kltessa

Hi! I'm having issues that are severely threatening my chances of graduating this fall. I'm a visiting MSc thesis student from Europe working in an US lab, and am being mentored by a PhD student (well, he recently defended but anyway). My research is a derivative/continuation of his. My problem is, he has now twice executed experiments that we'd discussed and decided to include in my thesis. The first one, at least, was relevant to his PhD and included in his dissertation. I didn't get the technique right, and he did it before I could. But him doing it meant my first research aim was redundant, so I moved to the second one, for which there were two experiments planned. And when I went to him to discuss some things he needs to train me on to do it...he told me he's done the first of the two experiments....which, in this case, DOES NOT fit within his thesis, and was not included in his dissertation. When I suggested I then move on to the next experiment in that line of research, he told me he thought the question wasn't interesting. If it wasn't interesting, why did he do it, then? Especially considering the hypothesis has been validated, which was the desirable outcome. At this point, I have absolutely no data because my first aim was rendered redundant by the guy who supposedly is mentoring me, and he dismissed the second one now that he's done it himself, even though he didn't think it was 'uninteresting' when we first planned out my research proposal. These are ideas we came up with while discussing, so I cannot call them 100% mine, but they WERE explicitly meant to be part of my research, not his. The PI doesn't seem to have any issue with it. I have been asked to come up with an ENTIRELY NEW research plan now (my report is due in 10 weeks! this is ridiculous). So I have - multiple ideas, even, but my mentor didn't think any of them were interesting/feasible in my remaining time. Now, what I'm wondering, is whether or not I should discuss ideas with the PI directly before involving my mentor. I know it's borderline paranoid reasoning, but I cannot see any reason he would investigate research questions that a) I was meant to do myself and b ) suddenly deem them uninteresting once he's done with them, OTHER than just stealing from my project? If I can get my idea(s) approved by the PI before my mentor hears about them, then I have a chance of actually getting my own data for my ideas, which is all I need....I don't even need a huge amount of data, because if my literature review, discussion, and future perspectives sections are solid, I should have a decent chance of getting my thesis approved. Any advice welcome! I'm in a very tough spot and have very limited time. If working 15hrs a day could solve the problem I'd do it, but I'm not even being given the OK to start experimenting because of this!