Bully Advisor

[EEBPHD2015]

Hello All,

This forum has been great to me, so I wanted to give back a little to anyone that is in a similar situation.

I am a current Masters student that was suppose to have graduated this semester after two years in my program. My advisor has been bullying me for the past 7 months and continuously changed their mind on my thesis... Loving it one minute and despising it the next. I had a thesis defense date set and then two weeks before I was to defend, it was canceled. I don't want to go into too much detail, but you get the idea. At this point I have all levels of administration involved with the situation. However, the bylaws of the school state that I am not able to choose a new advisor and take my research/results with me. Make a very long story short, the system has failed and I will not be graduating with my thesis.

For those students that have a questionable relationship with their advisor, please be careful. I was completely pushed out of my program and now all of my data is now my advisors. I can guarantee my advisor will publish the data within the next 6 months. Do not let one person determine your value and remember you are absolutely not alone. Bullying, retribution, intimidation and stealing data is common in academics and try to get everything in writing to protect yourself.

I am moving on to a PHD program and looking forward to deleting this awful experience from my life.

Good luck to those in similar situations. Please learn something from me and protect yourself.

[fuzzylogician]

I am sorry to read about your bad experiences, but thank you for sharing. I am glad to hear that you are able to move on to a PhD program, so hopefully this hasn't done you too much damage. Take it from someone who also started but didn't finish an MA, that it doesn't matter in the long run if you have good outcomes from your PhD. Good luck!