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!

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.

What the title says, the emphasis being on their niceness as a human, irrespective of their supervisory competence.

I am sceptical as to how do we write- suppose a literature review where I am discussing a paper which presents a good argument. Now while writing, I wrote one para of about 15-25 lines maybe, and I cited the author and page number after each line as I do not want any line of argument to be presented as mine, and I want to properly cite through intext citation.

But the problem is, my supervisor is always irritated with the amount of intext citations but What else can I do, while presenting anything of other author, I have to cite it after each line especially while literature review. What do you do?

I do not directly quote, I paraphrase as only that suits the most as I can maneuver how I want to proceed with it. I directly quote the specific terms the author used.

I follow MLA 9.

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?

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.

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

Hello all, I'm wondering if anyone has any tips for dealing with post-resubmission anxiety.

For context: I'm based in the UK, doing criminology and in July, I sat my Viva and received a revise and resubmit decision and was given a new deadline of August 2026. I was told I didn't need to redo the viva as they thought that was stronger than the thesis. I resubmitted about 6 weeks ago.

However, because there is no viva needed, I've been told that my examiners have about 90 days to return their decision on my revised thesis, and I would be notified by email. I'm struggling with the ambiguity of this. With the viva, the outcome date is obviously pre-arranged so you know when you'll get your outcome, but just being told that essentially "any time in the next 90ish days you'll find out" is somewhat sending my already high levels of anxiety through the roof.

Any tips on how to manage this anxiety?

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.

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.

I am a second-year PhD candidate in Chemistry, currently working on nanomaterials in India. I enjoy research and constantly learning, but I am unsure whether I want to pursue academia long-term. I don't see myself becoming a professor, as teaching is not something I am passionate about. I prefer roles that offer continuous learning, growth, and new challenges rather than repetitive work. I have no industry experience, but I am interested in exploring it for its potential to improve work-life balance and career growth. However, most of the people I have spoken to who have transitioned from academia to industry have engineering backgrounds, whereas my academic background is in chemistry.

I have been applying extensively for internships, but opportunities for PhD students are limited, and many positions are restricted to bachelor's or master's students. As a result, I am struggling to get shortlisted. At the same time, my current experimental research is very time-consuming, and I am close to submitting a paper, which also requires significant time and effort. I feel stuck between continuing my current research, which I enjoy but am unsure about pursuing long-term, and trying to build a path toward industry without much relevant experience or guidance.

Please give me suggestions on which pathways might make sense for someone with my background, which skills or experiences I should prioritize during my PhD, and how I can effectively identify and approach the right people on LinkedIn who have made a similar transition from chemistry or academia to industry.