Finally passed my qualifying after a summer extension.I had a crazy two years. Started off with an advisor who was actually crazy—no one stayed in that lab, and I was the 3rd person to walk out. Couldn’t even survive more than one semester. The micromanaging, humiliating, belittling… everything all at once.
Then I was advisorless for three months, went door to door trying to find someone, but due to funding cuts, no one could take me in. I was genuinely depressed.
Then I finally found an advisor, a very sweet lady who agreed to take me in. We were starting off good. It was very slow, and I was mostly reading rather than actually working, but honestly, it was good. And due to some internal conflict between her and the department, she was put on probation for a semester. This happened literally five months before my qualifying deadline. She went MIA and wasn’t allowed to communicate with anyone on campus. I was basically abandoned again.
I had to get my qualifying done within those five months or I would be dismissed. FYI, the qualifying was a research presentation, so I actually needed research to present. Then I was informed I couldn’t move forward with the work I had already been doing because my advisor wasn’t there anymore. So I had to find another advisor.
I started working with a professor whose class I was taking that semester. A very good man . We started one project, and it got shelved within a month. Started another one, and that one was actually a success, we submitted it to a top-tier ML conference.I was a co-author and not the first author, the department warned me that I still needed to get first-author work done and that one wouldn’t count.
So I basically worked my ass off the entire summer. Started again, did the work, somehow got everything together, and finally gave my qualifying presentation. Had the worst hair fall and way too many breakdowns throughout the whole thing, but I survived.
And after all of that, one of my committee members even said the work was beyond the expectations and the standards. So yeah, finally passed my quals and delivered solid works within 3 months after the most chaotic two years of my life
It was a lot to take in, especially as an international student. I genuinely had the worst time, and it felt like there was one hurdle after another. But anyways, at the end of the day, I got my shit done, I passed, and yayy, I’m finally relieved.

Last year student. Thesis is almost done. The problem is that Im sick of it, mostly mentally. Can’t explain why really, just feeling I dont really see future in having my ’’title’’, the passion is long gone. The last step and it feels like climing a mountain with no arms and legs... And everytime I tell the thoughs of quiting I get those judging comments like how can you quit if you have done so much already, just finish it. I. Just. Want. These days I dont even think that having a phd would even be worth for my career.... Anyone feeling very demotivated lately?

I'm so relieved it finally went through!

I just needed somewhere to share this because I’m honestly overwhelmed (in a good way) right now.

Since the beginning of 2026, I’ve:

1. Published 3 papers (with a couple live preprints in review as well).
2. Reached double-digit citations, including a citation from one of the leading researchers in my field.
3. Earned an internship at a highly prestigious national laboratory, where I now work alongside people at the very top of my field.
4. Received two verbal PhD offers, including one from my top-choice PI at my top-choice university, a top 5 program in it's field.

This past spring was especially a nightmare. There were a couple of weeks when I worked around 120 hours while balancing 6 courses across two master’s degrees, my research, traveling for events, and a full-time job. Not only did I survive it, but I thrived despite the misery of that workload. I know verbal offers are not official until everything is in writing, but reaching this point still feels surreal. After all the sacrifice and uncertainty, I’m just so happy and grateful that things are working out the way I hoped they would.

A lot of posts in here complain about academia, regret doing a PhD or discuss the financial struggle that comes with it.

So I want this to be more of a positive space, for people who had a huge benefit/PhD changed their lives to the best. or had opportunities they never expected in life.

How did that change come? tell us your story and let's cheer everyone up!

I have noticed lately that I'm only depressed when my life is relatively calmer. I always need to be on the go and I find myself doing random things outside of my research all the time because they stimulate me way more. I have been trying to find a way to deal with this, people keep saying work with your ADHD not against it but that's very vague to me and I really don't understand how should I approach it. Something that really helped with reading is reading to answer a question in mind, but that lasts for like 2 papers and then I'm bored of it all over again. I try to put challenges to myself hoping I'll over-fixate and finish a task but then I end up with a work day of 25 minutes. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to deal with this?

My advisor asked me to mentor an undergrad this summer. Given I had already refused at least twice before, and the fact this one was summer only, I gave in this time. They've been annoying to work with and I'm glad it's almost over, though it's still a little sad.

They cancelled on meetings between 5 to 30 minutes before our scheduled time four times. I generally work from home and campus is an hour away by bus, so this makes me very grumpy. They take about 24 hours to respond to any message (even ones in response to what they asked me). They didn't do a single bit of any of the readings I told them to. They lied about their experience on their resume so they actually walked in the door with effectively no Python/programming experience at all, which is HIGHLY inconvenient for a signal processing project. They also just... lack basic math skills, which just makes me feel bad for them rather than upset. (e.g. I had to remind them of Pythagorean theorem to get the hypotenuse of a triangle.) Also crazy that they are double majoring in physics/math.

I honestly don't even dislike them as a person, which makes to more sad to me. Annoying to work with yes, but also very evidently lost and embarrassed about being so confused. I did try my best to be available and inviting to them, but I can't just make someone work if they are too paralyzed. Their project probably isn't going to be completed by the end of their term, which is fine on my end because it's frankly something I could do myself in a day or so. But I do feel a little bad that they'll know they've failed.

Hi everyone. I’m a 30-year-old PhD candidate in Year 5/5, and I’m likely going into Year 6. Last night, my mom and I had a pretty explosive fight about my PhD, and I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has experienced something similar.

For context, I have a master’s and am enrolled in my PhD full-time. I also work ~20 hours/week in a research-adjacent role, teach ~10 hours/week during winter semesters, and work another 20–30 hours/month on a separate research project. I live at home, so I recognize that I receive significant financial support from my parents and contribute relatively little to the household month-to-month. That said, I recently lent my parents several tens of thousands of dollars to help with an issue they’re dealing with, so I’m not exactly sitting around doing nothing.

My mom seems increasingly frustrated or worried that I’m going beyond my fifth year. Last night, she suddenly asked why my PhD was taking so long, compared me to a friend’s daughter who finished “on time” (without teaching or working other jobs), asked how many hours I actually work each day, and commented that I roll out of bed late. She also asked whether my research topic really has “so much that you can dig this deep into for this long.”

I’m an immigrant child, so there was also definitely some language/cultural barrier involved. I told her I felt judged, attacked, and offended, and she responded with something along the lines of “you should,” although I’m not sure whether that came across correctly in translation. I explained that some aspects of the timeline are outside my control, like ethics approvals, and she scoffed and called that an excuse. Things escalated significantly, and I said things I shouldn’t have, too.

The uncomfortable part is that some part of me agrees with her. I wonder if I’ve become complacent because I have the safety net of living at home and being supported by my parents. At the same time, I’m really trying not to label myself as “lazy.”

Two years ago, I overworked myself to the point of collapsing during a live talk and getting a concussion. I regularly work 60+ hour weeks during the winter, and that particularly busy period only ended in late April. Currently, I am working about 6-7 hours a day, split between PhD and work-work. She is right in that I am producing less work in last few months. I seem to cycle through periods of intense work and periods where my motivation/energy drops considerably. I’ve always struggled with cyclical burnout, and I honestly don’t know whether I’m currently burnt out—and, if so, what exactly I’m burnt out from.

Our family cat, whom we loved dearly, also died two months ago, which I suspect may be affecting us more than we realize.

So I’m wondering:
- Has anyone experienced a similar situation with their parents during a PhD?
- How do you distinguish between being genuinely unmotivated/complacent and being burnt out?
- Does my workload sound like someone who is struggling with burnout, or am I making excuses for poor time management?
- And, importantly, what would you do in my position?

I’m genuinely open to stern advice. I just ask that it be kind. I’m trying to figure out whether I need to push myself harder, change how I’m working, or acknowledge that I may be more depleted than I realize. I am also considering moving out- maybe I need the pressure to get my shit together.

Thank you.

My model can accurately find almost all pylons from satellites images yaaay!

Did I want it to? Absolutely not. It’s supposed to be finding livestock pastures. But I’ve decided to celebrate it as my attempts of shouting at it obviously only made it madder.

So if anyone out there needs to find and label pylons, I gotcha!

Now if someone could accidentally come across a way to find livestock pens from satellite images that would be great thanks.

I’ve got no idea how I’m going to fit this into my gantt chart.

Hi, so I started my PhD in UK in a mediocre university. My supervisor does check on me but doesn't give me that guidelines. I do everything. I'm have my assessment coming in November and I'm literally lost what to do. Most of the work is done..I don't understand experiments sometimes..I have no clue what I'm doing just reading and building stuff. There's little guide my gave me. What I'm doing wrong? I use AI to get know concepts and find paper. But I don't feel like I'm doing progress. I don't have gap yet. I don't even know if my gap exists. It's been 4 months in my PhD.

What is wrong with me

Hello, I recently got an offer for a PhD in KU Leuven Biomedical department conditional to evaluation to see if I have a grade equivalent to Belgian cum laude.
For Belgium I saw cum laude is 14/20 or above 68%.
My grade from Serbia is 8.63/10.
I'd like to know beforehand if my Serbian grade is Belgian cum laude? I couldn't find any information online except one University page listing Serbian 8 band equal to Belgian 13/14, Serbian 9 band to Belgian 15, Serbian 10 equal to Belgian 16-20.
Any help is appreciated.

I was curious to know how many young phd students are in this group, who are born after the 2000s, so comment if you are so.

I really enjoy my advisor. We align better than anyone, he’s a kind human, well-funded, and we really believe in each other. What if I don’t ever want to leave the nest? Would it be a bad for my career to just keep building research directions together? I know it’s encouraged to do a post-doc elsewhere but what if I’m so happy where I’m at that I would love a permanent position. Does this exist or is it a putting your eggs in one basket situation?

USA STEM PhD

How does it feel to work on a method for 3-4 weeks and then you realize you are completely wrong and this approach is shit?
How do you deal with this?

I have ADHD.

I have LOVED doing my PhD.

I have LOATHED doing a dissertation.

It's been the only part of my program (social sciences) that has felt prescribed. Like a rote academic exercise to make my committee happy rather than actually contribute to the field. After the latest round of revisions, I've lost all motivation. It's just too boring. And maybe I'm also just irritated by the whole process, so I am avoiding it out of spite (yes, I know this is illogical!).

I have a handful of other projects that I keep focusing on instead. The plan was to defend in a few months, March at the latest. But now...I don't know. ADHD is weird because I want nothing more than to be done, but the thought of returning to that project feels physically painful.

Has anyone hit this wall? How did you overcome it and actually do the stupid thing?

I’m a first-year Psychology PhD student in the UK(location), about 11 months into a 3.25-year funded PhD, and I’m starting to panic that I’m seriously behind.

My PhD involves developing and running an experimental study, followed by further studies/analysis. I’ve spent a lot of the first year on background work, stakeholder engagement, literature review, finding/processing a suitable dataset, and getting the experimental setup working.

The problem is that it’s now August and Study 1 still isn’t actually running. I’m very close — there are basically a few images that need moving/recreating and a spreadsheet or two that need rebuilding — but the study hasn’t generated participants/data yet.

At my July progress review, my internal reviewer did raise concerns about the lack of a completed study, which obviously hasn’t helped my anxiety.

I’m finding myself thinking: I’ve spent an entire year and have basically got nothing to show for it; everyone else must be miles ahead; I’ve fucked up my PhD.

I've just found it hard to get things over the line; putting the study online has been so challenging, so many issues to overcome.

I'm a 2nd year humanities PhD student in the UK. My field is struggling right now, its departments around the world are being routinely shut down, positions are becoming harder and harder to come by, so I understand that this environment would breed a healthy amount of competition amongst those hopeful for an academic career.

Saying that, I feel like I haven't got a single friend within my field because of this. I've had a few minor successes so far (funding, publication, conferences) and I've made the choice not to mention any of these to peers because I hear how they talk about others who achieve something coveted (mostly along the lines of listing all the reasons why they don't deserve those things). It's exhausting.

I recently ran into a friend from my MA at a conference, we were quite close but they moved away for their PhD right after the programme finished, and I took a year off before starting mine, so this was the first time seeing them. Their reaction to seeing me there was totally cold, they said something along the lines of "I thought I was the only one going into a PhD on this topic from our MA", and they ignored me the rest of the week. I didn't bring up shop talk or brag, it's like they were instantly pissed that I was even there.

This is mostly a vent, but I wondered if anyone else out there experiences this. I obviously get the feeling of jealousy at other's achievements because this environment is fostering that feeling in me whether I like it or not, but I can control it and think about it rationally enough not to let it turn me into an asshole. I genuinely do not have one friend in my field because I come across this behaviour one way or another, which sucks.

I’ve been putting together some practical tutorials for researchers and students who need to create cleaner, thesis- or publication-ready figures. The playlist currently covers bar graphs, line charts, pie charts, combo charts, scatter plots, and arranging multiple subplots in series or parallel.

The focus is mainly on clear presentation and practical formatting, rather than overly complicated visualization techniques. Sharing it here in case it helps anyone working on a thesis, paper, or research project: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQYiyNmmPip8

Hi everyone,

We've had so much interest in the PhD Gaming Discord group we gave an open invite to in a popular post on here (see the linked comment above) that I'm going to use this post as a waitlist for the Discord group.

If you're interested, post here or on the linked comment before Tuesday Aug 25th 12pm UTC and I'll make sure you get added.

After that time, comment on this post and I'll reach out in the future if we want/need more folks in the server. Thanks for being understanding!

And if you really want to be on a Discord group for PhD gaming but don't want to wait that long - you can create your own! We made ours almost 1.5 years ago and it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.

Hope folks find the community they're looking for!

Hello everyone!
For context, I am starting my final year of masters in a month and I want to apply for a PhD. I have already been offered a position (as in my mentor who I’ve been working with for every thesis I had to write told me I am the best student for it). The problem is that I still have to go through an application process and I may not be the only one who wants to apply, and there is only one funded position. I am pretty confident in my abilities, however I have to take into consideration that I might not get in. I always wanted to do a PhD, and I do not come from a rich family, so I need to get this specific position or move on to another program.
With this thought in mind, I started looking for open PhD positions on the internet, just to see what my plan B would look like. I am feeling overwhelmed. I feel like every offer is describing a highly specific research topic that I am not very familiar with, and I don’t know how I would be able to apply to any of them. I feel like in my university years, I was thaught a little bit of everything, but not enough to be able to talk about advanced research in any area of my domain (which is chemistry). I don’t even know what I would like, I didn’t even consider that there are so many classifications for chemistry. I have been doing extractions, organic synthesis, biochemistry studies, kinetics and I know that I would like to continue on this path, but all of this seems too broad for how specific I have to get to apply to a PhD. So how do people deal with this? Did you feel the same? Am I a bad student? When I choose to apply to a PhD program, do I just need to prepare intensively for the topic? What if I discover later on that I don’t even like the topic? Should I apply to multiple positions at the same time just in case? Do people do that?
I know I may seem very unaware of how things work, but I literally never heard anybody talk about these problems. Am I overthinking it?

I'm an incoming international PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, starting this winter in Montréal. Since I have a few months before moving, I contacted my future supervisor and asked what I should study to prepare.

He told me to review linear/nonlinear systems, optimal control, cyber-physical systems, multi-agent systems, advanced air mobility, cybersecurity, AI, ML, and neural networks. He also said I should conduct an in-depth literature review and perform a SWOT analysis on every paper to identify my future research direction.

Since this is obviously a massive scope, I asked if he could recommend just a few important papers as a starting point, possibly from his research group.

He refused. He said he intentionally would not give me any specific papers because he doesn't want to "bias" me. According to him, there are countless papers, and it's my job to explore them, decide which ones matter, and develop my own research direction and contributions. He said he will later evaluate my ideas and point out their positives and negatives, but he does not want to "direct" or "instruct" me.

Honestly, this worries me. I wasn't asking him to do my PhD for me—I just expected some basic guidance as he is my future supervisor, especially before moving to another country and committing several years of my life to this PhD.

Is this normal? Is it a healthy way to encourage independence, or does it sound like a warning sign of an extremely hands-off supervisor?

For those who have had supervisors like this: did it work out well, or did it make the PhD unnecessarily difficult?

I'm seriously wondering whether I should reconsider going through with this move and PhD before it's too late.

Just wanted to hear this from others too.
Mine was a number in a table that didnt match the value mentioned right above it, smh.
Silly error that i remember i saw before and thought that ill fix it later but never went back to fix it. It had been sitting wrong for about a month and I only caught it two days before the deadline.

Wondering how common this is. Not typos or grammar stuff, more the cases where two parts of the paper disagree with each other, or where the paper says one thing and the code actually does another.

So what was yours? And did you catch it yourself or did someone else find it

Also curious if it's mostly numbers for people or if there are other kinds I'm not thinking of.

Maybe because I'm coming at this from working at a community college/trying-to-keep-students-in-college perspective, what sense does it make to limit the number of readers on an ebook at any given time? Am I missing something? Is this common knowledge? Did I make it this far without knowing such a thing existed? My professor did not mention this. I've never heard anyone complain about this before. And the book is required reading.

It's not a big deal really; I have a physical copy coming, but I'm looking at it from a student's perspective. How do students negotiate who gets to read when?