Advisor going on sabbatical at worst possible time

[desp1]

I am a 9th year Ph.D. student and in the last 2 years or so my advisor has become disorganized, has started forgetting to work with me, has missed some times he was supposed to meet me, and now only responds to about half his E-mails. He is now forgetting to inform me when he will be out of town and has forgotten some major discussions we had. Furthermore, the things has asks me to do are less and less reasonable and have become repetitive. He keeps wanting me to re-write my computer code over and over to test different things with no coherent idea where we are going. He insists all of this is "normal" but rumor has it that he has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. If he forgets to respond to me this summer on his sabbatical or misses meeting, I am likely scr**ed because by the time he gets back that will be another 5-6 months of mental deterioration. I am desperate and fear that it may be too late to switch advisors. Should I drop out or do I have recourse? I am afraid to tell the higher-ups about this because I have no proof of his diagnosis despite the fact that he has been showing difficulty even remembering his own office phone number and is far more disorganized than ever before, even compared to previous times when he was under a lot of stress due to grants, etc. Help!!!!!!

Edited April 30, 2017 by ncole1

[rising_star]

Is there any one else who could reasonably become your new advisor? I'm sort of wondering why you let this go on for as long as it has...

[fuzzylogician]

How far are you from graduating? Since it's taken you this long, I won't even try to guess. Changing to a new advisor at this point might be difficult and also possibly not something too many people would want to take on, because taking this long is an obvious red flag so people would be concerned about spending time with you that doesn't end up going anywhere (sorry if this is blunt, but I do think that's how people would think). If you can still find someone, that might be the best solution. (One option is someone young and relatively inexperienced, who wouldn't know the history and also isn't too busy with other advisees. There are obvious drawbacks, but it could also be very good.) Otherwise, you may need to start documenting everything, including everything you agreed to (in particular, what you still need to do to graduate), and his conflicting requests and forgetfulness. Do you have a committee? Is there anyone on your committee who you could express concern to, or who could take over as the main advisor? The fact that your advisor is going on sabbatical might actually be helpful in that it's a great excuse to replace him without anyone losing face. 

[desp1]

The problem is, most professors here are reluctant to take on new students because they are already over-extended. I would also need time to get them up to speed on what I'm studying (though that is one possible advantage to summer). I do have a committee and in fact was very near to being able to start writing my thesis, but then my advisor started giving me more irrelevant work, being hard to reach, forgetting everything, etc. and there have been a number of other issues which were completely outside of my control that caused me to lose more time. The combined effect of all of this is that I am far behind and feel totally stuck. I did not switch earlier because (a) I had no idea it was going to get this bad, (b) I wanted to publish something first so I could make myself more appealing to future collaborators, and (c) I didn't want to get caught in the perpetual TA trap due to lack of funding many PI's have been suffering from in my department since sequestration.

 

 

[dr. t]

On 4/30/2017 at 11:04 AM, rising_star said:

I'm sort of wondering why you let this go on for as long as it has...

Yeah, I have a lot of questions/concerns here. To be blunt, taking a hard sciences PhD into a 9th year is... not good. And the fact that it's taken you two years to figure out that your adviser is a problem that you needed to address, when coupled with this long time to completion, suggests issues that go far deeper than your adviser's mental decline. I think more than past time to reevaluate where you are and where you're going, and that the particulars of this adviser is only a small (if important) portion of the conversation.

[desp1]

18 hours ago, telkanuru said:

Yeah, I have a lot of questions/concerns here. To be blunt, taking a hard sciences PhD into a 9th year is... not good. And the fact that it's taken you two years to figure out that your adviser is a problem that you needed to address, when coupled with this long time to completion, suggests issues that go far deeper than your adviser's mental decline. I think more than past time to reevaluate where you are and where you're going, and that the particulars of this adviser is only a small (if important) portion of the conversation.

I am going to have to disagree with you here. I have had extreme bad luck with funding, bad reviewers, and the structure of collaboration in my department. Similar things are happening to other students. I don't want to be defensive, but if you knew all the facts you would not be suspecting what you do, but I can't go into specifics due to fears that someone at my institution may see these posts and figure out who I am. In a nutshell, your view is too uncharitable given my circumstances. But thank you for saying this anyway. I do like healthy criticism.

Edited May 2, 2017 by desp1