Random Fail: First World Problems

[Boyiee]

No, it's not. Quit complaining.

But if she did that then we wouldn't have a thread.

[Aksannyi]

Like she's the only one who complains.

Yes, the irony is intentional.

[Melena]

I will admit spending an extra hour in preop fucking blows. Id be bitchy as well

[BerenTebogo]

I probably just should have left 3 years ago when I had to change labs. It feels silly to be like, "I need to be gone in 4 months!" when I've already wasted 6 years here, but I don't like the idea of an indefinite PhD.

Yeah the skewed feeling of time in long programs is real. Not keeping perspective is how to quickly lose another 6 years a week at a time. Not being able to solidify an end date after so long must be the most stressful situation ever.

When I was in undergrad there was a grad student I took a few classes with who was married and etc. He was supposed to defend his thesis / graduate at the end of that year, had even has mock defenses and stuff. One day he just said fuck it and peaced out, no PhD, no master's, nothing. His situation wasn't quite the same as yours because he had a good adviser and good support structure but I think he just hit a wall and needed to be fucking done right then. He never showed any signs of wanting to leave or not enjoying himself but who knows.

At least nobody can stop you from getting your MS.

[Airenn]

Second glass of soylent is far easier to drink after being shaken very well and left overnight in the fridge. Also added 1 cut up banana and it's not... bad anymore. I didn't expect this much of a change but it's FAR more drinkable like this. Woooo.

[Fievel]

Second glass of soylent is far easier to drink after being shaken very well and left overnight in the fridge. Also added 1 cut up banana and it's not... bad anymore. I didn't expect this much of a change but it's FAR more drinkable like this. Woooo.

Did you drink the first cup with it at room temp? Because yea it's pretty fucking disgusting if not cold.

[Airenn]

A little cold, but closer to room temperature yea. It was the powder flavor/smell that was really bothering me. After letting it sit/mix + bananas, that's almost gone.

[Melena]

Ugh so they had to give astyla a spinal for her procedure. Yay for waiting 2-4 hours before discharge since she can't feel her legs.

[Airenn]

I hope she and everything is ok. :/

[Zetanio]

Hope she's alright.

Also, doesn't adding food to soylent get rid of the whole point?

[Astylla]

I'm alive just feeling very panicked, my two worst fears are being blind and not being able to walk. I may not be the most active everyday but I pride myself on trying to better myself in many areas. I broke my foot in 2005 for 9 months and was told us be lucky to walk with a cane the rest if my life.

I obviously beat those odds and did whatever was possible but in this case I just feel like I'm helpless.

I could give a shit what anyone thinks of me good or bad, but at least I'm honest that this shit freaks me out.

[Marootsoobutsu]

Ugh so they had to give astyla a spinal for her procedure. Yay for waiting 2-4 hours before discharge since she can't feel her legs.

It's up to you to feel her legs for her.

[Astylla]

Right now I can't feel anything from my abdomen down , fuck this anesthesia procedure. Bad enough my spine was jacked so it took 10 minutes to get it in. But actually that part felt awesome. I'd actually love some more needles in my back now that I know it actually feels good.

[Byrthnoth]

At least nobody can stop you from getting your MS.

Not entirely true, unfortunately. I would still have to form a master's thesis committee and write a master's thesis, which I'd have to defend. They might even require I stay another semester to do so, in which case I probably should have just left.

My previous advisor situation was basically:
* Join lab at the end of my first year
* Handed incredibly ambitious experimental project that experts in the field say might be possible (bilateral electrophys recordings from a specific brainstem nucleus that has like 100 cells in neonatal rats)
* Yaay, I get to do science! Lets figure this out!
* 3 years later, with a 6 month training trip to Europe, endless finger-sized rats, days in lab, and dozens of technical hurdles jumped, I have finally gotten it to work.
** During this time, I was forbidden from asking anyone who has experience doing this kind of experiment anything because the professor is paranoid.
*** I was also forbidden from asking anyone at our university who has experience recording from living animals about anything, because my professor doesn't want it to appear that he's not mentoring me properly.
**** Apart from the conversation where he laid down these ground rules, I saw my professor twice a month and got one word answers from him, so he arguably wasn't mentoring me at all.
* Go to my professor about proposing my thesis
* Professor puts me off
* A month later, professor tells me that I'm so focused on technical advances that I should have been an engineer instead of a scientist, so why don't I consider mastering out after finishing out my year on the training grant? (It's November, grant runs until the following August, it looks bad for them if they terminate someone mid-year.)
> wut? <
* After asking around, I find out that he's in a funding squeeze. I haven't proposed yet and my project is not directly relevant to his grant, so he's forcing me out.
** I also get a super creepy vibe from him, to the extent that I don't trust he'd give me a Master's even if I did play ball and attempt to get a 5 year Master's with him.
* I talk to the graduate student wrangler and he swings me into another lab where I have to totally restart my research progress.
> wasted 3 years. fml <

These stories aren't even the worst part, though.

[BerenTebogo]

Not entirely true, unfortunately. I would still have to form a master's thesis committee and write a master's thesis, which I'd have to defend. They might even require I stay another semester to do so, in which case I probably should have just left.

My previous advisor situation was basically:
* Join lab at the end of my first year
* Handed incredibly ambitious experimental project that experts in the field say might be possible (bilateral electrophys recordings from a specific brainstem nucleus that has like 100 cells in neonatal rats)
* Yaay, I get to do science! Lets figure this out!
* 3 years later, with a 6 month training trip to Europe, endless finger-sized rats, days in lab, and dozens of technical hurdles jumped, I have finally gotten it to work.
** During this time, I was forbidden from asking anyone who has experience doing this kind of experiment anything because the professor is paranoid.
*** I was also forbidden from asking anyone at our university who has experience recording from living animals about anything, because my professor doesn't want it to appear that he's not mentoring me properly.
**** Apart from the conversation where he laid down these ground rules, I saw my professor twice a month and got one word answers from him, so he arguably wasn't mentoring me at all.
* Go to my professor about proposing my thesis
* Professor puts me off
* A month later, professor tells me that I'm so focused on technical advances that I should have been an engineer instead of a scientist, so why don't I consider mastering out after finishing out my year on the training grant? (It's November, grant runs until the following August, it looks bad for them if they terminate someone mid-year.)
> wut? <
* After asking around, I find out that he's in a funding squeeze. I haven't proposed yet and my project is not directly relevant to his grant, so he's forcing me out.
** I also get a super creepy vibe from him, to the extent that I don't trust he'd give me a Master's even if I did play ball and attempt to get a 5 year Master's with him.
* I talk to the graduate student wrangler and he swings me into another lab where I have to totally restart my research progress.
> wasted 3 years. fml <

These stories aren't even the worst part, though.

God damn, not to go all Captain Hindsight on you, but were the GIGANTIC red flags not a sign that maybe you should have dropped that project and switched advisers?

I definitely agree that you should have peaced out when you could have, especially after reading some of those, but damn. I also see why you're reluctant to pretty much do the exact same thing as before - trash years of work and leave with nothing.

You should look deeper into Masters reqs. Did you have to pass qualifying exams for your PhD program? Present general exam? Most programs won't just let you do your own thing for 6 years without some checks in the middle. Those checks can effectively serve as Masters reqs depending on the program, you may not have to write a thesis at least.

PhD is at discretion of adviser and committee and is scrutinized highly as it is a new contribution to the field as a whole. If you have passed core classes and have done years of work your adviser, technically, should not be able to do jack or shit to stand in your way, but you should be prepared to go above his head faster than be can blink. Thinly veiled threats can grease wheels pretty well if need be, especially if he is paranoid and in a funding freeze. "Methodology gets leaked all the time, weird huh?"

Overall sounds like you went from one cock to another, and I highly suggest not devoting any more of your life to them unless you are 100% sure it is what you want out of life. If it isn't, stop giving them an option to say no or put you off. Heads and chairs of departments may be interested to know why lab heads are cockblocking more than qualified candidates from properly graduating. Again, masters are (generally) not at the discretion of your adviser, they are not solely research based. I would be SHOCKED to find that there was not a base course credit + paper or talk + test procedure that is rubber stamped.

[kuronosan]

Ugh so they had to give astyla a spinal for her procedure. Yay for waiting 2-4 hours before discharge since she can't feel her legs.

Eek. Are they doing a CSF analysis?

[Melena]

I don't remember what the exact medical term is but they did a biopsy plus plant a iud in her. It seems her previous woman's doctor was not very bright as this new one mentioned a few things that should have been noticed on previous visits

[Aksannyi]

Ugh, women's health issues are tricky and it's so hard to find someone you can trust in that regard. Hoping the IUD works as well for her as mine has been for me. I haven't had a period since August. Sending period-free wishes your way.

[Byrthnoth]

I would be SHOCKED to find that there was not a base course credit + paper or talk + test procedure that is rubber stamped.

There's no such procedure, and there's a "Master's research credit" requirement (formally defined as a class code), which is different than the PhD research credit pseudo-class. The only thing I don't know is whether my PhD research credit pseudo-class would count towards the Master's requirement. If it does, and I can get a Master's committee together that's willing to put me out, I'd be fine and it would essentially be a paper + rubber stamp procedure. If it doesn't, I'd potentially be stuck here for another semester or the summer.

Also yeah, it's all incredibly obvious in hindsight. Heck, it should have even been obvious at the time. Two postdocs told me within a year of joining the lab that I should switch to a different lab because my adviser sucked shortly before they each abandoned the lab themselves. I was just putzing along doing hard experiments and trying to make things work, and it felt normal because that's approximately how graduate school had been described to me. If I had stayed in the lab and actually been supported, my PhD would have probably generated a single, high-impact publication.

It really didn't help that we were in a completely insular environment, way apart from any other mentor/mentee relationship that I could have used as a basis of comparison. My wife's mentor/mentee relationship was similarly dysfunctional, with the difference being that she was doing modeling with a well established system (since the 80s) so there was quite a bit less technical innovation required.

[Astylla]

Eek. Are they doing a CSF analysis?

No not that just this style anesthesia was recommended due to how much they had to do with my uterus and cervix. Basically needed several biopsies of tissue very deep in , had to place an IUD for hormone therapy to help fight against cancerous cells should they turn from abnormal to cancerous and the progesterone from the implant helps build healthy tissue.

Also because mine is an abnormal shape , I also am needing to get an MRI done to confirm exact abnormalities and an ultrasound of my kidneys soon to ensure the functions are normal.

As usual most people tolerate these procedure well but I don't due to previous trauma and unexplained sensitivity and pain. So this usually done in an exam room at a medical office but I can't take it and black out hence why they required me here.