Need Advice Badly: Four Years and Dissertation Research Going Nowhere

[Uus]

I am in a real bad situation regarding the progress on my Ph.D. and my advisor, and I could really use some advice from someone who understands such circumstances well.

First, let me give you some background. I originally entered grad school in a physics program and decided I rather do Aerospace Engineering instead. I switched to an Aerospace engineering program in a different school after receiving a masters with thesis. I was disappointed with my Aerospace program and again got a masters with thesis, a switch back again to physics at the original university I studied. Because I switched back to my old university, I immediately met all my course requirements and was able to take and pass the Ph.D. candidacy/qualifiers within the first year back. Still, I had blown 4 years essentially acquiring two masters.

At this point I decided to commit to the program and a advisor and see it through to the end in an attempt to complete my physics Ph.D. It has now been four years since I have entered this physics program for a second time, and all progress on my dissertation has been agonizingly slow. I have achieved very little, only producing a single publication.

My research has led me into the investigation of several topics, but many of these topics have never made it past the planning/theory stage. Two years into my Ph.D. I finally gave my disseration proposal. In my dissertation proposal I had planned to investigate two topics. The larger of the two topics, which the majority of my dissertation proposal consisted of, was the topic that earned me my lone publication. My advisor essentially decided over a year ago to abandon that line of research (although the publication itself was not actually completed until after the research was abandoned), and instead focused on a marginally related topic of research which was also abandoned, an unrelated topic in which minimal and unsatisfactory research has been conducted on, and the second smaller topic of my dissertation, for which no research has been actually done. When I confronted my advisor about the fact that we are no longer pursuing the original topic of my dissertation proposal, he informed me that “dissertations can be changed.”

This problem is compounded by the way in which research is carried out in our group. I am supposed to be doing experimental physics work, and the topics of my dissertation proposal involved experiments that were to be carried out. My experiments all involve ultrafast lasers, or more specifically, physics that can be done with ultrafast laser beams. However, my group is very large, probably over 30 people in total under my advisor, and divided into subgroups of about 5 people a piece, one of which I work with.

A single ultrafast laser, the one I need to carry out essentially all my experiments, “belongs” to my subgroup. However, only certain members of my subgroup are permitted to actually operate the thing, and I am not one of those people. This means I cannot simply come into the lab after hours and carry out an experiment, I essentially need one of the laser operators to either be with me during the experiment, or at least on call while it is being carried out. Furthermore, any experiment I want to conduct has to be scheduled in advanced with the group as we essentially share machine time for this device. While practical, it basically forces me to run any planned experiments through my advisor, allowing him to essentially veto experiments that I would like to do and only carry out those he fancies at the present time. Also, he often requires that I go through extensive planning of experiments before I am permitted machine time to carry them out, and even after I plan an experiment he still won't necessarily approve it.

While this seems like good training if I wanted a career carrying out experiments on particle accelerators (for which you also must share machine time), its seems like overkill for tabletop ultrafast laser experiments, and probably a consequence of my advisor hiring more people than the equipment can support. Whatever the rationale, one thing is clear, I don't work well in such an arrangement. I can easily spend no more than a handful of hours carrying out experiments in the course of a month, and the rest of time I am either planning experiments, analyzing experiments or just doing theory work because I don't have to fight to get to get theory work done the way I have to if I want to run an experiment (in practice I end up doing more theory the experiments despite supposedly being an experimentalist). Its is becoming quite clear that at least part of the agonizingly slow pace of my work is because of this arrangement.

Ultimately, my graduate career since I have rejoined physics has proved unproductive, unfulfilling and is making me increasingly unhappy, and even worse, I don't think I am really learning much of anything under my advisor. It could be my own fault, or my advisors fault, or just plain bad luck, but in any case I want to discontinue working for this advisor as soon as possible. However, I really don't want to walk away empty handed. According to my advisor, I am on track to graduate with a Ph.D. within a year, although he obviously can't promise that, but I just don't see myself graduating within a year while moving at this snails pace, and I don't see the pace getting that much faster, no matter how hard I try to increase it. If I knew for certain I could graduate in a year I would be willing to hang on one year longer, but I am not willing to work for this advisor indefinitely.

Perhaps the most prudent course of action is to change advisors, but even here I run into problems. See, my physics program is essentially divided into optics and condensed matter physics with little in the way of significant research in other branches of physics. I currently work in optics and I have no real interest in condensed matter physics nor an adequate background in it, so I am really stuck on the optics side of the program. But a lot of the optics side of the physics research isn't done by the physics department but by the optics school, which is where my current advisor resides, and which is honestly far better equipped to carry out experimental optics research. But it is more of an engineering department than a physics department and a lot of its faculty rather hire either optics or electrical engineering graduate students than physics students. This may make finding an advisor in my field of interest difficult, and this problem could be compounded by how my current advisor reacts should I resign (I honestly have no idea how he would take my resignation). Naturally, it would probably require at least two years to obtain my Ph.D. under a new advisor even if things go smoothly, so I am looking at at least some lost time.

The final and most drastic option would be to simply write the last four years of my life off as a complete loss and engage in a completely new line of research or simply go into the workforce with multiple masters degrees. With regard to going into the workforce, I would really hate to give up now after investing 8 total years in graduate school and walking away with only a Masters degree level of education. Restarting a Ph.D. program from scratch isn't much more appealing, as it will likely take four years to complete (and that is assuming no further problems) and I have absolutely no interest in spending 12 years total in grad school. About the only consolation is that maybe I would finally be able to choose a line of research I truly enjoy, but I would much rather be doing that while already in possession of a Ph.D. Four years is a long time to just throw away.

If you have bared with me this far, you realize just how screwed I am. I would dearly like to believe my advisor, that I am on track for graduation in a year and that I need not embark on any of these contingency plans, but I am rapidly losing confidence in him and in the research I am doing. I don't want to be in this line of work a second longer than I have to, but I also don't want to be spending half my life earning a bloody Ph.D. Signing up with this guy now ranks as the worst mistake of my life, I wish I had recognize what was going wrong and how badly things were going wrong earlier on. I know I made a mistake choosing this advisor, but I have absolutely no idea how to fix it. If anyone is familiar with this problem and can give any advice that would be helpful, it would be greatly appreciated it.

Thanks in advance for any advice you might provide.

[fuzzylogician]

So if I understood correctly, you don't have many options and you don't like any of the ones you have.

Changing advisors within your school will allow you to graduate in two years, assuming that you find a new advisor and everything goes smoothly -- but that's not guaranteed.

Starting over will take at least four more years and I agree does not seem to make much sense, given your background.

So it would appear that the best course of action is to make things work where you are. Is your advisor aware of your unhappiness? One of the main problems you describe is independent access to the equipment. Can you do whatever training is necessary to be allowed to handle the equipment yourself? Being forced to rigorously plan experiments and then having some of them scrapped doesn't sound unreasonable to me; if you think that your experiments have merit and should be run, do you try and defend the ideas? Being an experimentalist doesn't mean you don't need to think about the theoretical merit of your work, rather you should be able to justify your experiments based on the theories. Your advisor doesn't sound wholly unmanageable to me; maybe you could learn to deal with him better? Is there anyone in your group who is successfully working with him who you could seek advice from?

[StrangeLight]

tell all of this to your advisor. tell your advisor that you want to finish your degree and he'll need to prioritize your access to the equipment you need (or give you approval to use it yourself).

i will say, though, that making you write detailed plans for experiments and spending a lot of time on theory does seem like good training to me. better, certainly, than spending hours on a machine several people need, just sort of winging it with experiments. i'm not in sciences myself, but i know a lot of people who are, and i can't say that your arrangement sounds all that different from theirs, including all the frustrations you're experiencing.

[ktel]

I agree with the above posters, it sounds like sticking it out and trying to make it work is your best option given the information you've provided. Try your best to share your concerns with your advisor to remedy the situation. If you can make it work it sounds like the least complicated option

[Eigen]

Your situation doesn't sound all that different from most students I know in your stage in related fields (we have a large laser chem/optics section of our department). If your advisor says you can graduate in a year, I'd trust him.

Dissertation proposals don't have to mirror your research. You can change topical areas entirely if your chair (your advisor) is onboard. And really, when it comes down to it, if your advisor (dissertation chair) feels like you've done enough to graduate, chances are your dissertation will pass review. You may be expecting too much of yourself, and he may have a more realistic idea of how much your dissertation will need to include. I'd say your best course would be to sit down with him (since he's said you can graduate in a year) and ask him if the two of you can work out something of a timeline/discuss what results you need before you start writing up. Maybe seeing what he expects from a gameplan will help, and will get both of you on the same page.

As to the research not being exactly what you want- you're so close I'd say to just suck it up and finish (assuming that the above discussion lets you see that as plausible). Your graduate research doesn't have to be the same thing you want to do for the rest of your life- you just need to do it and move on. You can take post-doc positions in areas closer to what you ultimately see yourself doing to get experience.

I'll also agree with StrangeLight that what he's requiring of you sounds like pretty good training, especially on an instrument that's in high demand. If the instrument was less busy and/or inexpensive to operate, winging it isn't that bad of an idea. But otherwise, you need really good theory and proposals before you start- literature precedents, and a good idea of what you expect to see.

[Uus]

Thanks for all the advise. It does sound like sticking it out is the best course of action. I will have to stay on top of the situation, but hopefully it will all work out for the best.