#mostly written up to like. frame the components of the situation to myself. idk. again: boring

[unopenablebox]

long long long long long, boring, self-inflicted phd problems

I have ten days until I take my qualifying exam. This is formatted as a ~20-minute presentation to a group of faculty (not including my advisor) about a proposed research project with about a paper’s worth of experiment ideas. My department’s guidelines clearly state hat the proposed research project need not have any preliminary data or pilot experiments completed, indeed need not be a project you plan to carry out at all. The presentation is meant to show that you can come up with a project idea/hypothesis and experiments to test it and explain your thinking clearly; the remaining ~1.5 hours of the exam is spontaneous questioning testing your overall ability to think about biology and experimental methods more than the precise technical details of your particular project.

It is also standard, and officially stated as standard, to take between 1 and 2 months completely off of lab work in order to write the accompanying on-paper thesis proposal and study/practice for the prelim.

My boss wanted me to instead take no time off and do lab work the whole time I was preparing for this exam; I agreed to try this, and continued to do lab work for the first two weeks of my prelim prep time, but discontinued them after that because I was struggling to fit in the repeated major revisions my boss wanted me to make to my project while still doing lab tasks. I told her I needed to do this at the time and she didn’t really react. There were various repeated conflicts as we were editing my project proposal (which, incidentally, is supposed to be almost entirely my own work and not have heavy advisor input, lmao) because she wanted me to propose a more logically rigorous sequence of experiments such as one would have in a grant proposal (different format, different audience), and kept inventing different overarching models of the phenomenon I study, none of which I agree with, for me to build an experimental suite from. This included my boss demanding I reply immediately to her emails about an entirely new model while I was across the country attending my brother’s graduation, something she knew about and which I had had on the calendar for weeks. These major content revisions continued until two days before I submitted the written proposal, even though we had already been discussing these ideas back and forth for the previous ~3 months.

The two weeks after you turn in the written component are supposed to be for making and honing your slides, intensively practicing your presentation, and studying biology broadly to prepare for the questioning part of the oral exam, which happens at the end of that time. I couldn’t start this period precisely at the 2-week mark, which was last Thursday, because I was attending a mandatory lab retreat in which every hour was scheduled (and which, incidentally, involved a surprise non-optional ten-mile hike), so instead I am starting it today. I thought my day would be talking through some slide design ideas with my boss, followed by a day of assembling slides and practicing my talk.

Instead, my boss found me in the main lab space to tell me that 1. I need to be doing more experiments again during this period and shouldn’t have any trouble fitting them in with sufficient talk practice 2. I should really have preliminary data to show my committee, because otherwise they will only ask me about the technical implementation details of my project and not any of the theory/broad biology that is my strength. Initially she suggested I try to perform a particular (imo totally pointless and inane) pilot experiment in the next 10 days, but eventually concluded that that was probably not feasible. I remarked that I do have a couple of pilot experiments that we at the time considered to be the minimal proof-of-concept that this project is worth pursuing. She told me that because the images I collected weren’t good quality it doesn’t count. I tried pointing out the various things about the nature of this exam according to the department; she told me basically that I was wrong to think that, and even if I was right, I should be ignoring those requirements to focus on more experiments and getting a much faster turnaround on making and testing my reagents, because that’s what’s important. Furthermore I am way behind where I should be for the stage of grad school I am in.

Even if this critique is correct-- which, like, I am slow at doing experiments and make a lots of mistakes currently, I am probably a very bad experimentalist and very disappointing in this aspect of my graduate work, I think that’s probably quite fair-- the time to tell me that I need pilot data or my prelim will be bad was when I was scheduling the exam, because in that case I would have simply not scheduled it until I had data, even though that conflicts with the also-urgent department mandate that as many students as possible take their prelim exams before the start of their third academic year (which would be this fall & is why I scheduled this for June). I thought I was getting this out of the way so I can focus on improving at experiments afterward.

I honestly don’t think I can do the experiments she wants this week and also prepare for my prelim effectively. This would be true regardless because I guess I just suck at doing things efficiently, but is especially true now that I have received this last-minute public critique and had to leave work midday because I couldn’t stop crying whenever I thought about it, which oddly makes it difficult to do any work premised on thinking about my experiments or presentation.

I guess maybe there’s a secret consensus that actually everyone except the two faculty in charge of the program really think that you need preliminary data to support your proposal, and won’t accept it without that, and everyone really knows that you’re supposed to keep doing experiments the whole time you’re preparing for the prelim. In that case, I didn’t know this, nobody told me, and also the two faculty in charge of the program will tell you really really convincingly that this is how it’s supposed to work.

I have managed to be satisfactorily functional and efficient for maybe a combined month and a half in my first year of working for my advisor. I think I’m not going to get to the point where I'm good at my job. A more resilient person would take these critiques in stride, without being shut down by distress. A more efficient and effective person, willing to push and experience discomfort to achieve goals, would just do the experiments as well as the full amount of exam practice. A more assertive person would push back on this more strongly. I’m not any of those things and I don’t think I can get there quickly or without a lot of pain. I think I am not going to get to the point where her communicating her expectations and requirements to me does not confuse, scare, or sadden me due to my failure to meet them. I think I am too dumb and weepy for this and I think I should quit. I was kind of having a good time before the thesis proposal started because I was coming off of a mostly nondisappointing monthish, and I also just won one of the most prestigious fellowships in my field based on this project idea. Nonetheless I think the interactions I’ve had around this exam and experiments in the last month and a half are stronger evidence than either of those things about how this PhD is going to go anytime anything is difficult. I think I am wasting everyone’s time and money by continuing. I am so sad and embarrassed. I want to stop because this is hard and makes me feel bad.

#mostly written up to like. frame the components of the situation to myself. idk. again: boring #box opener #doctor worm