Grad School Career Realignment?

September 3, 2008 9:51 AM

I'm starting my second year of a Ph.D program and I'm stressed and upset. Help!

I am in a small research group within a large department. I like my adviser on a personal level, but project management doesn't seem to happen here (in terms of formal requirements, etc), so I'm always chasing a moving target and have no way to evaluate my own performance, and some of the core assumptions of our work don't make sense to me. In many cases, I feel like we're trying to produce good PR instead of good research. Maybe that's the case everywhere, but it's frustrating me here. Several people I know in this group left at the end of last year, so I know I'm not the only one feeling this way. I stayed, and they liked my work enough that they gave me more funding this year. Unfortunately, I don't like my own work and it's making me crazy to work on it. Were this commercial, I'd stick it out 'til the end of the project and see what comes next, but there is no next project -- I'm supposed to love this thing enough to spend insane hours on it for the next several years, and I don't.

So the question is: how realistic is it to think that I could change advisors/projects a year in? There are other groups doing work I'm interested in, but their faculty are already at a full advising load. I got a lead on one project outside the department that I think I would've been qualified for, but the faculty in charge is affiliated partially with my current dept and I was scared that it was close enough that these people would be angry at me for leaving and make my life even more hellish. I didn't apply, and now that window has closed. I sort of want to go for the next opportunity I see, but I don't want to burn bridges to the point that any new team I find will be haunted by the old team.

I'd also consider trying to get my adviser to put me on a new project, but enough effort has been spent on this one that I think I may be in too deep to get out. Thoughts on this angle?

Caveats: My adviser has spent a fair amount of time and resources on me. I'm worried that any sense of dissent at this point will be greeted with anger and loss of funding/position.

posted by anonymous to education (8 comments total)

How realistic it is to change supervisors (or change project while keeping the same supervisor) after a year may depend on the kind of PhD you're doing. Are you in a North American grad school where they give you 2+4 years? Or a three-year program in the UK/Australia? For what it's worth, I changed supervisors eighteen months into a three year PhD. When I realised things weren't going well I thought it was too late, but I was lucky enough to be in a large group in a large department with plenty of options. I had to learn a lot of new stuff and I'm going to overrun by a year, but I am going to finish.
posted by caek at 10:20 AM on September 3, 2008

The answer depends a lot on what type of Ph.D. (humanities or science) and what country you're in.
In science Ph.D.s in the United States, people change labs, projects, and advisors all the time. One year into a 6 year program is nothing!

As a current disgruntled grad student (see my recent askme here), I'd say that if things are bad now, they're only going to get worse as the years go on. Talk to the chair of your department or another faculty member whom you trust.
posted by emd3737 at 10:48 AM on September 3, 2008

how realistic is it to think that I could change advisors/projects a year in?

In the hard sciences, in the US, this happens all the time. I occasionally hear of people changing labs 3 years in. A PhD takes far too long to be doing something you don't enjoy.
posted by chrisamiller at 11:03 AM on September 3, 2008

I finished my phd in physics about 6 months ago. I was in situations similar to what you describe. Feel free to email me.
posted by Shutter at 11:57 AM on September 3, 2008

It really depends on what your field is. I'm in English and I would think it would be possible to do it in English (and keep your funding even!), and in most other humanities fields. Definitely don't keep stewing about it. Talk to your grad chair or someone on the faculty who you trust so that you can figure out a game plan.
posted by pised at 12:34 PM on September 3, 2008

The first thing you need to do is tell you advisor how you feel. It's in both your interests that you are happy- he'd rather be paying someone who wants to work there. I recently went through this same sort of thing so you can also email me if you'd like. If he's any good at his job he'll be as concerned as you with finding a solution.

Step two is to find out if there are other places to go, and if not, it is probably not too late to get a TA gig for a semester. Also, maybe you should consider a leave of absence for a year to really get your head around what you do want to do.
posted by Large Marge at 4:40 PM on September 3, 2008

Are you working in an area where it's possible to explore an interdisciplinary approach - for example the Humanities?
I know several people who have combined English with Visual Culture morphing into Media and Communication Studies etc etc... or something like Law with Policy and Political Science... some departments are very big on this; others loathe it and are fiercely territorial.

I suggest this because perhaps you could get a few advisors from different fields without deserting your current one altogether, see how you progress by following your interests, and then decide if you really want to change altogether once your research has morphed in a clear direction (well, clear enough...)

Of course, no idea whether this sort of thing applies in the sciences or not. But it's quite acceptable in Australian universities to have several advisors with different specialties, so long as you still have a principal supervisor to nominally sign off on things. People I know regard their secondary advisors as better mentors and specialists than their main advisor, but just weren't able to change without dramas.
Good luck!
posted by Weng at 9:07 PM on September 3, 2008

Folks, I don't think the humanities-oriented "go interdisciplinary" advice is going to help here: based on the phrasing of the question and some of the particulars (especially working in a "research group") I think it's quite unlikely that this is a humanities Ph.D. we're talking about. It's more likely to be either social science or natural science/engineering.

Here are two previous questions about advisor-switching situations: 1 2. I think a lot of the answers will be useful.

One caveat: a lack of what you call "project management" – that is, frequent and close supervision – is, sadly, more or less endemic to most graduate advising. You will probably need to learn to do without it, or with less of it than you'd like, in any case, and keep going. But motivation, grounded in a research topic you really love, is one of the most important things to keep you going without frequent advising. And you're not very far into your studies yet, so I'd urge you to explore making a change – in your research, and maybe also a change of advisor – right away.
posted by RogerB at 12:29 PM on September 4, 2008