PhD advisor told me to consider whether I should continue the program

[zmondo]

Hey everyone,

I recently had two conversations with my advisor that were extremely difficult. The first one came one day after I arrived back in town (this Monday) after I had a series of daily panic attacks that affected me and made me take most of last week off. These panic attacks come from thoughts that have a tendency to get stuck in my head and are on repeat constantly. I have ASD, ADD, depression, social anxiety, and generalized anxiety disorders. I've also been socially isolated so any small incidents in the big scope of things I don't realize are small until someone pulls me out of it or I approach it factually. 

Anyway, I meet my advisor in the lab after she tells me that I left the lab a mess. Some of them were equipment related issues I did not know about and that my print outs should have had bigger spaces for me to write (I have dysgraphia) despite digital record keeping. However, she was primarily upset at me over how I sorted the files. The folders were stacked on top of each other with 100+ pages in them per folder. This study I did also has a follow-up study we are currently running and I put the follow-up study forms participants completed in the same folder as the first study. I kept them in order thankfully, so I re-organized them accordingly.

She proceeds to tell me that this is a mistake I should not make at this point in the program (I am a second year PhD student who had their MA with a thesis before I started this program). She cited the previous student who graduated last year who also left the lab a mess at one point and told me that I should have learned from his mistake. She tells me that, while she thinks I can do it, I'm stretching to get myself there. This analogy was used by her to indicate that I am not happy in this program. She told me to consider whether I should finish the program because the only reasons she saw that mess was due to: 1.) Not caring - Which she told me she does not think is the case with me because I'm conscientious according to her. 2.) Overwhelmed - She's confident this is the case with me, even though I did not say it, and that me becoming an instructor of record next year + lab duties may break me. She told me that she will still work with me and give feedback on a paper that serves as my program's equivalent of quals. I spilled everything to her about the isolation I've had since I enrolled in Fall 2020, people who think I'm capable of finishing the program (she said they were wrong that I could and only she can judge that), and that I'm going to try to do better.

However, after this last impromptu meeting with her, I'm not so sure. I called her because I had realized I gave the participants the consent form for the first study (when we are running our follow up study) by mistake. I called her just in case we had to get rid of our old data and she told me we did not have to and that it was not a big deal. I was panicky at the start of the call because this came two days after our Monday conversation. She took the chance to say that this mistake goes back to the conversation on Monday. She doubled down on her points. When I tried to explain to her how this affected me she told me, "This all goes back to what I said on Monday, which is that when you worked during the summer [I worked at a rec center], you did not like your job but you cared about doing it well... This is one of two things I've seen with students who have come through the program in the past. They either: 1.) Don't care, which I find hard to believe with you because you are a very conscientious person. 2.) They are overwhelmed. If that is the case, teaching + running the lab next year will be very hard for you." The fact she brought up that my summer job at the rec center was the happiest I was in the program bothered me a lot. I apologized to her for my past behavior. I tried to tell her about the isolation but she questioned me with, "what does that have to do with running the lab?" She told me that she "didn't believe me" because, if I truly liked what I was doing, that I would not have let any external factors influence how I do in the lab.

I think that what she said was insensitive because allowing external factors to affect me has been an issue after COVID began. It even affected the last student in her lab who recently graduated. No graduate clubs or organizations have been active on campus since March 2020. She continued to double down on her points and said that, "if you have a perspective and refine your points, I'd love to hear it." I probably will NOT do that and continue working as much as I can. 

I'm concerned because I did re-cleaning of the data just in case I messed that up (I did slightly) and I emailed her mentioning that I did so. She has NOT replied to that email at all even though the attachments were ones she requested. I am VERY worried about my future in the program now.

[zmondo]

Update that she's replied to my emails now.