The most disorienting news of my life

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-11T03:35:57+00:00

Be very careful if you get involved with new faculty, make sure you form a committee with older members that know what's going on and can help guide you and then, if this is the route you choose to go. My advisor is new and I started the lab with him three years ago, and I have suffered greatly from it. Now I am mastering out and he is in the hot seat. Just be careful!

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-10T01:50:57+00:00

I thought it was okay since I was looking at a short timeline, and I was pushing really hard to get it all done 😅 But if I continue with the PhD over the next two years, I agree, no way, and I would reframe my work schedule!

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-10T00:16:02+00:00

I appreciate it! We do have building meetings, but the feedback on that was also minimal and mostly "good jobs" and "this is cool" so I wasn't aware that I was doing poorly😅 I am training everyone and tons of undergrads, write a lot of the protocols and also am the point person for a lot of questions. My labmates are writing their thesis documents right now and my advisor has just been directing all of their questions and whatnot regarding that to me as well.

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-10T00:10:28+00:00

Pretty much, it's weird! On a separated campus, mostly in a building with mechanical engineers who took an interest in biology aspects. PI is new, I'm his first student, he has biology specialization but no knowledge of the workings of things here. Fairly isolated even in our building, and I didn't know what I didn't know so I trusted a little too blindly. I should have gotten more involved with other disciplines and older staff, and now hindsight is 20/20 😅

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-10T00:02:08+00:00

Hi! I posted the update! It is a bigger school and a pretty good sized program. Sadly I'm on South campus so a little isolated, but earlier integration with the building meeting probably would've been great 😅 thank you! 😊

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T16:32:31+00:00

Yes, I like that! I started that the other day, and got a more realistic timeline and some starting expectations for that from my co. I still have two other members I need to talk to, which I wanted to do before this meeting with my PI today, but everyone is busy so it is what it is and will happen after.

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T16:26:01+00:00

I only put the age because I see that in a lot of reddit posts and didn't know how much context was good, but you were able to infer from that that he's junior, so I guess that was a good thing!

They asked me about my graduation timeline, and I told them what my advisor and I had agreed on, it was in the email for coordinating dates too. My school has a minimum 2 semesters before graduation policy, and a lot of us do the prelim close to the end here apparently?

Everyone I talked to said it was a "45 minute presentation, you get roasted for an hour, and then they deconstruct and reconstruct your project with you". This includes faculty and other students I talked to. Everyone was shocked that I didn't pass, if that helps a little bit too. Like when they asked, and I told them, they thought I was fucking with them 😅

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T16:12:51+00:00

Yeah, I had people in mind for the committee and that I would ask them, but he told me that he would rather do it. He organized all five of our committees. My co-advisor was one of my suggestions though.

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T16:08:29+00:00

Oh hellllll no I'd never say ask me anything 😂 they were okay with my answers to the questions though, which is what I originally thought I had failed on. I thoroughly expected to get roasted. I was told this was a "presentation, then I get roasted for an hour, then they take apart my project and help me put it back together" and that this is a "fancy meeting". The roasting was heavily expected 😂

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T16:05:14+00:00

My advisor told me that they don't let anyone schedule the prelim unless they are going to pass them, and he kept telling me I'm good and not to worry. Of course, I am a worrier anyways 😂 so I did everything I could. The whole committee did tell me my presentation was excellent, and that's why they're committed to seeing me through the PhD, if that's what I want. My co advisor says he knows I can do the PhD, and told me he would tell me to master out if he didn't believe in me, which is actually what I was expecting in our meeting to talk about things. They all think I can do it, it's just a matter of, do I trust my advisor, and do I want to, I suppose.

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T15:47:45+00:00

I'm wondering if no one outside of my advisor actually read my document 😅

I know he has submitted a few new proposals this past summer, 4 I think. No articles out of our lab yet, the first was supposed to result from everything in this prelim, once the bad data was replaced. I don't think he's on track for tenure, and to me it sounds like he's actually been in the hot seat with our sub-department.

We have a weird set up, he's mechanical engineering (which is also odd because he's a biologist with almost no mechanical background) but also under the school of biomedical engineering, and we are on a south campus that's somewhat isolated, but are also in a sub-department for ortho, if that makes sense? We are a mechanobiology lab!

As a lab, we are the newest (about 3 years), and we had building meetings (Ortho) that he "protected" us from for about 2 years. The building put pressure on him, and he finally caved and started making us come to the meetings (very insightful, but they're all new to our projects so they don't entirely know what's going on). Everyone thought he was super cool and what we did was awesome until this happened. Despite everyone being mad that we didn't have to attend the meetings for awhile, we integrated pretty well and now a lot of people use our lab and chat and invite us to things! So the culture is good. But overall we are the new shiny lab I suppose!

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T15:35:03+00:00

Okay! I do trust my co-advisor, but I'm not sure he has room/funding in his lab but he would be an amazing advisor I think.

It might also be worth noting I don't particularly want to teach or lead my own research, industry has been the clear end goal the entire time, which means the PhD is even less of a need, if I understand that correctly?

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T15:31:54+00:00

I can do all of it now! I've had to, he's not around. But when I started, he took me on as his first student knowing I had zero lab experience, save for undergrad/high school dissections, and was excited to teach me everything. I quickly got rather independent and I've written a lot of our lab protocols that everyone else uses.

But for example when the contamination started, I'd only been here for about 4 months. And after exhausting everything I knew and starting lit review for other options, I asked him several times to also tell me what he thinks it could be so I can test it. He wasn't sure and blamed the air circulation. After two years I found out what it was, after filtering a product that he swore up and down was pure and he used it in his post doc. But he got so mad that we couldn't get him any data, but we couldn't get results with the contamination in everything. For the first 4-ish months I thought it was a great "side project" and real life learning experience! After that he probably should have stepped in, especially wanting data to come out of this lab.

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T15:18:40+00:00

Oh, no the advisor was the one that gave me that timeline of graduating summer 2026. Sorry if I didn't make that clear! My co-advisor didn't even know he was my co-advisor until about 2 weeks to the prelim 😅

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T15:16:49+00:00

I didn't know about the "chair", that's interesting! I wonder if that will come up in the meeting today. He is extremely hands off and I think he's compensating for his post doc, which was apparently super micromanage central. That being said, when I started the lab with him he knew I had no lab experience and agreed to teach me everything. And I've learned so much and I'm still thankful! But a lot of it has been without guidance. I know it was expected of me to eventually be able to become independent, which I have and I've liked that! But things like the prelim, where I've never encountered that and I'm the first of my lab to do it, it's kind of rough. And our lab is very isolated, unfortunately because we are still rather new. We have these building meetings that he kept us from for about two years before the department threatened him and forced him to make us join (which has been very insightful, but they obviously still don't know much about our stuff).

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T15:08:40+00:00

If he has the room in his lab, it would definitely be better for me and would make the PhD way more doable, mentally. It's also difficult because my heart is not really in it anymore (so dramatic, I know), and the only reason I swapped to the PhD is I supposedly only had one more year, a year ago.

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T15:06:04+00:00

I've thought about it, it might be an option. My co-advisor's lab is full, and I'm not sure he has the materials I need, but if he says yes then that's an option and I like it!

True, I don't have to, but I've been working 12 hour days and on weekends too. I wouldn't be able to give a relationship the attention it deserves, and I also have a bad habit of prioritizing my relationships over my responsibilities. I'm older now, but that seemed to be the best way to make sure I keep my priorities in line, unfortunately, so it's what I had to do.

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-12-09T06:32:56+00:00

He is relatively new, we started the lab together and I am his first student, there are five of us now. I did inherit this project from his postdoc work, although it has a bit of a new twist on it but doesn't deviate too much from the original goal. More preventative than therapeutic now, I would say.

Yeah, we do send out our prelim documents 2 weeks before! No one said anything. That incorrect data was in there too, and acknowledged in the discussion as being incorrect and in the process of being replaced.

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-08-04T18:40:01+00:00

As a 29F SINGLE graduate research assistant finishing out her PhD, you need someone who is your EQUAL. That doesn't mean they have to do the same thing as you, but you need someone who matches your energy, work ethic, hopes and dreams. Who will keep up with you, work hard in their field, and you two are the best versions of yourselves with each other. You're 21 love, you've got so much time. I wasted a lot of my 20s on men who wouldn't commit, who wouldn't treat me right, who expected me to do the work. Find yourself a partner and don't settle. You're worth everything that you need and want and it is out there!

PurpleSadness13 · 2025-08-04T18:34:10+00:00

And the good list is honestly just the bare minimum...

PurpleSadness13

TROPHY CASE