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Background
I grew up in Southeastern Michigan. I was always good at school. In middle school, you could say I was the teacher’s pet. In high school, I wasn’t the smartest person, but I was definitely at the top of the class. I enjoyed that reputation. In college, I studied but I didn’t have to work really hard to achieve good grades. At the end of college, I had to make a choice about my future career, and I decided to go to graduate school. I have a BS in Genetics, and going to grad school for biology is actually something I get paid to do. This was a better option, imo, than getting a job as a lab monkey at some corporation doing quality control on third shift, like one of my classmates. I would have the freedom to work whenever I wanted, I would get to choose a project that was interesting, and I would be getting a decent salary at the same time. Grad school was a go.
Grad School
I’ve been in grad school for 5 years now. The first year was a lot of work – we had courses every morning and lab rotations the rest of the day. I actually had to re-take one of the courses because I failed one test really badly. However, I aced the course the second time around. I chose a lab that would let me work on a really interesting project that may, some day, have an impact in medicine. I was excited and motivated. I worked hard and in 2010 I was able to publish my first paper as a co-first author. Then I hit my first roadblock – a technique known as 5C (Chromosome Conformation Capture Carbon Copy, for those of you who care). I had done the parent technique, 3C with no problems, and everyone in my lab assured me that 5C would be easy. Not so. I spent a whole year troubleshooting this technique. Finally we realized the problem was not me, but was one of the reagents we were using (bad primers, for anyone who knows about that). We got a new set of primers and viola! Success. However, I really lost my motivation and momentum in that year. Trying the same thing time after time, with no results, killed some small piece of my soul, and it hasn’t returned. In the meantime, I did other experiments and got more data, but I still felt drained.
Present Day
About this time in a grad student’s life, it’s time to think about graduation, and where to go next, and what to do. At my school, we have a TRAC (Thesis Research Advisory Committee) made up of 3-4 professors plus your own. This committee meets yearly to discuss your progress and determine if you’ve done enough work to graduate. I had my last meeting 6 months ago, and the committee was supportive and told me to start thinking about jobs etc. That made me really happy, because they were on board with my attempt to graduate in 2013. Then everything went poorly. I was working on a new experiment over the winter, but it turned out to be too expensive to continue, and I started another technique that takes more time but is cheaper. Since I am close to graduation, my TRAC wanted to meet every 6 months. I had another meeting with them a few weeks ago. I thought that it would be the same as last time, relaxed and easy. I prepared my slides and showed all the work I had done and was doing that was ready to go into my thesis. I had a bunch of really new data to show them, which I thought they would like. I was prepared for pats on the back. Boy was I wrong.
The meeting was a disaster. They basically hated everything I showed them. They criticized it all – my presentation style, my data, my thesis plan, and my apparent lack of progress. To them, it looked like I had done nothing for the past six months (since I had to start over on that one experiment). They beat me up verbally for two hours. Thankfully my boss did all he could to defend me and my work, but the accusations they made really hurt. I was barely holding back tears at the end of the meeting. Even now I can hear my committee chair saying “We have serious concerns about your progress …” For a student who wants to graduate in a year, that’s a terrible thing to hear.
Maybe for some people, that kind of language is motivational. For me, it’s just the opposite. My faith in my abilities and in myself at this point is almost nonexistent. I feel like I’ve gone down the wrong path with my research, and there’s no way to rescue it now. I have to keep plugging along and hope that what I am doing works out. But this lack of confidence is also on a deeper level. When I graduated college, I was so excited to go somewhere else and do something new. I could do whatever I wanted! I had confidence in myself and in my abilities. Now, I’ve spent 5 years in a university setting where I feel like an idiot. Everyone here is really smart, and I feel that I don’t measure up. On top of that, I have no motivation to do research anymore. That 5C experiment failure killed it, for some reason. I feel pressured by my TRAC to produce results, but at the same time I have no desire to be in the lab or pick up a pipette. That is not a good combo. Basically, I feel that the future is going to suck and there is nothing I can do about it.
There’s more – the question of what I will do when I graduate. I came here to get a PhD so I can teach at the university level. Now that I’m close to the end, everyone around me is cautioning me that it’s harder to get a teaching job than it seems. They tell me I may have to do a post-doc (post-doctoral research, usually an additional 3-4 years). No fucking way, folks. I’m not going to keep doing this shit for another 4 years. I’m already 27. I want to move on and get out of here and do something - anything – else. I feel that I am being blocked at every turn.
Here's a graphical image of the process:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LBIoV.jpg)
Have you ever lost your motivation and confidence? What did you do to get it back? Any advice?
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Canada13389 Posts
Im only in my masters, going into my 3rd year and I know exactly how you fucking feel.
Shit sucks, I lost all motivation for nearly a year (Don't want to get off the couch phase) and Im starting to get to what a beautiful day feeling now.
Do what you want, if you want to teach try and get a part time teaching position while working some other job or while doing more research if you want to teach full time. If you get lucky, with a few years of part time teaching the students love you and you can get a job as a lecturer type professor (classes, little to no research) as opposed to a research professor.
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Thanks for the interesting story and insight.
After working as an RA sitting in the same room as my professor who's really open I'm starting to have doubts too.
My friend taught 3 subjects for a sem (tutorials and maybe labs) in Monash Malaysia as a fresh graduate and got RM5k, which is a crazy amount since most fresh grads get 2k+ and 3k is rare. Don't know if it's only possible here though.
That said, you just had shit luck with your experiment. I highly respect researchers and given your past achievements don't give up if you can.
Researchers make the world go round. Without them we'd have nothing. (not that they're all perfect)
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They destroyed it this very year. I wanted to do a thesis for some professional objectives so I was forced to make another master degree (yeah I already have one), this time with a research specialty. It was not as horrible as you since it just lasted some months before they finished me.
I ended up in one of the most elitist and disgusting "school" here in France, at least in mathematics. I was surrounded by brilliant mathematicians. And you would think it would be great to improve and to discuss. And you would be horribly wrong. If you're not already a brilliant young student, then you are some kind of shit they have to crush time and time again, while staying the socially retarded bastards they are. You're never good enough to please them. They like to spread their mathematical background/relations/knowledge and to act with limitless proudness of it. I was considered as a complete alien, nobody talked to me except for that one cool dude and teachers liked to talk to me like they talked to their kid.
I felt like the stupidest moron ever this year, and I think I can totally relate to what you said in this matter. I was so stressed, trying my fucking best to obtain those fucking good grades, in fact I tried so hard that I ended up in hospital for 1 week just before the second wave of exams. They barely acknowledged that I was there when I told them, just asking "and how do you think you're going to pass the exams ?"
At the end of this wonderful waste, I started my "stage" : 4 months where you work for a professor on a subject, but not at the level of a thesis. This was better and I felt the stress gone. I found a thesis supervisor, and I informed him instantly that my grades were and would be just enough to present myself to the comitee ; I didn't want to work if it was not possible to present it. He accepted me nonetheless. So I worked quite hard on my subject to relate it to the thesis subject he gave me, for 2 months and a half.
And 2 days, before the comitee closed the deposition of the files, he sent me an email saying "ok your grades are not good enough, yes you have already a master degree and that particularly hard to get title, but if you cant obtain at least 2 references more, we won't present you". I could not habeeb it, but I tried to obtain the reference still. I asked to the 2 professors who gave me good grades this year. By email because guess what, they were unfindable. They never even answered me. But they found time to answer my director to tell him
1) I'm a hard-worker and a serious student
2) I'd did well at their exams
3) I'm too bad to do a thesis.
In France, specially in mathematics, the first thing here is basically saying "well, this guy is a complete tard that has no idea what he's doing there, lol. Try him at your own risk, but I'd suggest you to send him to teach in highschool." with the second part meaning exactly what you think it mean : that highschool teachers are stupid morons doing a shitty job.
So I explained at the asshole that could have been my thesis director that he just made me lose 4 months of my life and that if he just warned me before I could have organized my next year, but that now I was completely fucked up (not in those term obviously). So he accepted to present the file and I even got a reference from my stage's advisor.
The night before the inscriptions would closed I waited for the thesis subject proposal my director promised me to complete my file. Woooow guess what, I finally received it at 1 am, but what did I find ? A little piece of pdf with plenty of grammatical and orthographical errors, badly written and with shitty layout. I knew I was totally fucked at this moment. And I learned the next day that 1) I was refused 2) a guy from the school I already mentioned, who was 2 years older than me (make it 28), who did not have the title I had, and who just spent 2 years in who the fuck know where, had the money, office, and director all at once just by showing himself up.
Now that I tried to blog myself at your expense (and sorry for that but this had to go out one day), here what I learned this year :
-You're not a retard. Believe me, you are not. They seem so good around, so better than you, yeah I know. You are good too. Because if you were not, you would not be there. You're not a retard.
-The world of research in Science remembers me of 4chan, without the particular vocabulary : people there are prone to insult the one they find weak and because of the power they had by their establishment, you'll never know who is your friend, and who fucked you in the back. Don't let them get in your head. You're not a retard.
-Sadly, I do not know a way to teach at university without post doc. If this is your objective, add 3-4 years (or more) of work to your thesis. Add them. Now. And think about it : does it worth it ? If no, you know what to do.
-How did I get my confidence back ? I focalized on my success. They will always try to do the converse, but do not let them fool you. And by the way, you have attained a level where you can defend your work against bad criticism, because guess what ? You're not a retard.
-Advices : I think at the moment you should give yourself some time. Not too long, not too short ; get like a month. Without science (if you can). Stop working the evening. Try to do something else. But again, if you take time, it's not only to get some rest, but also to think : do I really want to teach at university ? Because that will imply a post doc. That will imply you'll stay in this bad environment you are. That will even imply you'll continue to see the fuckers that were "concerned by your progress" (oh god I know so much how they should have say this...)
Last word : you are not. A. Retard.
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keioh, out of curiosity do you happen to be an arab or a black or are you european too? And is the school ecole polytechnique?
....... anything to do with Parisians?
That 4chan statement reminds me of what my prof said too. "These people have Phds but they are idiots [more rant about the situation]"
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You know you can leave whenever you want right ?
I can relate to what you say and if it weren't for my parents I would be living on the streets right now. But am I complaining about how I failed to achieve my masters in theoritical physics and how I am devastated to see all my friends entering good doctoral schools and how I can't even dare to call them because I'm ashamed of myself ? HELL NO ! I did it before and it was self-destructive. STOP. HURTING. YOURSELF.
I choose to quit, I choose not to accept being miserable all the time, and I choose to do a lesser degree to get a job.
Accepting that you made a mistake or that you have failed is the first step towards self-confidence. Getting an high education isn't for everyone. I could write an complete essay about how I was under the impression that everything I did wasn't for me, that I couldn't get myself to do anything because I didn't see the point to advance anymore.
Don't hurt yourself for a thing you don't wish. Being happy with someone I love was for me way more important than getting a degree, I hope you can find what's make you advance too.
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this university environment looks like a terrible jungle, you should leave this and get a job somewhere else, because your health is more important! if you stay in this you gonna get into bad depression!
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Think about what you really want. Are you doing this study because it's really your field of interest or because you think you should? What about quitting? Are you not quitting because you know you'll regret it later or because you are afraid of taking a new path into a new and uncertain future? To me, you sound like a person that has always known exactly what he wants, until the doubts recently kicked in.
This could actually be a really positive and enlightening experience for you, if you approach it right. Wether or not you want to stick with this job you're at a crossroads of sorts. It's up to you which path to take, but for whichever you choose the same applies: no looking back, and give it your all.
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I really hated grad school and eventually I ended up dropping out because it was so much competition, backstabbing and politics as opposed to collaboration. (mathematics btw). I'm jealous of all of you guys who could take that and end up getting your degrees!
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Calgary25980 Posts
Thanks for this thread. It's really interesting and something I never knew about grad school.
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Masters student in medical genetics/biochemistry here (yes, an interesting hybrid)
I feel your pain. I mean literally, I can feel every bit of suffering, doubt, regret, hopelessness, and all those qualities you demonstrated that are associated with basic science research. It really takes a particular set of qualities to pursue academia. The successful ones I know are exceptionally optimistic and generally very happy. Sure, they contribute their share of complaints, but at the end of the day they're always smiling.
People like me who entered graduate school (coincidentally, for the same reasons you did), will never make it in academia. Being kicked repeatedly, even when you're down, only to slowly crawl forward in hopes of getting your hands on that one piece of data. Now repeat that 10 times and you have yourself a publication and repeat that 20 times and you have your thesis. It took me a year before I realized I hated every moment of being here. I regret my decision to do graduate school of it and in retrospect I should have taken a year off to decide what I wanted to do with life.
Also, the field itself is still in the dark. I find it hard to find any motivation to do work when at the end there's no job security because the number of graduates are increasing when the number of available positions are decreasing.
Lucky for me, my saving grace is I'll be done next year. As a masters student, I do not need a complete story to graduate. Best of luck to you.
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Well, a big part of your success in grad school comes down to who you get as an advisor / what your project is. A dead-end project with no assistance from your advisor is going to spell trouble unless you are stand-out brilliant.
I'm having the time of my life in grad school, and much of it comes down to having an interesting/relevant project with a great advisor.
Also, grad school humbles the great majority of us / makes us feel useless. The Impostor Syndrome is related to this.
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I go to a school that a lot of people kill themselves working too hard in. My motivation chart:
The point is, gotta take some well-needed breaks. It's about balance. As you can see I've been working off of extremes so... No balance here, but I'm working on it.
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I'm (if all goes according to plan) 2 years away from my doctorate. What you describe sounds like a very typical experience in a hard-science program. I'll say two things.
One, how in the world were you not aware that decent university teaching positions are hard to get, even after a couple of post-docs. NOBODY gets hired into a tenure-track job in the US right out of grad school, unless it's at some sort of tier four community college. Also, once you get that research professor job, you know you're still going to be under the same issues, right? Constant pressure to find publishable results, dealing with run-of-the-mill lab roadblocks, equipment that breaks and destroys all your samples, etc. It's not like you just get your PhD, waltz into a random liberal arts university, and teach Bio 100 to 19-year-olds for a few decades. If grad school doesn't feel like a good life to you, my guess is that life in academia won't feel much better. It's just not for everyone.
Two, don't be too discouraged -- everyone feels that way, from what I hear. Google "impostor syndrome". (Edit: haha, looks like i got ninja'd on this one). A huge, huge number of grad schools at any given time have this nagging voice in the back of their head that sometimes flares up and says "are you fucking insane, there's no way you're cut out for this; one day everyone is going to wake up and wonder why they ever thought you were remotely capable of being a real scientist/whatever". Push through it. There are always setbacks; it happens.
PS - I feel your pain on the primers thing. My wife just finished her masters in microbial ecology, and she spent about 3 months getting nothing but failed PCR product because her primers were like two decades old and her advisor wouldn't let her spend any grant money on new ones.
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If you want to teach at a university you're pretty much going to have to do post-docs. If you want to teach at a tier 1 school you're going to have to do more then 1. And you're going to have to get into a good lab where the research is promising. I don't know anyone even in tiny liberal arts colleges where they got a proffesor position straight out of grad school. If you want to be a lecturer I suppose that's different but then you might as well go teach high school. Get paid better and be more appreciated.
And don't get discouraged. This sounds like a typical thesis committee. They tell you everything is fine until you actually show results and then they're not happy. I'm sure your advisor is ready to be rid of you, so as long as he's on your side you'll be fine.
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Going into 4th year Ph.D, I can understand how you feel. I wouldn't say it's an issue with confidence, but motivation is becoming an issue. Things aren't really working in the lab, and I have papers galore to write by the end of the summer. I also have decided there's no way I'm going into "academia" (lol), so it's tough trying to work through the motivational issues when there's no clear goal in mind.
To be honest, it helps to set your goals week by week and you can just focus on less at any one time, and I find it also helps to change your hours up. A routine is nice sometimes, but it makes everything all the more monotonous when you're struggling to keep at it. Come in at noon one day and stay till 10-11pm.
And btw, 27 is young, don't freak out about your age.
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Not sure how you're expecting to go straight from PhD to teaching at a university level. No sure statistics here but most of the people I know who came out had to do a post-doc before they even had a chance to teach. I only know of one person who was able to go straight out from graduate school to a teaching position so its not impossible but .. not super likely. Sad to hear your story though.. I'm beginning to think the same might happen to me. If anything, I hope your PI will get you out within the next year or two.
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I understand you completely dude.
Without going into too much detail (because it's a chapter of my life I'm happy to leave behind) was doing a 2-year MSc under a supervisor who let's say....less than supportive.
Had no progress, many bumps and issue and experimental problems along the way (including primer issues!!).
Eventually ended up withdrawing from a program I only went into because I didn't know what to do next in the first place.
Took a year of depression/anxiety to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with myself.
Am now happy and have 3 years left in Optometry, a career where I will actually be involved with other people, not sitting in a lab all day.
I treated my MSc mistake as a learning experience and honestly from the sounds of it you should be learning something about yourself from the program you are in as well.
Do what makes you happy, not what you feel you SHOULD be doing.
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don't lose confidence. I think you might be dealing with possible burnout as well. Maybe a change of scenery or a break is needed.
Lots of interesting information about grad school here, something I've never experienced...Stopped at Bachelors, maybe I'll go back to school sometime in the future.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kPFSf.png)
