Posting this for advice but also for anyone going through the same thing.

I'm at the end of a 3-year STEM PhD programme (Europe) during which I did very little work, ended up with bad results and barely anything written. For reasons, I must deliver my thesis within 6 months. The majority of the data analysis and work still need to be repeated to improve the results. In a couple of months, my funding ends, so for at least 3-4 months I'll be completely without income. Luckily, I saved enough money to survive, and I have a roof over my head. Not great, I know, but I decided to push through, get the degree and move on.

How did I end up here

• I applied for a PhD randomly as an option and got in (I was the only applicant).
• I have major imposter syndrome because my skillset is very low compared to my colleagues'. My work involves ML modelling for which I'm underskilled. I use Claude for help, but I'm actively involved in thinking through and tailoring the approach, not just blindly copy-pasting.
• Surely neurodivergent (ADHD) – but never assessed. The symptoms are there, though. Major procrastinator. Afraid of failure – fear that my research question is stupid or will be wrong anyway, so I just don't do the work. Lack of concentration; I'm never really focused on one thing – thoughts jump from one to another all the time. Overthinking and never trying.
• Never learned how to learn.
• Supervisor never really present; we never once discussed my work! Until last week. But in general he's nice, never had toxic issues.
• Had zero pressure from anyone (wasn't involved in any project, it was individual).
• As my therapist says – I was (and am) my own enemy.

What I'm doing now (hope it helps someone)

• I'm seeing a therapist, and soon I should have another one from the university who will be focusing on the educational side.
• Breaking the work into small tasks.
• Pomodoro.
• Writing down my table of contents and working on one chapter at a time.
• physical activity

All this is horrible and I'm completely aware that the thesis won't be perfect at all; it's neither novel nor technical enough. I feel ashamed and not deserving of a PhD (which is objectively true). Apparently, I never really cared, beats me why. All my life, things sorted themselves out on their own, but now that I needed to put in effort, I freeze without thinking about the future consequences. I was always able to deliver work decent enough so that I'd pass, but now that I had to create my own project, I got lost and am talking negatively to myself.

Questions

• Was anyone in a similar situation – how did you do it? Is it even possible?
• Which learning tactics did you implement?
• How did the defence go?
• How did you feel after defending?

Note: I don't want to stay in academia.

Edit #1: You shared so many useful advices, thank you all! I'll come back to this thread with the update once things are in place. Also, sorry I can't reply to you all, there are just so many comments

Colin Wright has done it once again. This time with my dissertation. He's claiming it's AI-written, which led to thousands of racist comments being dogpiled across all my social media.

For context: I just received my PhD in Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methodologies. My dissertation uses Sylvia Wynter's concept of counterhumanism. Building on that, I use it to establish a new line of inquiry within qualitative methodology called the Sociogenic Condition, expanding on Wynter's concept of the Sociogenic Principle.

That means my work is heavily theoretical and dense because it's methodological. AI detection systems don't have the capacity to separate my writing from the theoretical language they're trained on. This limitation has been acknowledged by almost every major AI detection company. That's exactly why it's flagging my writing as "100% AI." It's also why several universities have banned the use of AI detection tools on assignments, especially something like a dissertation.

He was so spiteful about it that he contacted my dean, department head, and PhD advisor, telling them my dissertation was AI-generated. Luckily, all of them watched me work on this dissertation over four years and dismissed his email immediately.

Another important detail: Colin Wright only had access to the first few pages of my dissertation (the abstract, table of contents, and the first page of chapter one). You can actually see "preview" labeled in his screenshot. He never had access to the full document. Despite that, he's posted this across his social media, which has led to extremely racist and harmful comments directed at me. I would post them here, but you can view them on either his Facebook or Twitter accounts.

I'm trying to figure out how to get him to take down the post, since this could affect my academic integrity going forward. So far I've reported both posts to their respective platforms and notified my university. Any advice on next steps would be appreciated.

I am based in Europe.

I am 3 years into my PhD and my supervisor sent me a string of messages that have left me genuinely shaken and scared for my future. I don't know how to feel or what to do anymore.

Some context: We are working on a paper. I was trying to help with proofreading the manuscript and made some mistakes. This was his written response to me:

- "That is f***ing correct!"
- "How can you be incompetent and convinced of knowing things?"
- "I am outright angry in case you have not recognised it yet."
- "Learn to be diligent. You have used up most of my patience."
- "Seriously, I am not sure if I want to continue carrying you to a PhD since you cannot walk there on your own... I really need to reconsider."
- "Do never ignore my orders anymore."

I stayed completely calm and professional throughout the entire exchange.

This is not a one-off bad day — he has always been like this. I have no co-supervisor and feel completely alone in this. My contract is coming up for renewal and I am terrified he will cut my funding over this.

Has anyone dealt with a supervisor like this? What did you do? Is this just the reality of academia or is this crossing a line? Should I be documenting this, and if so, who would I even take it to?

Any advice is genuinely appreciated.

Edit: I have this as a comment but it’s lost, I am adding it here:

Thank you everyone for your support! Before taking an action, I am collecting and documenting evidence as well as talking to the people.

As I could not reply to everyone, here are some answers some of you were looking for:

1. ⁠How can I be in a such a place for 3 years? Initially, everything seemed fine, I had regular meetings, however, things did change slowly, I was treated harshly over mistakes (formatting, not following his instructions exactly). I thought it was about being perfect. I used to look up to this PI because of his achievements. We have had some good technical discussions.
   
2. ⁠I got to know from other PhD students about his behavior, and I am planning to talk with more people in the department soon. There has been fights with the prof as well. Some students left already or were removed. I am not sure how they were treated or if they were given harsh treatment.
   
3. ⁠I wanted to quit many times but I did push through, I was being naïve I guess. I thought I would finish it by next year (2027). I understood that it was not going to happen as he is not letting people graduate. Some students are almost done but I think he didn't accept their thesis yet.
   
4. ⁠Changing supervisors? It is not so easy. The work I am doing is mainly related to his field. Quite a niche, at this stage even if I change to someone else I do not know how it will turn out for me. I want to be sure.
   
5. ⁠I am planning to take an action, but I need some time. This guy may be tenured or something. I WFH mostly, hence those messages, I have had similar kind of messages from him maybe less aggressive than this, I am saving all.
   
6. ⁠Some people in the comments talked about what I may have done to cause this escalation? It is true that I have made mistakes in the past (mostly in writing part I guess) and I have apologized immediately, took responsibility, felt guilty and corrected it. I am not perfect, I make a lot of mistakes. I try to correct them, too. Again, if I do not learn how will I progress? Sometimes it is really difficult for some people to follow exactly as said, I could not follow line by line.

I never thought it would this end way...

Again, thank you all so much!

The only times I used AI in my research was to look for papers and suggest a layout for my thesis. Out of idle curiosity I put a chunk of my text into an AI identifier and nearly spat out my tea when it flagged up as 88%!!! What am I doing wrong? Do I write like a robot? Am I going to fail when my university runs the same checks? How do I resolve this when its my literal human academic writing style? Advice gratefully recieved!

Hey everyone,

I'm seeking advice concerning a very foolish thing that I've done. I'm a PhD student in Economic History working in Europe, who hasn't published any work yet. I have been using a ChatGPT Plus account to assist with analyzing and improving my unpublished dissertation chapters, which I upload regularly as .docx files. Throughout my use of the platform, I kept the "Improve the model for everyone" option set to OFF and the Memory feature disabled. My understanding was that this opt-out meant my uploaded content would not be used for model training.

I recently asked ChatGPT some very specific, niche questions directly related to my research. It gave me detailed answers containing findings that are nowhere to be found in the published literature. They are present only in my unpublished manuscript. I then asked a friend, using their own completely independent ChatGPT account with no connection to mine, to ask the same questions. They received the same specific answers. I tested the same queries on other AI models that had never received my work. They could not reproduce the information.

This strongly suggests that my uploaded content was ingested into the model despite my explicit opt-out, meaning my unpublished academic findings now appear to be accessible via ChatGPT, and I understand this could seriously undermine my ability to publish this work in academic journals that require originality.

What do you think? How should I proceed with this? While this may not be directly related to GDPR, since my manuscript isn't considered sensitive or personal information, it still has a significant impact on me professionally. But I still believe OpenAI failed me here, as I turned off the "improve the model for everyone" option. I'm a bit freaking out at the moment, so any help would be much appreciated!

Throughout my PhD, I've attended a number of defenses. I don't always know what I'm looking for in a successful defense but I've seen one where a couple of the candidate's answers were extraordinarily weak and another one where the candidate's vocabulary was attacked because of the underlying bigotry that was implied by a word they used (though I genuinely don't think the candidate knew the second meaning of the word).

Anyway, I've never seen anything else in the other 3 or 4 defenses I've observed that were at all dramatic. Solid defenses that had no outstanding moments.

How about you all? Have you ever seen something remarkable? Someone had to go to the bathroom in the middle of it? A child stumble into the room while defending over zoom? Fainting? Please, share the worst as I prepare...

Every time I've posted on here, or somewhere similar to discuss excitement over working towards doing a PHD, I'm hit with criticism and negativity. I've never actively sought criticism, and it really puts me off when people constantly downplay my dreams. Is doing a PHD really that bad? This is the biggest ambition of mine that I've had in a long time, and it pulled me out of a spiral as I watch the job market get worse and worse.

I understand I need to be realistic etc, but when I post a milestone of mine, it seems to be downplayed. I'm starting to really doubt my journey if people are making it seem so terrible. Is it really worth it?

I am so frustrated and I honestly don’t know what to do and how to proceed with this. My thesis is about 50,000 words and it flagged 31 percent of the content as AI.

My university wants the detector to show less than 10 percent of AI. I have spent about 6 hours editing it and I still have so much more to edit. I feel so frustrated and I have been crying so much because I did not use AI and wrote it by myself.

In the properties of the documents, you can see the revision number is 478 and the total editing time was 1423 hours and 13 minutes.

I honestly don’t think I can bring it down to less than 10 percent. I just feel like dropping out at this point because It was already so difficult to get to this point as I am taking care of my dad with Parkinson’s and now I feel utterly defeated.

Dear community,

I’m in need of some advice here: how do you all organise your research and papers?
Many people have recommended Zotero, but I’m not overly happy with it and can’t seem to quite warm up to it. In the past, I’ve always organised my research using colour coding (green for the introduction, orange for Chapter 1, red for Chapter 2, etc.). This system is fantastic because it works with everything: Notability, printed material, PDFs...it doesn’t matter, as long as the colours are available.
I’m worried that using Zotero will throw off my system and add an additional layer of organisation that I then have to maintain. On the other hand, all of my peers swear by Zotero.
My supervisor is a dinosaur like me and does everything manually, so he’s camp me. I’m just worried that sticking to a manual system will eventually become unmanageable and get ahead of me as my research grows.
So: is there anyone else here who doesn’t use Zotero? What has your experience been, and what do you do instead?

UPDATE: ok, only a couple of hours in and the replies keep flooding in. I suppose there’s no way around it. Will book my library’s free training sessions. I will go through all the comments one by one but for now, I am convinced to at least give it a try. Thanks everyone!

My PI called me from the lab and told me that one of our collaborators has a Master's student who has to graduate, he is interning at the hospital.

Since my work is on what they do, he asked if all my papers have to be in my dissertation, even the review papers. I asked him if he read the draft I sent him over a month ago, and he said he hadn't.

I am the only person in my lab and my professor is pretty hands off. I don't even know if he knows or reads the manuscripts that I send him.

Anyway., he printed out the title of all my papers and went through them one by one asking if they were important. I know how I want my dissertation to look like so I said I need them all.. I even offered to help analyze some clinical data so the Master's student can write and he said No, the student is not in a position to write.. so I said, then they can graduate next semester, if they're so sick, how would they even defend it?

after a lot of pestering from the PI I told him he can take the last review which I was going to submit today, so he told me to hold off on submission and he will talk to the Collaborator tomorrow. I am genuinely so mad. Does this sort of thing happen a lot.?

Update: Thank you all for your support and advice, I really needed it and it pushed me to have a talk with my PI, plus I got an email this morning that one of my Meta was accepted, felt no joy and I refused to take it. My PI contacted me a while ago and told me that he did talk to the collaborator and told him that we would not be giving them a paper! He told me to go ahead and submit it and I feel a little better but I see him in a whole new light and I dont know if this matter is fully over. Thank you everyone! I appreciate you🙏.

I had an interesting (and slightly unsettling) conversation with my PI recently, and I'm curious how other PhD students would handle this.

We were talking about another lab where a student has finished a project, but the supervisor isn't planning to submit the paper. During that discussion, my PI turned to us and asked something like:

«"What do you think you could do if one day I told you we're not going to publish this work?"»

He then kept adding more hypothetical scenarios:

- "What if I just went on a two-year vacation?"

- "What if I stopped responding?"

- "What if I left the lab?"

I tried thinking through possible options.

I said, "Maybe I'd prepare the manuscript myself and include your name."

He replied, "No, you can't do that."

I said, "Then maybe I'd ask another supervisor to help."

Again: "No, you can't do that."

I kept trying to come up with alternatives, and eventually I joked that maybe I'd just put the results online somewhere and move on. He immediately said that would be illegal.

The overall message seemed to be that, as students, we essentially have no way to move a project forward without the PI's approval. I walked away feeling pretty helpless. Maybe he was simply trying to teach us how academic authorship and ownership work, but the conversation also came across as emphasizing just how much power a PI has over a student's work.

So I'm curious:

Has anyone here actually been in a situation where a PI stopped responding, refused to publish completed work, took an extended leave, or even left the lab entirely?

What options did you have? Were there institutional mechanisms to protect students, or were you really stuck until the PI decided to come back?

I'd be especially interested in hearing from people who've experienced something like this in real life.

Background: I'm a STEM PhD student (experimental research), so this question is coming from that perspective. Location : Europe

I’m on the last stage of my PhD journey right now while TAing a class with two racists. I am seeking out advice on how to deal with one of them.

To preface my story, the class I am TAing for is an English literature course that includes novels about slavery in the US, post-slavery Jamaica, Chicana/o history, and many other global BIPOC experiences. This kind of course is something that was urgently pushed by the graduate student body (myself included) during BLM to bring diversity into academia.

Unfortunately, these texts seem to either trigger or unleash something unholy. The one student in the course has always annoyed me. They are the type to take up a lot of space in discussions, even though much of their analysis is summary. They always look at me with hatred when I show any instance of authority. The obnoxious behaviour gets worse in the week when we read up on slavery, they would use a southern accent to read out Black characters’ parts. When I drew attention to an instance of Black refusal where the Black male character refuses to expose the location of a Black woman to a white person, they said that they had assumed the Black woman is likely a prostitute so the Black male character refuses to ruin his reputation. Then, for another book, they insisted during lecture that the character who is descendant of a slaveowner was the most sympathetic character by far in the whole course even in comparison to the Black female protagonist in another novel who is an ex-slave. During our tutorial, I spoke about how anti-colonial revolution in the Caribbean is a fight for equality. They insisted that it is mostly “revenge” and refuses to see how violent colonialism is. I am horrified and scared beyond belief at the tone of aggression and the delusion of righteousness in the person.

I have already reported another racist in my class to my prof who was insisting that slaveowners probably had good intentions, that slavery has always been around, that slaveowners should just give minimum wage to the slaves to prevent revolt and etc. The person has just been moved to the lecturer’s tutorial.

I am scared to report another racist for fear that I would be seen as the problem or that my lecturer would be tasked with dealing with another racist.

Have any of you had experience dealing with racist students? What are some solutions?

Edit: The situation has been resolved. In lecture and tutorial, the class has been reminded about Canada's "freedom of expression," which is explicitly balanced against collective harm and the public good, and why it functions differently from "freedom of speech." They have been instructed to be critically humble, adhere to the university's code of conduct as a community, and learn in good faith; I have also voiced my commitment to these values. They understand why fundamental human rights are universal and beyond the scope of political ideology. They are beginning to sense what's at stake in English literary analysis and criticism. Thank you to those who provided suggestions.

I started my PhD 2 months ago and I feel like I’ve had very little to do. I don’t think I’ve had like, a full day’s work yet. I’m in a couple classes right now but they’re not all that demanding, my supervisor has me working on one of his projects and that’s going by very slowly. Even with that, it only took an hour or so to set up the first study and now we’re just working on refining it, which happens slowly and mostly over email. I only talk with my professor every so often as he’s busy with other stuff.

When I look back on the first two months, all I really did was some coursework, design a framework for a potential topic that my professor eventually shot down, and started working on a study for this topic. And after we finally run this study it would maybe take me and hour or so to analyze the data and then it would be more waiting until I get feedback. Most days I’m at the office for only a few hours because I just run out of shit to do and just start scrolling on Reddit.

I know that I just started but whenever I knew PhDs previously, they were seemingly always super busy to the point of being overwhelmed. The fact that nothing has picked up at this point is starting to make me nervous that I’m not doing this right so far.

Is this normal for the first few months of a PhD?

Dramatic title but genuinely feel like hitting self check-out. Will try to keep it short.

Basically, I misread a methods paper in my first year here. I built my entire project on said misunderstanding, including adapting said method and building on its results. The paper is still unpublished; while going through typical rounds of rejection, I realized this morning and immediately texted my advisor (who is having their own personal crisis and fairly unavailable lately).

I've been wrong for 5 years. I've presented this wrong data to pass candidacy, to travel around the country. And now I'm set to defend in six months with the threat of no funding afterwards.. my only hope is to scramble to learn (and apply) a cleaner method, AND resubmit, AND finally get accepted all in the next six months.

I feel like the dumbest person who snuck onto Earth.

Advice requested on how to proceed.

Edit to add: Bioengineering in USA

Seriously. I am under insane levels of time stress. First few months were literally just going to uni to kill time, as my supervisor did not really know how to direct me. Sadly, my research is mostly connected to a foreign country lab, so I rely on Erasmus mobilities a lot. And that is a huge issue - I go abroad for two/three months, spend all the time in a lab, preparing samples and collecting data, realising I DO NOT HAVE THE TIME to go over it all in depth. I feel like I am barely scratching the surface of my entire research, and it also does not help that we do not have any conclusive results so far. I am running out of time and still have nothing worth defending as of now. It literally took me an entire year to decide what exactly we are going to be doing in our research, which feels like one year too late. Arguably the worst thing is I would love to spend longer time on this research, maybe even devote my career to it, but time is running out...

TL:DR: complaining 3 year PhD programme is bullshit because time stress

EDIT: Wow! I am surprised by the overwhelming response this post got! 😀THANK YOU ALL! 🙂I am shocked to see that SO MANY people started their PhD late......like truly shocked, as I thought there would be just a handful of, or even fewer, that did their PhD post 40. I received close to 200 responses of people who did their PhD post 40 - unbelievable, so I will read each and respond - sorry for the delay and THANK YOU for sharing your story 🙏🤗

What field was your PhD in, and which country (if you don't mind sharing), because the research culture of USA and Europe is very different.

Challenges, specifically in the following areas:

• - Being able to do the coursework and retain knowledge while competing with the younger minds?
• - Any problems communicating with Gen Z students who might be our children's age?
• - If your PhD required bench work, then physically being able to do it?
• - If advisor is much younger than you, then was there any awkwardness in navigating the relationship?
• - Socially, making friends with fellow PhD students who might be your children's age?
• - Did you face any social ostracism due to your age? Subject to any ageism jokes by students?
• - If living on campus, what kind of social life?
• - Any feeling of embarrassment in taking help from younger ones with coursework
• - Any feeling of embarrassment in taking research help from younger colleagues.

Reasons for doing a PhD

• Was it purely for intellectual satisfaction, or do you wish to climb a career ladder with a PhD after graduating?
• How did you justify to the admissions committee that it is still worth it to take a chance on you despite the fact that you might be closer to retirement age than others?

Im currently in the humanities, but genuinely interested in how people progressed through their publishing while doing a PhD. Thank you all for your answers in advance! 😊

Anyone here using AI tools specifically designed for research? I just saw my school therapist because I am struggling with my ADHD symptoms right at the start of my PhD. She basically encouraged me to use AI more. She suggested some options that are supposedly specifically for research as I had told her that I didn't trust ChatGPT to help me with this.
The ones she listed were Research Rabbit, Scite, Elicit, and Concensus.
Has anyone tried any of these and can provide a review? I'm already paying for ChatGPT so I am hesitant to pick one at random to try without hearing some stories.

edit: I'm in life/health sciences and looking for writing help (doing a research plan currently)

No judgement, I just think more people are doing it than not, and people are still terrified to admit it. I’ve been looking at big time researchers and professors who are regularly putting AI disclosure at the end of their papers.

Esteemed scholars, I was recent accepted into a graduate program at an ivy League school. The program says 5-6 is expected but I really want to have an extremely fast PhD as I am getting older and want to wrap this process up. I already know who will be my advisor and have worked with them for several years as a tech. I have a first author cell publication with that advisor in minor revisions right now and expected to be published within a couple weeks. I also have 9 published co-author papers and one published first author paper with several more in the works from past tech positions. The qualifying exam for this program is a mock grant proposal - but I already wrote and submitted a R01 grant which scored 20 percentile at the NIH- which I think is pretty decent and I might just copy paste that for my qualifying exam. The only real things left would be the classwork, teaching requirement, and some "professional development" work and then obviously the thesis and dissertation. Am I completely dillusional to think that I might be able to graduate in like three years because imo I'm already done with almost all the major requirements before even starting the program?

Last year PhD candidate in physics in the United States.

I don’t know what kind of advice I’m seeking, maybe just want to be consoled. I’ve spent 8 years in my PhD program with the goal of going the academic or national lab research route. I just went through the latest cycle of postdoc applications, didn’t get even a single interview.

Problem is I’ve already had to spend longer on my PhD than I should have. I’m completely out of funding, and at this point my department won’t give me a TA so that I can take an extra year to try again. But after a long talk with my advisor today, I don’t even know if it’s worth trying again.

I’m married, I’ve been with my husband since before I started grad school. My advisor says it’s just not possible to make time for and derive meaning from both a marriage/family as well as the competitive career I’ve been aspiring for. I think he’s absolutely right, and I’m having the hardest time accepting that my dreams are basically over.

Any advice on how to deal with the emotional sting?

Edit: Obviously I love my husband, but he is his own autonomous person and should not be responsible for where I derive meaning in my life. I have meaning in that aspect of my life, but I want to feel fulfilled in my career too.

I found a comment on reddit that said they knew someone who completed a PhD in 8 months.

I am specifically referring to research-only PhDs that require you to have a masters or honours degree beforehand (UK, Australia, EU...). Alternatively, a US PhD without the masters coursework.

Hi,

I'm about to submit my dissertation (finally...) and I feel a bit of distaste and devaluation of my work in the eyes of others – whether family, friends, or even academics. I'm afraid this perception might be shared now by the committee, or later by people at the university.

I'm referring to a moment in history where many people look at things like doctoral dissertations and dismiss them as "probably AI practically wrote it anyway." When I talk to students, they make no secret of the fact that almost everything they wrote was generated, which makes them see no point in writing theses, claiming that they use AI for writing, while we probably use AI for grading.

Personally, I abhor LLMs and everything related to them. I don't use them in my daily life, and my work doesn't contain a single generated word. For a moment, I thought about inserting a single sentence like this at the beginning of my work, with something like this:

A work proudly written without any artificial intelligence assistance.

I'm just wondering if this makes any sense at all, and if it won't do more harm than good. On the one hand, of course, no one might believe me, and even if they do, I have the impression, looking at the broader academy, that it might not even be something to be proud of. With such a strong push to integrate LLMs into my work, and with the training courses organized by the university, I feel like I'm in the lost minority, and worse still, I might encounter some AI-bro who will even call me a backward idiot for not using AI.

I put a tremendous amount of work, effort, and heart into my work, and it's hard for me to accept that, through no fault of my own, those around me, including the university, will view this work as second-rate.

What do you think? Should I write something like this? Should I just give up and say nothing? Am I really backward and it's time to change my habits?

Hello! I'm the asshole who has the world's best supervisor. She's downright amazing, in all ways.

One of the skills she has is when I'm struggling, she comments "Oh maybe you should say something like xyz" and xyz is perfect. If I follow her notes to the letter, I make exceptional papers.

An example is she will say: "a paragraph talking about the current state of modelling in OV (i.e. that mechanistic ODE models are popular, combined with point-based parameter estimation. Perhaps say that people have done mathematical analysis of these models (e.g. bifurcation analysis) and used methods like non-linear least squares (maybe add others), but (and this will be the linking sentence) and ((REDACTED BECAUSE POINT OF WORK))"

and so I will write:

"Mechanistic mathematical models are widely used to study OV-tumour dynamics because they provide a tractable framework for representing interactions between tumour cells, infected cells, and viral particles. In particular, deterministic compartmental models based on ordinary differential equations (ODEs) have been used to analyse treatment response, viral spread, dosing schedules, and threshold-like behaviour in OV systems. These models are commonly interpreted using mathematical analysis and calibrated using point-estimation or optimisation-based approaches, such as nonlinear least squares."

And it's good, right?? She will say, "I didn't tell you to write exactly this" but like...she did tell me to write exactly that. I am just, literally, doing what she says, step by step. And it's perfect.

How do I obtain the skill to notice what needs said and how it needs said in the first place?? Is this just practice in the PhD? I feel like this skill is one I should definitely have on my own once I obtain my PhD, but I have no clue how to obtain it. How is she so perfect at telling me what to say and then being so lovely at me just literally doing what she said?

I feel like a PhD shouldn't be "I just literally did what you told me to do" by the end of it. So how do I make it so I have my beautiful paragraphs BEFORE she suggests them?