually comes to me to ask me when we can meet, so it's not odd for me to have to wait for a few days before she can fit me in. She also never reads my emails, which makes arranging a meeting difficult sometimes. It's also because she is quite intimidating in general - I really don't want to knock on her door when she's busy as she'd probably try to fire me for that. As for the vacation time, this is something she has completel constructed from fiction - she always says that our group doesn't have to follow the "official" holiday schedule as she has arranged with human resources that she will deal with this directly - therefore, if she approves it, it's fine. Saying that I have taken too much vacation time is a pure ad hoc modification of her owne rules to make me look bad (a bit like the lateness rules she has). It's also definitely true that my slightly junior colleague has taken much more time on vacation than me - my colleague usually tells me when she goes away as we are friends. I'm happy that my colleague seems to have as much time off as she likes, but it really isn't fair if what is OK for one group member is not OK for me (and only whenever my supervisor feels like it). I agree, I have made a series of mistakes. However, I think if you look at anybody's work record and only look the the mistakes, one would find something very similar. I'm on time 95% of the time, I usually complete admin tasks as well as I do my academic work, and I don't take excessive holidays. I think she should also consider my not inconsiderable academic output (virtually all of my colleagues said they were well into their second year before a publication became a likely possibility). As for the medical issue, I believe I am legally entitled not to reveal my problems to her - obviously I don't know what the problem is at the moment, but it could result in anything from a course of antibiotics to major surgery. I don't exactly want my supervisor to know that in the next few months, I might be rendered incapacitated (if, and I hope this is not the case, it is something serious), as she would just find a reason to get rid of me before I need to take time off to recover to avoid providing sick pay. However, I was considering mentioning it, in the hope that she might realise that some of my errors have been due to illness and retract her aggresive threat, but she's much too cold-hearted for that. I was considering asking for a meeting, as you suggest, and perhaps we can clarify some points, but again, I don't know if this will help. As you can probably gather, she is something of a woman of contradictions, and if I openly said that I am confused because of her contradictory ways, I don't think she would like that. It's hard for me to ask, for example, when I should arrive without suggesting that there are clear problems with her "arrive before me" policy, or to ask how many holidays I can or should have without pointing out that she has a much more lax attitude towards other group members. I think she'd just fire me for "challenging" her, although I hasten to add, I don't want to challenge her, I just want to find out what the hell is going on inside her head so I can't upset her. I don't think she said it in the heat of the moment, I think she planned exactly when to break this news to upset me as much as possible - leaving it until after my holiday, on the last day of the week so that I would have time to "settle in" after returning. That doesn't mean it isn't an "empty" threat though. I think it's entirely possible that she doesn't intend to fire me (that would involve some paperwork, and of course I would be appealing against it), and that she just wanted to upset me, but on the other hand, she could be deadly serious, I just don't know. I am really enjoying my research and the field I am working in is right up my street (hence my rapid academic progress), so I really don't want to look into switching. Also, she is the only person at my institute that does the work I am interested in, so if I was to move, I'd have to go to a new insitute in a new town, which would involve just as much upheaval as getting sacked, so it's not desirable. I'm definitely going to stick at it for a while longer, maybe she will soften slightly if the paper we are working on is as well-received as we expect it to be. I have a tendancy to be a little paranoid, I usually keep it under control, but when people behave in a hostile manner towards me I can't help but wonder if they have ulterior motives. For example, part of me worries that she's just trying to get me out of the way so she can take full credit for the work that I basically did alone. I know this thought is probably a little crazy, but professors stealing the work of their students is not unheard of, and I wouldn't put it past her. I agree, I'd get a better response from people who know us both, but at the same time, I don't want to appear that I am whining about it. I can accept my faults, if I'm not good enough then she should get rid of me, what I object to is the childish and cruel way she's going about this. I also don't want to talk too much with my colleagues, as it could drive us apart. I get on very well with my colleagues, I regard virtually all of them as friends, but if they find out that my supervisor want my head, they might distance themselves from me in fear of being fired themselves for associating with me, and I don't want to be the office leper for the rest of my PhD (if I last that long), or be responsible for my colleagues getting in trouble. I've also received no social calls since I've been back in Spain; maybe this is a coincidence, but I wonder if she has told people or otherwise convinced people while I was on vacation to stay away from me. She does have a reputation, before this incident however I was under the impression that she was not as bad as everyone was saying. For 7 months, apart from two verbal warnings about lateness, separated by several months, we've had a stable, professional relationship. I'd go as far as to say I have enjoyed working with my supervisor, when she's not having a tantrum. This is why I am so surprised at this recent revelation. As I said before, it's not that I don't accept my faults, I'm just confused as to how our working relationship can go from OK to terrible in virtually an instant. Anyway, thanks for your response, I appreciate your honesty. Hopefully I'll be able to work out a strategy to deal with this.

Hi there, I've been reading up matters involving conflicts between grad students and their supervisors, as I am a PhD student and my supervisor revealed last week (pretty much out of the blue) that she hates me and wants to fire me. This came as a complete surprise, as at the start of last week I had just returned from a holiday (that she had approved) and I had thought things were going pretty well before my holiday. I've been too stressed out and ill to discuss this with friends yet, so hence I thought I'd try putting it up here to see what others think. Apologies for the long post, it takes a while to explain the details so you will know exactly what the situation is - I've tried not to be biased. Here's the story: I am studying for a PhD in computational chemistry. after only 7 months working on my PhD, we have been preparing a very large manuscript for JACS based largely on my results and those of an experimental colleague. So I thought I can't be doing too badly. The only thing my supervisor has warned me about is lateness to the lab. I admit to having been late a few times, that's my fault and I accept it (even if it is due to illness or forgetting to set my alarm clock etc.), but I do computational chemistry, and I work as late as I need to in the evening, so physically it makes virtually no difference when I arrive. Also, she hasn't adequately defined what "late" is, apart from that I should arrive before her. But even this is inconsistent - the last time she told me off for lateness, I actually arrived at the lab about a minute before she did (she saw me walking in to the building as she pulled up in the car park), but on another occasion I saw her driving in and waved good morning, and we didn't have any problems then. I would have thought that great results on the plus side with occasional lateness on the downside wouldn't make me a candidate for being fired, and this is how I thought things were before I took my holiday. So before I went away, having approved my holidays with my supervisor beforehand, I tied up loose ends with regards to the paper, sent all the relevant data to my supervisor, and I told her that if there were any problems, she could just email me and I'd be able to respond. So with that I go away on holiday, thinking that everything is OK. Two weeks later I arrive back in Spain (I'm British and I study in Spain). My flight was delayed, so while I was hoping to arrive on Sunday evening, I in fact arrived very early on Monday morning, and having had an all-round stressful journey, I didn't get to sleep until about 8:00am on Monday morning, so naturally I decided to take the day off to rest and just come back in on Tuesday. On Monday afternoon, after I woke up, I started to check through any emails I might have missed over the break, and I find one from my group's secretary, asking me if I am OK, so I reply, apologise for the slow response, and I explain that I wouldn't be in any fit state to work on Monday, but would be there the next day. She replies and says that's fine, and wishes me a good rest. I come to the lab on Tuesday morning, and I just pick up where I left off, I check my calculations, work on a poster for a conference, read over some papers etc. I notice my supervisor isn't talking to me, but she can be busy, so I figure it would be best not to bother her, and wait for her to be ready to discuss my work. This goes on until Friday afternoon, when she calls me to her office. I print out my latest results, bring my notebook, and head over, expecting to discuss scientific matters. Instead, after we sit down, she starts yelling at me about not being in on Monday. I explain the situation, with the delayed flight, and so then she says that it would have been fine if I had let them know in advance, but of course, I was trying to catch up on sleep when apparently I should have been hurrying to tell them that I was sleep deprived and wouldn't be in the lab. Going to my PC to send a bunch of emails isn't what you do when you're exhausted after spending all day stuck on planes and buses. So then she goes on to something else. She complains that I hadn't completed a relevant form for a student discount for a conference we're going to. This I admit is true - I'd completely forgotten as I was working on the paper. As it turns out, everyone bar one of my colleagues had also forgotten. So, my supervisor sends the conference organisers an email on behalf of all of my colleagues (but not me) asking for the discount. She didn't say why she did this, it must have been purely out of spite. I can't understand why, as she's wasting her own money, just to make my life difficult. The she goes on about the lateness (I hadn't been late since arriving back after my holiday, so I'm a little unsure as to why we didn't discuss this before I went away), and then drops the bomb that she's considering firing me and I've got three months to get my act together. Naturally, I was horrified at this - I was hoping that we were just going to discuss my results. Eventually we did get onto the scientific matters, I presented some nice new results, and then we discussed the stuff we're going to start tomorrow (which she blamed me for not starting earlier in the week "because I wasn't in the lab", but of course I was there from Tuesday and she could have spoken to me at any time during the week). So in the end I make a grovelling apology, promise to be a good boy, and go back to my desk white as a sheet. Can any of you make sense of this? I was completely shocked by this discussion, for as far as I was aware, my occasional tardiness was the only issue, and I don't think that's a good enough reason to fire a student who has produced a lot of good results in a short time frame. As for the conference discount form, if everyone else forgot, why am I the only one being threatened with losing my post for it? It was an honest mistake, I just forgot, and besides, she could have just sent me an angry email while I was on holiday, which I would have read and just sorted it out. I received precisely zero emails from her. And as for taking the day after my flight off, there was absolutely no indication that this is was a problem. And if the lateness was so much of an issue, then why didn't we discuss this before I went on holiday? Why did she even let me go on holiday, if my lateness was such a problem that she would consider firing me? I think she has done this purely as a spiteful intimidation tactic. I've been quite stressed out and physically ill with an undiagnosed abdomial problem since March (she doesn't know this, I'm having a gastroscopy in a few weeks), so I was trying my best to keep on going until we had most of the paper manuscript finished before asking for a holiday. Now I feel physically even worse (I've not left my bed all weekend with the pain), and even more stressed than before, and I feel like I've wasted two weeks of my limited holiday time. When she was shouting at me, she even complained that I've taken too many holidays, despite the fact that I haven't had a single day off (apart from illness) since Christmas, and she approved my holidays in advance. I have a colleague who has been here for two months less than me who has taken more holidays than I have, and will be taking even more in the summer, so compared to this colleague, I haven't had much time off at all. Any advice? Sorry for the long post, but I just needed to get this off my chest. I haven't told anyone else about this yet. I was seriously considering resigning, but today I'm feeling that I should stick at it, as just giving up would make it way too easy for her. It looks like she deliberately let me go on holiday just so that she could prepare this nasty surprise for my return. OK, so I have made a few infractions, but she made no previous indication that I was going to be fired for it, and she seems to have completely ignored the fact that what will probably be her biggest paper of 2015 is almost entirely composed of my work (the computational stuff, that is, I'm not counting the experimental side which our colleagues abroad are handling). I haven't a clue what employment law is like in Spain, so I have no idea if I have any legal recourse. Thanks in advance for any comments, I appreciate advice and support.