Grad Advisor Problems- How I Became a Traitor

[redsfan2014]

Here's the situation:

 

For part of my first semester in archaeology grad school, things with my advisor seemed fine. I thought we had similar research interests and I looked forward to having his feedback for when I began my thesis research. The program is a very tight-knit group predominantly composed of students who went to the same university for their undergraduate degrees. So that meant almost all of my fellow grad students had been working with my advisor for years and knew each other very well. I was one of the few "outsiders" coming into the grad program, but all of the grad students were nice and welcoming so I felt like this wouldn't be an obstacle for me.

 

Yet...I couldn't help but notice that my advisor had a little "club" of students that he favored. It wasn't like he gave his club more funding than the rest of us or anything like that, but he appeared to be very dedicated to only those students who were in the club and he no patience for those who were not. It took me a couple weeks to realize that his club all had similar research projects concerning archaeological sites where my professor was conducting his own research. This isn't unusual at all and it is very common for grad students to connect their research with an advisor's existing research. But due to the size of our program, grad students had only two options for a thesis advisor: one other professor (famous for being uncommunicative) and my advisor.  

 

I didn't select my advisor because he was the lesser of two evils. In fact, one of the reasons I applied to my graduate program was because I had similar research interests as my advisor. He was very supportive of my research goals at first and seemed to listen intently to what I had to say. It was almost as if I was actually in the club. I am not a follow-the-crowd kind of person, but because I was the new kid I didn't want to make too many waves by being assertive or high maintenance. I had the impression that graduate school was about doing the projects my advisor told me to do and having the discipline to organize and carry out the work on my own. So when my advisor started being pushy about a project he had in mind for me at one of his archaeological sites (despite the fact he said I could work where ever I wanted to) I agreed to make it my thesis. My advisor and I both wanted the project to apply a specialized technique. I wasn't too enthusiastic about the project site, but I wanted to show that I was a team player with flexibility.

 

After some initial tests, I became skeptical that the technique would answer research questions I had about the site. The more and more I researched, the more I came to hate the site and my entire thesis project. But my advisor kept pushing. He started twisting the project to where he practically redesigned the whole thing. I told him the results were inconclusive. He said I wasn't focusing hard enough and that I needed to take ridiculously larger samples. I couldn't make sense of anything he said, and I don't think he understood (or listened) to anything I said. He responded to my questions with apathy and every time I left a meeting I felt like I had just gone to battle with a stone wall. It was exhausting. I was supposed to be doing a lit review over winter break, but every time I tried to start my stomach would get all in knots and I lost all of my ability to concentrate. 

 

I should probably note that I have been struggling with depression for most of my life. I am on medication and therapy, but sometimes it gets out of my control. One of those times was when I was at my breaking point with my thesis and advisor earlier this semester. I felt like we had major communication problems and were just plain incompatible. Our first meeting after break began with me being unprepared, continued with my advisor tearing all of my ideas apart and providing pieces of information that would have been useful to know months ago, and ended with me in tears. My depression had worn me down and I didn't get bounce back from it for several weeks. I deserved the criticisms I received, but I was too afraid to tell my advisor that I hated my project. During our meeting, he looked at me with such disgust that I became extremely uncomfortable in his presence. The few days after our meeting, he started making passive aggressive comments in class about how some students weren't surviving grad school and couldn't handle failure. Failure. 

 

That was the last straw. I knew I had to switch projects and advisors, but I didn't want to come to my advisor about it until I had a sturdy back-up plan. Luckily, a project crossed my path thanks to the other professor (Dr. Email-you-3-weeks-later) and a new professor who was just hired by the program. I did some background research for several weeks and I became very enthusiastic about potential for my new project. It took a while, but I finally got the gumption to tell my old advisor that I had found a new project with a new advisor. I kept it simple and respectful. My old advisor greeted my news with his typical apathy and said it was fine if I switched advisors. I sent him an email thanking him for his help as my advisor and apologizing for wanting to switch so suddenly. The anger he hid during our meeting showed up in his response email: he told me he was disappointed in me, that I couldn't take criticism and that I was running away scared. He said I had wasted his time (true) and that I wasn't doing the heavy lifting required of being a graduate student (very false). 

 

At the end of the day, I needed to change projects because I picked it for the wrong reasons and hated it with a passion. I needed to change advisors because we didn't communicate well, were hardly on the same page, and I was sick of all of the game playing and politics. But if I tell all of this to him, I risk  1) disrespecting him, 2) making my life even harder seeing as I have to take his classes until I graduate, and 3) elaborating about my private life and medical issues to someone I don't like or trust. Should I tell him the whole story? Should I let it go and move on? He sees me as a traitor but he also gave me a few days to "reconsider my mistake." Should I suck it up and go back to working on that project just to get my masters? 

 

I am young, stupid, and hopelessly out of my depth. Help!

[Don't Panic]

Look, I have had my share of teachers who underestimated me, drew wrong conclusions about my dedication and generally maligned me to all. But all that was during my undergraduate years. My M.S.S. adviser and I didn't have that much in common but she wasn't malicious or anything.

 

I think you made the right choice. You have been polite with him. Regarding what he thinks of you, you can't really change that can you?

 

I don't think elaborating on your reasons why would be much helpful. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who would understand.

 

That's just my two cents. Best of luck for the future.

[St Andrews Lynx]

It sounds like your advisor's last email was more fuelled by shock or knee-jerk anger than anything actually connected to you. Do you hardest not to let the words hurt you. If he tries to have an argument with you in person, then just tell him calmly, "I'm sorry you feel that way."

 

Since you will be around your advisor until you finish your MS, please avoid telling him (or anyone else in the program) all the stuff you are feeling. Right now you are also hurt and angry. If asked you can just say it was a "bad research fit" - you aren't obliged to give more detail than that. Keep things as professional as possible between your old advisor and you...even if he doesn't.

 

Good luck!

[thegirldetective]

Be extremely polite to your old advisor. Make it clear to everyone in your department that you are pleasant and great to work with. That way, if your old advisor bad moiuths you, they will treat his words with suspicion because they do not jive with their overall impression of you.

 

But you DEFINITELY make the right choice getting out. You want to do your thesis research somewhere you will thrive, with an advisor who really wants you to suceed.

[danieleWrites]

You definitely don't want him to go wandering around archeology conferences with a Tom Collins in hand telling everyone who'll listen what a disrespectful, thin-skinned whiner you are that enjoys wasting valuable time and resources just to turn traitor at the last moment for someone who'll coddle you. That means addressing the problem.

I have to wonder, after reading your post, how much of the compatibility problems stem from your feelings of being the outsider? Even we prefer-to-work-alones need to feel like we're a welcome part of a group. Humans = social animals (darn it all). I wonder this because you made two mistakes. The first was presenting the team-player, low-maintenance facade by acquiescing to the group. The second was giving your adviser no feedback about the real problem, so he could only make judgments based on the project.

Being assertive is ]i]not being high maintenance. Being submissive is not being low maintenance. So, now you're at a point where you switched advisers, but the old adviser thinks you did so because you couldn't handle the studenting part of it, and your inability to do the work prompted you to have some kind of primadonna moment.

Your task is to change that impression of you, because that's not the way it is. So, yes, you need to speak with him.

The problem with you not asserting yourself is that he likely had little to no idea that you weren't interested enough in the project to make it your thesis, and that you were having difficulties assimilating into the group. One of the major things about team work is that you have to treat yourself as an equally valuable part of the team, too. That means asserting yourself. So, he might have known a student that seemed easy-going and enthusiastic about the group, the program, and the thesis project, until things started going wrong and you started clashing with him. As the semester wore on, the problems he was aware of had to do with your work on the project, and eventually your responses to his criticisms, rather than your dislike of the project from the very beginning. So, when you swapped advisers completely out of the blue, what reasons for your switch did you give him to choose from?

You should not return to your old adviser's project, but you should have enough respect for yourself and for him to tell him what the real problems are. That means meeting with him and explaining how, in your efforts to be a good student and a good part of the team, you never stood up for yourself, and, in retrospect, the only thing that did was cause problems for you, for him, and for the team. If you have the opportunity, practice your conversation (whatever it is for you) with your therapist or with someone else you do trust. That way you can work out what to say, how to say it, and stuff.

[redsfan2014]

Thanks to all of the replies. I forgot how long the original post was, so thank you for reading through it!

Update: It's been about a month since I switched projects and advisors, and I am more convinced than ever that I made the right choice. I am so much more interested in my new project and I have (so far) a very productive working relationship with my new advisory committee. I do agree, however, that I shouldn't have been so timid when I first began my graduate program. I believe the whole problem stems from that. 

I ended up emailing him back and explained a little bit more in depth about what was going on concerning the project. I told him I shouldn't have worked on the old project for as long as I did because it wasn't fair to him or the archaeology site (sometimes archaeologists get very attached to their sites and talk about them like this - we're weirdly nerdy). I got some of my backbone back by telling him that I do in fact want to succeed in graduate school, but that would only happen if I follow the research path I am actually interested in. My email didn't go into much detail about my depression or other related things because my old advisor gossips too much with his favorites and I don't want my personal business spread around the department. My counselor and I did talk about this whole thing after the fact, and she told me he also must have "kind of lost it" in order to have responded like that. Apparently, I unknowingly struck a sensitive nerve. I guess we had more in common than I realized.

He just replied "well, if that is what you want to do..." and asked for all of my lab keys back. The passive aggressiveness has continued, but it has not seeped anymore into the course where he is my professor. I would never tolerate something like that for long. My former advisor has done some things lately that I think are meant to be passive aggressive toward me but nothing too upsetting. He has gotten more possessive, like mysteriously putting all the equipment on lock down and changing electronic door passwords for vague reasons. It feels like he is cutting me out or pushing me away, but I am perfectly fine with this since it doesn't prohibit my research at all. Every time I pass him in the hallway, I just give him a genuine grin because I no longer have to work under him : ) 

In sum, I have learned a lot in graduate school but I have learned the most from this whole situation. I made mistakes, tons of them, but I think I have gained insight that I didn't even know I needed. I am 10 times more confident and focused than I was before. No one, not even a tenured professor, can try to convince me that I am a failure when I know I am not. Learning how to work with people different than you is very important. Even more important is knowing when you are in an unhealthy situation and doing something about it.  

[Don't Panic]

Great news! So happy for you!

 

By the way, your old advisor sounds...well, 'not normal'.

[bsharpe269]

It sounds like you did the right thing! I dont think that the way you handled it at the beginning, with compromising on the project location, was that wrong even. I think that most students in your shoes would have done the same. Good luck with your new project and advisor!