Anathem

Looks like my advisor will not budge, and I feel like I can't breathe. I appreciate all your help. I hope any new students reading this will know to have things in writing with their advisor when it comes to situations like this -- I wouldn't wish this heartbreak on anyone.

I understand.. but my frustration lies in that, previously speaking, my advisor had specifically informed me that a summer internship would be fine. Imagine if you won the lottery and went to redeem your ticket only to find out that it expired 3 days ago and is no longer valid. That is how I feel right now. That said, I guess a learning opportunity I can take away from this is to always look things up myself, for even people in charge are wrong about their won policies sometimes, haha..

Well, I'd be lying if I said that these posts brought me any comfort, but I do appreciate the honesty. Hopefully I can get this sorted right. I could not find any policies that state I cannot do summer work, so I hope that's a good sign. Thank you all,

I am a first-year PhD student. Ever since last September or so, I imaged to get in contact with a very well-known scientist who has his own wiki and books and whatnot. We have been regularly communicating back and forth since then. Meanwhile, my academic advisor (who is also new) informed me several months ago that she would be totally fine with me doing a summer internship position. Now, just a few days ago, the scientist informed me that I can work (paid) for this company -- this was very exciting news to me, as this is exactly the type of work I would want to do after I graduate (although it is not really related to the research I do now). I very eagerly tell my advisor the good news... and she says she has made a mistake and that I cannot work over the summer -- instead I must continue with research and work on my proposition. This is devastating to me because this internship is so important; it's not like I can just "apply" again next year -- it's something that I had to do by keeping in contact with the CEO for several months. I don't think my advisor understands what this means to me. Also, until I mentioned the opportunity, she never told me about her new info that she doesn't want me working over the summer. Hell, she even wrote me a letter of recommendation for a similar company about a month ago. This whole situation just really aggravates me (although aside from it, my advisor has been great so far). One of the worst parts of this conflict is that none of my peers seem to understand what this means to me, and the general consensus among them is that if my advisor says "jump" my response should be "how high?"... (Personally I would drop the PhD altogether in a heartbeat and work for the company at hand if I could, but I don't think that could happen, and it's rare enough for this CEO to let me work under him.) Hopefully this is the right area to ask this.. I do appreciate all your advice.

Hello fellow grad students, (First time I spent 1+ hours writing this and then got logged off upon submission...so let's try this again.) I am a first-year PhD student, and I am trying to decide between two groups, and let's call the advisors A and B. Both advisors are brand new to the university (assistant professors). B currently has one grad student and is looking for another; A has none and is looking for two. I am taking a class that A is teaching. Her works is obviously interesting to me, but there are only certain parts of her projects that relate to what I want to do after graduation (only certain projects are related to energy. The good news is that I would probably be the one working on them). I like that her work is focused on more of an industry setting (she did her postdoc in industry), and she is also very friendly/personable. She also has funding for one of her projects from the DOE. I have not gotten a chance to interact with B as much because she is not teaching this semester. I would say that her work is more relevant/specialized in what I want to do after graduation, and I also feel like her letter might be worth a lot of weight because she has a lot of papers published, and she also did her postdoc at MIT (although it is probably still too early to tell). As far as I know, however, she currently has no official funding (although I have no doubt that she will obtain it). In addition, B is much more straight-forward and let me know what she would expect if I join her group the first day I met her. I don't want to imply that she is unfriendly, however, but I just thought it would be worth contrasting A and B since I will be spending 5+ years at this university (hopefully not longer lol), and I know warm relations are a necessity. (I also realize that having a boss that pushes you is important.. so basically I'm unsure of what to consider at this point. Not that A wouldn't push me -- I just think there are different approaches, and since I'm new to the whole grad school setting, I'm not sure which one is more effective.) I'm leaning toward A because I feel like her lab would have a better work environment, there is funding, and the lab will have more of an industry-feel. However, for the specific job I want after I graduate, I feel that B's work is more relevant. I'm hoping some of you could weight in on this. Thanks for your help!