I gave up on a higher ranked school to get into this lab because I thought my advisor was a good person.
But as soon as I arrived, my advisor changed and they seem extremely strict and stressed out.
These are some things I am concerned about.
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Will stop advising us if we don’t submit papers in 1 year
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Doesn’t let us take courses except for his – said if we take courses, we won’t be able to write papers on time
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Told him about some interesting topics I had, but he just told me that this lab doesn’t do those things, and I should focus on his topics. He was supportive before I joined his lab.
I think this is because he has his mid-tenure in 2 years, he needs publications now. But I kind of feel like he doesn’t care about our research and is using us as a tool for his tenure.
Is this normal? I kind of regret choosing him, but I am more concerned about the following years to come. What should I do?
Comments
You definitely made a mistake. I’d be figuring out a plan to leave sooner than later. Maybe another lab in the dept you can transfer to.
If his tenure review is in one year, whatever you submit or don’t will have no impact on his evaluation. Nothing you said sounds ‘bad’, he sounds strict but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Not a bad advice from his side tbh…
Do your job, snowflake.
Not normal.
REALLY not normal and really disturbing.
Not at all unusual. PIs have interests they wish to pursue and the degree to which they allow a student to veer from those varies.
Have a discussion with him about your concerns. If you don’t receive answers that seem reasonable, seek a new program.
Were you admitted by the program to work specifically with this person? if not, then I strongly suggest you confirm with the Grad Program Director the actual degree requirements and seek a different advisor.
It doesn’t seem normal at all, but I am not surprised given the intense pressure to pass a tenure bar. However, I don’t think an assistant professor with these policies should receive tenure regardless.
Depending on the field of study a paper in one year may or may not be a reasonable expectation. Making the advisory relationship contingent on this milestone is unusually strict.
This is bonkers. I would talk to your program director.
This one is not uncommon. You may be supported by a grant for a specific project that has to get done. Moreover a PI has to show a substantial body of scholarship in a particular direction. There may not be time for exploring other interesting topics. We would all love to be free to study whatever we want, and your time may come for that, but it is not right now.
1 I would phrase things differently. But I make certain there’s research being done. My previous department, every student needed to show some finished product in the first year, or face getting cut from the program. Extenuating circumstances considered of course. My current school it’s 18 months.
2 is weird. Really weird.
3 is normal, especially for new students. If you want a similar topic to the professor ‘s that’s ok. Otherwise, you’ll need to get your own funding.
I have spent most of my career in academia and now I work for the government. I have had a fair share of bad and good advisors and one that cut my funding and forced me to leave my PhD program (I got another PhD many years later).
The time for you to quit is NOW! Don’t hesitate even if you have to take a year off. Leave, withdraw and try to get back in the other school which had offered you admission (after scrutinizing the new potential advisor). Your current advisor will probably change his demeanor once they know you are leaving. Don’t fall for their bullshit.
3 is totally normal and understandable but 2 and especially 1 are big red flags.
1 & 2 are bizarre. I’m shocked 2 is even allowed by the program.
3 is common and not necessarily a problem, especially for a first year project, but concerning that he apparently told you otherwise.
Can you switch to another professor in the program?
Where is this? Everyone is talking like this is crazy, but it depends on where you are.
In my institute in the Netherlands, 1 is an institute-wide requirement – if you don’t have a paper ready in 10 months, your position is terminated. 2 is also normal, as a masters is mandatory so PhD students normally don’t take courses. They have already learned the skills to acquire this kind of knowledge without a course. 3 depends on the funding – if the PI is funding you, then the project has to be within the scope of what was funded.
Yep, the tenure pressure is real and unfortunately you’re caught in the crossfire, this behavior isn’t normal or healthy for your development as a researcher. I’d start documenting these interactions and quietly reach out to other faculty or the grad program director for guidance, because a good advisor should be investing in your growth not just using you for publications.
I guess it depends on the field, but it’s pretty common for the first chapter of your thesis to be a literature review, which you can easily do in a year. You’re going to need to do the reading to get started on new research, so write up a review and satisfy the requirement.
If your advisor has a research appointment (even if they don’t), there’s no way you can fill up your schedule with only their classes, let alone meet the academic requirements for courses you must take. Your advisor probably wants you to take their classes first because they teach the classes that are foundational to the research their lab does and you’re in their lab doing research. Everyone I know was told to take their advisors’ classes by their advisors. Now, many of us are TAing or even largely running the class. You can’t do that if you don’t take their classes early.
You will almost CERTAINLY have a chance to write a research grant or fellowship proposal that will be based on your ideas, but right now, you’re being given projects for grants they’ve already been awarded. I’ve never heard of a faculty member who wouldn’t be THRILLED that their student got a fellowship and they were off the hook for paying their tuition and stipend. It unlikely you know how to write a proposal that will be awarded funding because you literally just started.
Tell him he can fuck off with the courses. You literally have requirements based on your program plus skills courses for your research.
Did you just start? I’d consider investigating a few other labs.
If their mid-tenure review is in 2 years, that means they likely just finished their first year as a faculty. There is almost certainly going to be growing pains as they develop into the role. Mentoring PhD students is either a massive tine investment or you just let them sink or swim and benefit off those that swim. The 1 year limit sounds like the latter.
PI sounds like a major loser. Good to get out while you can and go somewhere where you feel you can truly excel. Forget what the European slave grads below say. Like their PI’s have amounted to much. The point is to aim high and get what you want and feel comfortable with out of the program. DO NOT get stuck doing the bidding of someone else, even if they use fancy last names and positions to try convince you to do their heavy lifting. I speak as a tenured faculty at UK university.
Based on the opinions by Europeans on this thread, it seems they see almost nothing wrong with OPs situation. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Its been one week – give it time. Its entirely possible that these are things he tells his grad students when they but doesn’t act on at all. Also ensure you aren’t just misunderstanding his expectations. Some of these things sound like maybe they are reasonable expectations but might have been communicated/understood poorly. A good tip (for everything) is to follow up on things like this via email – just do a recap of your understanding of what was said and give him the opportunity to correct you or to confirm your interpretation of what you think he said.
Ask his other students who have been held to this expectation how they accomplished it. Its actually really not a difficult task, and maybe its not what you expected, but its definitely achievable. Also, he is allowed to set expectations for his students and there have to be consequences for not meeting those expectations – a lot of PIs allow their grad students to be more or less unproductive for 2-4 years and then crank out just enough papers to graduate (or none if none are required) and perhaps he wants to set deadlines and milestones. Also, I sincerely doubt that he is counting the days and if you don’t have a paper published in 1 year, then you’re out – more likely he expects you to have a paper ready to submit/in the final stages of editing. Take this as a challenge and achieve it, it will only help you down the road.
He knows you have to take coursework. Its not crazy unusual for PIs to plug their courses to their students or even require them because the PI is teaching courses that are related to their research. Also, coursework has its place, but your goal should be to take the minimum number of credits needed and focus on your research. If you want to take more coursework, go do a masters.
This is normal and is honestly part of the admissions process – you should have read his papers and seen that his work doesn’t necessarily align with your interests. That said, a lot of PIs will allow their students to branch out and do side projects after a couple years of the student being productive and showing that they have the ability and capacity to take on separate lines of investigation.
Talk to other students in his lab and figure out what the situation is. If they also are concerned or confirm the red flags, get out now. Don’t waste your precious time.
I feel like advisors push their own personal agendas onto students and just want the publishing credit for students to do the work
This happened to me at the postdoc level. Nice supportive person during interview, totally different after I got there. Wish I would have run when I could. Ended up wasting two years of my life in a terrible situation. It is not your job as a grad student to get this person tenure. Can you switch labs? Otherwise, cut losses and run, advisor sounds totally stressed out to the point of being irrational.
Leave now
You are not doing a PhD to simply churn out papers for your PI. None of this is okay. Agree with the other comments that you should seek clarification and whether there is capacity to move labs within department if there is no resolution with this PI.
Don’t even bother mate. You will get another lab. Ask anyone who ignored red flags like this and they will tell you it only gets worse. What do you think will happen when you come back with results that conflict with ones in a paper they want to publish? Even if you get great data in year 1 the publication process can take 3 month to a year. I’m telling you get out now, imagine this guy having power over you for 3-5 years.
Sounds like my PI, who was a total sweetheart before I started so I chose this position instead of the other I got accepted for. Shifted a few months in drastically, almost no useful feedback but where is the paper because I am slow and am not working properly and the papers should be coming fast fast fast but also quality should be exceptional. Later I learned she needed at least three Q1 papers in the next two years to get her mid-tenure.
Maybe you are lucky that he shows the true colors so early on, or maybe he is just bad at communication. In either case I think it is just too early to tell and start writing disaster scenarios. I’d continue but keep my eyes open for any enforced (and not only told) red flag behaviour, and also keep good relationships with the other professors/maybe the other programme you got accepted to in case you need to bounce.
If you are unhappy with your decision, i.e. don’t want to work with this person but also aren’t excited to work with anyone else within your department/program that you could reasonably switch to, then consider writing back to the chair of the other program you declined. Something similar happened to a friend of mine and their undergrad advisor advised them to reach out to the program they declined. Surprisingly, they were happy to offer her a position again the following year. Yes, she sort of spent a year in a less-than-ideal situation but felt happier after switching back. In her case, the program was one that involved rotations instead of direct lab admits, so your mileage may vary. But even if it was a direct lab admit, I suggest reaching out to the other prof anyway; they may still have funding for a new student.
Whether you can still get an offer from the other place is, of course, uncertain, but it is possible. Students typically don’t know the options they have, so I just wanted to let you know that it may not be too late to change your decision, at least for the next year (and potentially even this year if the other school’s registration deadline is not yet over and the department / lab has funding).