anthro2009

It feels so good to hear from someone else with the same dilemma. What's your plan? Are you going to try to stick it out for the PhD, or master out, or leave? Would you have to do a post-bac, or do you already have your premed classes done?

No, there's no masters here because it's a research-based PhD with minimal coursework, sort of all-or-nothing. If I know I don't want to be a primatologist and feel like I could be doing much more helpful and useful work in medicine, but I stayed here for two or three more years just to not be a quitter, I was thinking that might also reflect poorly on me if I went down the med school path after that. I could imagine being in an interview, explaining that, after seeing the state of medicine in Ethiopia during my first year of my PhD, I decided I wanted to be a doctor... and then I waited three or four more years before moving in that direction? I was hoping that, if I quit my PhD because I really felt that medicine was right for me, then worked in a hospital for a few years, did all of my post-bac classes, did well on the MCAT, and wrote a really good essay explaining why I made the decision, it would at least show a prolonged dedication to medicine, not just an impulsive decision to quit. I don't know... I hope they wouldn't hold quitting the PhD against me, but I guess they might.

It will take me another 2 years minimum to finish the PhD, assuming that everything goes well. Other students here have been stuck here for 6 or even 8 years sometimes when samples don't produce enough DNA or the results just wind up being garbage... My reasoning with quitting now was that 1) I'm sure I don't want to do this for a career and 2) I need time to explore medicine, by working in a clinical setting and getting to see patients and shadow doctors, before I apply to med school, because I don't want to be similarly disillusioned with that. The worst-case scenario will be that, in 10 or 20 years, I realize that I'm just not someone who is super passionate about any particular field and that one is as good as another, and then I'll feel stupid for wasting time and not finishing the PhD. But at least, if I wind up in medicine, I'll be able to support myself, right?

Try to plan for your transition out of your current lab as much as you possibly can before reporting your boss. See if there's anyone within the same department or at your school who would be able to take on your project (assuming the research is sound, despite the dishonest boss). If there is another faculty member in the department you can trust, talk to that person about how to plan before you report your boss. Also, it wouldn't hurt to have a list of other schools where you could potentially transition your project. If you report this dishonest researcher with solid evidence showing academic misconduct, it seems like the department should continue to pay you until you find a new job, or at least give you a reasonable amount of time to transfer to a new phd position. If they aren't supportive, i'm sure there are plenty of newspapers and science journals that would love an editorial about your situation, which would make the department look pretty bad for hanging you out to dry. I think people are very sensitive now about supporting people who report academic misconduct. Nature had an editorial article about the Hauser thing that was all about the human cost of scientific misconduct and how awful it is for the students who report an advisor.

I think that you definitely need to say something - this could negatively affect you down the road, if you're publishing with this person and then they eventually get called out on being dishonest, and all the other people this research has worked/will work with, and anyone who is basing their own research on crappy work that's been published by this researcher, and just the credibility of the whole scientific community. Does anyone else in your department know about the dishonesty? Do you have tangible proof? If other people see the dishonesty and you can talk to them about it, you could report the person together. I can imagine how difficult it must be to report the person you work for, particularly when that person is in a very high-up position and you're still a grad student. I don't know if you've heard about the whole Marc Hauser situation at Harvard - he's a psych professor whose research assistants reported him, and he's been found guilty of academic misconduct: http://chronicle.com/article/Document-Sheds-Light-on/123988/ Harvard is protecting the whistle-blowers. I think you would probably have a sympathetic audience, particularly given that this just happened and people are becoming more aware of how difficult it is to report a superior person. I think the key is to have tangible evidence and go to someone in the university, outside of your department. Good luck.

I'm beginning my second year of a 4-year PhD in primate population genetics, and I feel 90% sure that I want to quit. My PI is great and I really like the other students, but the lab work is unbelievably boring. I had no idea what I was getting into - I worked in a lab before coming here, but it was just a totally different setup, and I think I expected my PhD lab work to be more like that: experiment-driven and varying, as opposed to extracting DNA from almost a thousand samples and then genotyping all of them over a period of years. I just don't think I'm cut out for this kind of work, where you don't get results for years. I also moved to a tiny city in Germany from the US, and though I am sociable with people at work and have made some friends, I can't see staying here for several more years. I miss having a close relationship with family and friends back home. I also am not making nearly enough money (my stipend comes to less than $17k a year) to deal with living expenses + flights home + student loans/credit card debt. During my PhD work, it has become increasingly clear to me that I want to pursue a career in medicine. I have enjoyed working with non-human primates and am fascinated by the evolutionary questions that my current research addresses, but I am far more satisfied working to understand and treat disease in humans. I want to feel like my work has a more immediate purpose and is helping someone directly. I worked in biomedical/clinical research for two years before starting grad school and was thinking about med school even then, but because I was an anthropology major as an undergrad and didn't take any premed classes, I assumed the med school door had closed. I spent January to March of this year in rural Africa collecting samples for my project, and, seeing the medical problems that are rampant in rural Africa really catalyzed my desire to apply my science background to human medicine. My plan would be to leave in another 5 or 6 months, to give my boss enough notice to replace me, to get my lab work to a point where someone else could take over easily enough, and to give myself time to get a job back home. I plan to apply to research assistant jobs in clinical medicine, so that I can get more experience working with patients in a hospital (I did this for a year after college, but I want to explore it more to make sure medicine is the right move for me). I will take my pre-med classes part-time after work, and if I get a job at a university, a lot of the coursework will be paid for with tuition remission. Then, if I'm sure I want to apply to med school, I'll take the MCAT and apply. I've already begun reviewing biology and chemistry textbooks to prepare for the classes/MCAT, and even though I don't have much formal science coursework, I worked in a neuro lab for a year and a molecular bio lab for another year, and then this genetics-based PhD experience will help me too. This whole process should take me about three years, so I'd be able to apply to med school to start at age 27 or 28. I just want to make sure I'm not making a mistake. My parents aren't very supportive of me leaving - I know that they'll support whatever decision I make in the end, but I'm just worrying that there's some merit to what they say. They think I should stick it out and just get the PhD, even if I don't think I'll use it. I don't want to waste time getting a useless degree. I think they think that I'm leaving because I don't like Germany, but this isn't the primary reason I don't want to finish. They also just think it's really cool that I'm living in Europe and can travel around, and I know they don't want me to give up too soon. They usually advocate toughing things out, but I've been doing that for the past year and feel confident that it would be a waste of time. I'd be interested to hear other peoples' opinions on the pros and cons of leaving my PhD, given the situation. Thanks, and sorry this post is so long!

Did anyone else feel like the reviewers didn't actually read their application? The comments that mine made were pretty ridiculous - like questioning my ability to extract DNA, when I pointed out in my application that I've already extracted DNA for my project from over 300 samples with a 98% success rate. Also, DNA extraction is not some wild, cutting-edge technique - the reviewer just seemed like she had no biology background at all. I applied as interdisciplinary research (bioanthro/genetics), so I'm thinking maybe this resulted in me getting reviewers that weren't familiar with my field of research, but it's still frustrating and doesn't really give me concrete ways to make my application better for next cycle.

I can't access mine either

I'm in the same boat. I'm just starting a PhD in East Germany, moving here from Boston/New York. I don't speak any German yet, which is frustrating, and I miss my family and friends a ton. I'm starting to worry that staying here for such a long time is going to be horrible (although PhDs in Europe only take about 4 years, at least). I hope that now that my classes have started, I'll start settling in a little more.

Rejected from Yale today - got an email with a link to the website. So now who wants to help me pick between Michigan and Leipzig? I'm so on the fence about these two, it's going to be a really tough decision...

I was applying for biological.

Got a rejection letter in the mail yesterday from Harvard... now I'm just waiting on Yale. Then the next stress-fest of decision making will begin...

Hi everyone, I'm the one who posted the Oregon/Leipzig/Michigan acceptances on the results search thing... I posted them here too a little while ago but didn't realize the results search existed until yesterday. Still waiting on Harvard and Yale. Anyone else?

I heard from University of Michigan and the Leipzig School of Human Origins last week that I got in! I think Leipzig might do things on a more case-by-case basis instead of one round of admissions, although I'm not actually sure about that... has anyone heard from Harvard or Yale?

I just heard from the University of Oregon that I got in!

University of Michigan Anthropology is making decisions this week, so I'm told...