Adviser problems

[jack_bauer]

Hello,

 

I'm an international student currently doing my PhD in US. I've been here for 2.5 months. I'm working as an RA. My adviser gradually started pushing me to work harder and produce more results. Now I'm in position that he is threatening that I will be replaced if I don't provide results at rate that he wants. Also, he's generally insulting me and putting me down more frequently. He started calling me out in front of other students that I'm not doing anything, insinuating that I'm incompetent and lazy. He also told me that I should work 16 hours every day and again said that if I don't want to he will find someone else who will. This is a new field for me. It is a pretty specific multidisciplinary field. I've been working around 60 hours per week at the beginning and now I'm doing between 70 and 80. I'm doing the best I can,but he doesn't care about anything, only producing the result.

Is this a normal situation? Do I have any rights to fight him if it's not? I just can't see myself working 16 hours a day for 4 years and in this kind of environment where I'm constantly anticipating when he will get angry and put me down.

[benz42428]

Hi Jack, I'm so sorry to hear that your advisor is being incredibly and unreasonably demanding to you. In my personal opinion, the way your advisor behaves is absolutely not normal (although I won't be surprised if there are a few like him in the academia). You might be able to respond to his demand for now, but after a while, this whole thing can really wear you out physically and mentally (I can barely work above 12 hours a day and absolutely not on regular basis). In a long term, I can't see how this works out. Since you are very early in your PhD career, I think it might be better for you to start looking for another advisor who is more reasonable and respectful. That is, unless you, for some reasons, really need to work with this advisor (i.e. he is the only person in the field).

[PsychGirl1]

Not normal... however, I'd try to be very aware of how much work you are producing. Are you working inefficiently? Are you struggling with anything specific, like data analysis or writing? Do you need to take some classes/training in certain areas to make yourself better at your job? Etc. And just focus on being very honest with yourself. If you are positive you are doing your job well, then start looking elsewhere.

[St Andrews Lynx]

I know plenty of advisors who are rumoured to be exactly like that in my field. The amount of hours you are expected to work often varies with the institution: at the most elite schools, everybody else will be putting in 16 hrs per day, so one needs to do the same just to fit in. 

Unfortunately, the PI really does own you - fighting back usually means that you end up getting replaced with someone else. I would say that you have every right to start looking for a new, less demanding advisor. 

[juilletmercredi]

No, it's not a normal thing, but it's not uncommon.  There are advisors out there like this, and I've heard that international students are especially susceptible to falling victims to this because their visas require that they remain students in programs.

 

I'd try to talk to your advisor and ask him to give you specific feedback on what he would like you to do.  Is he concerned that you aren't producing results fast enough?  Are there issues with the quality of your work?  Would he like you to work on different projects than the one you are currently working on?

 

If he remains unreasonable, I would talk to the director of graduate studies.

 

16 hours every day is unreasonable.  If he believes he can find another doctoral student who is willing to do that, let him.

[jack_bauer]

Thank you for your responds.

When I compare myself to other PhD students on the same university on the first year I don't see that they are advancing faster than I. I think that I am doing the job reasonably well in comparing to others. I am missing few skills that would help me very much, but I am not allowed to work on these areas and improve. When I try to do so I stop producing results (even though on longer run this investment would definitely pay off) and I get into trouble. It does not matter what I know and what I don't, he assumes that I should learn everything along the way while doing the job. This sounds reasonable, but the demands are very high and this approach amounts to me just looking into the areas I encounter superficially, enough to solve the current problem anyway  I can. I noticed that he uses the same approach in his work. I believe that this can often lead to errors and at the end can take much more time.

He's main concern is that I'm not producing results fast enough. Quality is not an issue, whatever produces the result is good enough.

And then it's off to the next problem. 

The area is very specific and switching advisors would be pretty difficult, I believe. 

There is another older student who came for a semester on this university. He is also having a lot problems with my advisor, since he is working for/with him. He noticed exactly the same things about him (unreasonable demands, pressure, emotional instability...). There is another student who's working for this advisor. He's also in similar position.

I should also mention that we are all international students from 3rd world countries all over the world and that university is not an elite one (it's not high ranked). 

Standing up to him just makes things worse ( I tried it and the answer is: it's my way or the highway). I also tried talking with him honestly, but he barely listened to me.

[danieleWrites]

You have two issues: abuse and work.

 

If you haven't started already, document the abuse you're receiving and who witnessed it. For example, Monday, October 28, beginning of lab, Dr. ___ said that I was stupid in lazy during the class session. His tone was angry, he was loud. Witnessed by 8 students: John, Joe, Jeff, Jason, Jennifer, Julie, Judy, and Bob.

 

One of the things about graduate school is having to learn new ways of advocating for yourself. This can be especially difficult for international students. You have done what you can to advocate for yourself with this adviser. You've considered your problem and your options. You've verified that it's not just you. You've taken the first step and spoken with him honestly, and he did not listen to you. This is where it gets tricky. He is the person you have to work with for the next four or more years in order to get your degree, so you can't just complain or ignore the situation because you won't be in it next semester. You have several options, one of which is just dealing with it. As an international student, you have people who will help you advocate for yourself, or will do it for you. Go to the international graduate student office (the people employed by the university to help international students succeed at the university, not the student run clubs or associations) and ask for advice on how to proceed. I would suggest that you also visit the university counseling center. Therapists/counselors don't just help people in psychological crises. They also teach people how to communicate with others. The counselor can help you figure out strategies to speak with and to deal with your adviser. This can be particularly helpful because you have a language and cultural barrier. You may be using the same words with the same definition in the dictionary, but you're likely understanding them in different ways. These two resources can help you figure out what you can do to make things better, what rights you have as a graduate student, what resources are available to you to solve the problem, and what your next move might be if you can't get this guy to be reasonable.

 

Document what you've done, by the way. Make a note of the dates and times of the people you've met with to solve the problem, what you discussed, and what the outcome was. For example, the date and time you met with your adviser, your specific purpose (why you met with him and what you wanted from him), what happened during the meeting, how the adviser reacted, and what the outcome was. When you meet with anyone else, do the same thing. Keep copies of anything they give you. We call it a paper trail. If it becomes necessary for you to take the problem to his supervisor (the department chair, director of graduate studies, or some other person who can do something about his behavior), you have documentation that shows what you've done and what you wanted from it. You can take your problem to the university ombudsman, dean of students, international students office, or graduate school.

 

The real problem is that bullying in grad school isn't addressed. Advisers and professors get away with bullying students, particularly vulnerable students like international students depending on a visa or women. Few grad students stand up and complain, and those that do often end up with a back lash. There's a mindset or a sense that it's normal to be hazed and bullied by your adviser because it "toughens" you up for the harsh world of academia. Grad students aren't abused, they're trained to deal with criticism. Grad school is one of the places that no one wants to call it bullying. They want to call it toughening up, or showing the whiny students who can't handle crticisms that they need another job.Your documentation, backed by available witnesses, will make it so that it isn't a case of a whiny grad student's word against a distinguished professor's. There is always risk when it comes to standing up to bullies. Retaliation is a real problem, particularly if you're in a situation where no other advisers are qualified to advise you, or if your university prefers to pretend everything is shiny and happy, so would prefer to pretend no one is ever abused or harassed.

 

Now, you do have rights as a worker if your primary problem is working too much as an RA rather than general harassment as a student. Your rights come from state and federal legislation and from university policy on GA employment. First, find out your university's rules on graduate student employment. They tend to be specific about hours worked. You can usually find the policy on the website somewhere by doing a search for graduate student employment policy, or similar. The graduate school will have a clear policy about graduate student workers. If you can't find it on the website (or in your graduate student handbook), you can go to the graduate school office and ask where you might find it. You should know this policy before you move forward. My university is very clear. Graduates with the full assistanceship (they call if 50%) may not work more than 20 hours per work. If your boss is violating university policy, you can make him stop. You may be one of the graduate student workers that not exempted from the Fair Labor Standards Act rules about overtime pay (the graduate school or human resources would be able to tell you definitively, but if you're required to keep a time sheet, odds are that you're not exempt). If you are not exempt from FLSA, then you are due a lot of money. Your original comments don't make it clear about how much time you're spending doing work as a research assistant or how much time you're doing work in the lab as a student. Sometimes these things mix.