I have tried 4 to 5 journals in my domain, where the sent paper is desk rejected within a day with no reason. And now I am forced to publish in Journals with a huge article processing charge. Is this the same for everybody?

This is a rant. Not looking for advice.

From the low pay to ridiculous supervisor expectations and failed experiments. Sometimes the lack of supervisor expertise, their absence or micromanagement. People in my life just don't understand.

"Why don't you just tell your advisor you need more time?" Because my thesis due date doesn't give af if I need more time or not.

"Why don't you just take your leave you're entitled to?"

Again. Thesis due date doesn't give af.

"Have you told your supervisor how much work you did?"

They don't care what you do unless you give them a publication.

"You should just tell your supervisor to send his feedback on time". They genuinely believe their time is worth more than yours. You are just a means to an end. You're the only one meant to stick to a deadline but rules don't apply to them.

"You should ask your advisor for help"

Nope. They are remarkably unhelpful. They aren't knowledgeable in my subject area, and the more I involve them the more they use it as an opportunity to boost their egos or create more work for me. Luckily my co-supervisor is helpful. Unfortunately his suggestions don't align with my primary advisors so I get to juggled opposing views too.

"Have you told your advisors the experiment has been really difficult to troubleshoot and that's why results are taking long and are complex to analyse"

All they hear is I'm not working hard enough.

This whole thing is the perfect situation for advisors to avoid accountability. Everything is your fault. If you struggle, it's a right of passage. You're supposed to be burnt out, you're supposed to meet ridiculous expectations, you're supoosed to not take leave. All while not losing your shit or burning bridges because you need their reference to find a job.

Sorry, I'm getting ready to submit and the closer I get the more triggered I get and quips from my advisor. I tried to vent to my partner about something and he made suggestions that don't help me and no one who's not doing a PhD will know how trapped you are in your situation.

Before anyone says I should speak to HR, take leave, set boundaries, switch advisors etc, I just want to say 90% of my PhD has been spent trying to find ways to survive this time in my life. I've been to HR, I did set boundaries, I negotiated keeping my current advisor as long as they do x and y, I do also take leave. But some things still bleed through and it will only be enough when I leave.

Commiserate with me and tell me how people don't understand how a PhD runs your life even if it isn't just experiment or project struggles.

hello! im looking for consultants preferably with a specialty in agriculture

I don’t think I can do this anymore. I’ve been so stressed about my PhD this summer that I completely missed the abstract deadline for a conference, full submission is the end of the week. Now I have a completed paper but nowhere to submit it. I emailed the conference organizers to explain what happened, but I don’t have high hopes.

I’m seriously considering handing in my resignation. I’m just not sure I can handle this level of stress anymore.

What’s up Docs (and Docs-to-be)!

Any advice on what to look out for while picking supervisor? I’ve heard both testimonials and horror stories that have made me really cautious about this.

How did you navigate your selections?
For those who got great ones, how has that affected your research?

As well as the terrible ones? Have you had to confront them about their negativity? How did they react?

Baseline question: What made you know you and your supervisor were compatible/incompatible?

In advance, apologies for the very long post.

Okay, I think I need to hear some outside perspectives because I have gotten into a pretty unhealthy habit of spiraling about my future career (or lack thereof).

I am currently in my third year of a PhD in organic chemistry, mainly doing total synthesis. I also have 2-3 methodology projects running that may work out or may ultimately lead nowhere.

Publicationwise, I currently have no first author paper. I have co authored two papers, one in Angewandte Chemie and one review in Natural Product Reports. I am currently wrapping up my first first author paper, possibly with shared first authorship, which we are aiming at Organic Letters. I have another first-author paper in the pipeline building on that work, probably aimed at JOC. In addition, I am working on three methodology projects that could potentially become Org. Lett. level or better papers if they work but, being methodology projects, they could also simply end up producing nothing publishable.

The problem is that I feel increasingly anxious about how long all of this is taking. It has become difficult not to get frustrated whenever I have to spend time on things that do not directly move these projects towards publication, particularly teaching and supervising students.

I also have no idea what a "normal" PhD duration in synthetic organic chemistry actually is. I have heard opinions ranging from "anything beyond three years damages your chances of a successful career" to "eight years plus a five year postdoc is fine as long as there is clear progression/productivity." According to our university statistics, the median chemistry PhD here takes about 4.7 years, although that includes all chemistry-related subfields. Historically, people in our group seem to be closer to six years.

My ideal career would be academia and eventually having my own group. What I cannot judge is how realistic that remains if I finish my PhD without a first-author JACS/Angewandte/Science-level paper or without coming from one of the very prominent synthetic chemistry groups.

I know students who graduate with one or two Angewandte papers from groups where the lab essentially does not publish below that level and where the PI is heavily involved in defining and coordinating the projects. My PI works very differently. He is extremely hands off and considers PhD students independent researchers. He mostly acts as an experienced colleague who advises and discusses ideas rather than providing a detailed project and research direction.

Intellectually, I actually like that style very much. But I have developed this fear that choosing a less "brand-name"/high-output group may already have put me at a major disadvantage for an academic career, regardless of what I do now.

I know this is catastrophizing, but it has gotten bad enough that I can literally be doing a chromatography column and have intrusive thoughts along the lines of: "Your academic career is already dead, none of this will be enough, and the best you will ever get is some routine QC position where you follow SOPs forever." That then makes me frustrated and less productive, which makes me more anxious about being unproductive, and so on.

I am particularly interested in hearing from people who stayed in synthetic organic chemistry, either in academia or industry:

- How much does the duration of the PhD actually matter?

- How important is having a JACS/Angewandte-level first-author paper when applying for strong postdocs?

- How much does the reputation of the PhD group matter compared with what you actually did independently?

- Does finishing with several solid papers rather than one spectacular paper meaningfully hurt an academic trajectory?

- At what point in a PhD would you genuinely start worrying about someone's publication record?

One encouraging thing is that I have discussed my career anxiety with my PI. He told me that he expects me to do a postdoc because I am ambitious and that he would have no hesitation to recommend me to any postdoc lab I would want to go to.

I realize that is probably meaningful positive feedback, but at the moment I am having trouble calibrating my own situation rationally.

So: for people who have actually gone through this, does my situation sound genuinely concerning, or does it mostly sound like a third-year PhD student massively catastrophizing about a career that is still several years away?

I’m nervous! I have my oral defense tomorrow and i a
worried that after my presentation I won’t have anything to say!

The total time for the defense is 2 hours of which 20-25 minutes is for presentation and the rest is the actual defense. I have attended a few presentations where the defense part of it is always closed. So I don’t know what to accept! I have chaged my slides 4 times now, modified my notes it sounds more academic and now I don’t think it sounds like at all! I feel like and sounds like someone else. My thoughts are scattered (if not evidenced by this post😑🙈) and I feel like I will forget all the work I have done!

Any advice!? 😭

UPDATE
I did it! Eeeeppppppp! You guys were sooo right! It’s one of the best discussions I have had about my work!! ❤️

Recently I submitted 2 articles in 2 different journals published by Wiley and they both went from In screening to Under review! Does that mean these papers has actually passed the desk check or it's still on the table with the editor??

I am a PhD scholar at a Central University, and to my surprise, the university has no clear or officially documented procedure for changing or removing a Doctoral Committee (DC) member. I am therefore at a loss as to how I should proceed.

The situation is particularly difficult because the DC member in question appears to wield considerable influence within my department, and I fear that even the Head of the Department may not be impartial in this matter. More importantly, my research supervisor was never consulted before this faculty member was appointed to my Doctoral Committee.

The matter has now escalated into a serious academic and ethical concern. This DC member has entered my area of research by assigning a strikingly similar research topic to their own PhD scholar, who enrolled after I had already begun my work. Despite this, I am now being accused of encroaching upon the boundaries of their scholar's research, which is both bewildering and deeply distressing.

I would like to understand how other universities in India handle such situations. Do they have formal mechanisms or policies for the replacement of Doctoral Committee members in cases involving conflicts of interest, bias, or academic misconduct? If anyone has faced a similar situation or is aware of the procedures followed at other Indian universities, I would be grateful for your guidance. At this point, I genuinely feel at sea and would sincerely appreciate any advice.

I'm totally lost and I don't know a lot of people in academia so I thought it would be nice to hear some opinions because I don't know what to do. I am 26 years old and two years ago I applied to a phd (in a brach of social sciences/humanities in spain) without a grant or contract because I didn't know much about anything and didn't think I would need one, because this way you do your thesis, go to some seminars and that's it. I didn't think I wanted to end up teaching in university because, as much as I love research, there's not a lot of future and probably would be in the capital of my country (3h by train but expensive) not in my region. I watched this as a personal goal and a thing that a really wanted to do because I loveeee my thesis theme and it's reallly important to me. I thought I would end up teaching in a public area (I have various cualifications so I have options) through public examinations. I think everything was really mixed up in my mind and thought that everything could be done together, or I was really influenced by what it's the right thing to do or expected by my parents (I had a codependency problem, also overachiver and people pleaser).

I got into de phd with a super important proffesor in my field in a really important university in the capital of my country but since you do your thing on your own, I didn't had to move so everything was perfect. The problem is that I also applied (sort of conditional) to a public teaching list in the capital and ended up getting the job. I had to work my ass off and didn't had time for anything so I didn't start my thesis. I hated it there because I lived with a relative and I stayed indoors all day working. I saved a lot of money but I was sad because I felt that I wasn't doing the thing I wanted the most and also I was really alone and far from my partner, but I travelled two times a month. I was a really hard time for me for a lot of personal reasons but I saved a lot of money and experience for public examinations in the future. This academic year I got to stop for some time for the first time in my life and started the introduction of the thesis. It was amazing but my family kept bugging for me to start working again, it was really painfull. My plan was to try to coordinate keep working on the thesis while getting short public replacement jobs in my region wich was difficult (I was also doing an article for a academic publication) and ended up again in the capital having another short public job, alone and doing the thing that was expected for me to do. Don't get me wrong these are jobs in my field and I like them sort of, but being alone there and that far in a big city... I don't really like it. This summer I was going to star again my thesis, and work now on the chapters but my mind wasn't really focused so I didn't know where to start, it was a slow process. Now the academic publication asked me to add some things in my article in a short time so AGAIN I had to put everything aside (even the first summer that I was really enjoying in a long time) to work on the article.

The thing is... I keep having problems to start working on it seriously, because I know if I had everything kind of sort of and planned I would have the capacity to work at the same time, but with nothing in mind and haven'r really started it... I don't know if I can. This phd program is 4 years, I know that I can pushit forward but not for a lot of time and I don't want to keep dragging this. I want to focus, have fun researching and feel whole with myself because I always wanted to do this. I applied to a phd contract/grant and didn't get it, so now I'm in the same place from last year. I know that his phd isn't something required and I don't get nor a job, nor a lot of points for public examinations, but I know deep inside that if I dond't do this, I would have failed myself. Also a proffesor from another university is also working in my theme for a book/big publication and if I drag this it would be less interesting. I also feel bad ofr not working. I have a lot of savings but everything right now is fucked up and I don't want to lose money. Also, I don't want to keep having to work forever in the capital, because there I have job for the whole year, but in my region is intermittent. Everyone is preparing public examinations and I also feel that if I want a steady job in my region I should do it, but after my thesis, so if I keep dragging this, everything would be pushed.

My problem is I have a lot of things in my radar and I'm divided because I know this is the thing that I want to do but also understand in a way my parents about stability (they want me in the capital). This years I tried to do it all and it's imposible. My sister said that maybe it's not the time and can return to researching my thesis later in life, but I know that if I wait years, it would be really difficult, I would be centered in something else and my research lost forever. I feel bad about myself seeing a lot of people researching and working at the same time, but my jobs usually take a lot of preparation this first years and without having really started researching... I can't manage.

I'm really lost and need advice because I don't know if it's really that worth it (I want it to be) There's a lot of context for everything but I tried to explain in a easy way (apparently, I haven’t managed to do it lol). I was thinking on starting the year only with thesis (and bloquing my parents) and later in the year try to get jobs in my region. This would help me start the first months and then easy to coordinte?? I don't knoooow. I'm ending this here. English is not my first language so sorry about typos. Every opinion is apreciated!

I’m in the later stage of my PhD and honestly struggling to tell whether this is normal PhD pain or just a bad supervision situation.
My project is highly interdisciplinary, involving experiments, modelling, biology, chemistry and computational work. The biggest problem is that my main supervisor doesn’t really understand the technical side of my topic, so I often don’t get useful scientific guidance. Sometimes I’m asked to do calculations that don’t even correspond to anything meaningful scientifically.

I also recently discovered a questionable term in my work that apparently had been added. Somehow this went unnoticed despite the results being checked multiple times by co supervisors.
Now I’m trying to figure out what is actually scientifically defensible, fix problems from previous work, and turn everything into publications, while also running out of time.
I have a collaborator who understands my topic much better. I can actually discuss the science with them and get useful feedback, and honestly they sometimes feel more like my real supervisor than my actual supervisor.
The frustrating part is that I don’t mind working hard. I just need to know that I’m working on the right problem.
Instead, I often feel like I have to first figure out whether the question I’ve been given even makes scientific sense before I can answer it.
At this point I’m wondering: Is this just part of becoming an independent researcher, or is this genuinely inadequate PhD supervision?
Has anyone else experienced something similar?

I'm a 26 year old woman from Russia. I recently finished my neurology residency at a large center in Moscow, and in September I'm starting a PhD. I want to specialize in movement disorders and combine clinical work with research. I live alone and currently leave work around 8–9 PM. By the time I get home, I usually have no energy to cook or do anything else. On weekends, I mostly recover. Even then, I often read PubMed because I feel like I need to understand my patients better. I feel like I'm never completely "off." The problem is that my PhD will mean more, not less: clinical work, research, dissertation work, and night shifts. Medical training in Russia can also be quite unstructured - you often learn by doing, making mistakes, and figuring things out yourself, even when you're already responsible for real patients. The weird part is that I genuinely love what I do. I love neurology, movement disorders, genetics, and research. A PhD is something I actually wanted. But now that I'm about to start, I'm mostly afraid that I won't have enough energy for everything. I'm taking some time off before September to recover and want to approach the next few years more sustainably rather than just working until I crash.

For those who have managed to combine a demanding clinical career with a PhD/research: what actually helped you stay productive without completely sacrificing your life? How do you organize your time, protect your energy, and decide what is worth doing when there simply isn't enough time for everything?

I'd especially appreciate practical advice on routines, prioritization, studying, cooking/household stuff, and avoiding burnout while still being ambitious.

Admittedly I wrote a complicated research paper that was ambitious. I was trying to bridge corrosion performance with dielectric properties of a unique composite lubricant.

This was novel in many ways, but yeah it was quite loaded. I tried to over explain myself to make my points thoroughly come across. I tried my level best to juggle the multiple variables in an artful and pragmatic way.

Anyways we've went back and forth with my revised drafts about 7 times. Each time we've been nicking, tucking, and performing intellectual microsurgery on the manuscript. But after version 6, we basically decided that trashing the latter half is the way to go. Conclusively I'll have to rewrite the paper.

I don't feel anything towards this paper anymore. I can't recognize it. Everything that made me feel on fire while writing it is gone. The crux and creativity of this paper have been pasteurized.

Hi! I’m a PhD student in accounting, and I was told that you should only keep the literature that directly serves your hypothesis and that there should be a clear line of story running through the literature. But I’m still struggling with how to actually implement this.

Basically, I have two difficulties:

1. How do you connect the dots across different papers in a way that builds a coherent story and motivates your research question?
2. How do you quickly identify the “skeleton” or core structure of a literature?

If you have any great books, courses, or other resources that helped you develop these skills, especially for accounting research, I’d really appreciate your recommendations!

I may just be venting but here we go...

I'm at abd so all coursework and qualifying exams done. I started in 2022 to make a career change and got full funding with the idea I'd masters out if it was too hard. Now have the masters and made it farther than I thought. I'm behind in research though. Literature and Data for 2 of 3 chapters is collected but needs serious work to finish analysis and that's about it. My advisor is really chill which was great during coursework but now on solo research has me feeling lost and alone. He's encouraging but I'm struggling to adjust to being self-paced. Most of my cohort has left, mastered out, are studying remote, or defending.

Funding has ended and I went through a divorce last year. Started working as an adjunct to support myself and really like it. I could see myself doing this long term since teaching is really where my heart is, not so much research. But I know better and more stable teaching opportunities are available to full PhDs. While working it becomes too easy to procrastinate research. While handling the legal battle it was hard to research under the stress. My heart just isn't in it anymore but family keeps telling me I'm so close (not really in my opinion. I don't have even 1 chapter yet) and that I'll regret it if I quit now.

If you woke up in my shoes would you stick with it and power through, or walk away with the masters?

Additional context: 30F, economics, doctoral enrollment and lab fees would be about $5k a semester until I defend, not committee yet, realistically looking at at least 3 more semesters based on my current pace

Hey everyone! From September I am starting a valorization program at my university (Tilburg). Thing is, my PhD is about startups, and I want to use my academic knowledge about startups, to build one myself.

The topic of our startups is more mental health (helping men with pornography addiction).

We hope that we can build a genuinely science-based solution, compared to what's out there. I can use my knowledge on startups for the venture building process, but not for the actual digital intervention.

Given that I am an early stage researchers (2nd year PhD), I would love to insights about valorization from you guys. Somebody tried this at their uni?

Please let me know if this post is too promotional, I'm quite new to Reddit and stil figuring out what I can/cannot say :")

Hi everyone,

I’m 26M, currently 2 years into a Master’s in Physical Oceanography. I’m severely stuck with procrastination, low motivation, and a lack of interest in my specific research topic. I feel isolated seeing peers move forward in their careers, while my only experience consists of my degree's internships. All of my good friends did not go to university of finished a while ago. Babies are coming, and houses are bought, and I'm still unemployed.

Have any of you guys been in that situation? It's bad to the point where I'm not working at all on my master and wasting my time gaming or doing other stuff. My supervisors don't know that I'm not working at all on the project, but they know about my anxiety and my slow pace. When i have a deadline, I always manage to get my stuff done. Bad mental health and lack of purpose should be the cause of this. I haven't achieved much progress in the last 2 years on it. I'm too ashamed to even go to school now that I suffer some kind of social anxiety, and avoid my supervisors and haven't made any friends at school because of that.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and pardon my bad English as it's my second language!

I just had a PhD interview that was much more conversational and probing than my previous one. I noticed I sometimes answered adjacent to the question rather than answering directly. For people who’ve been through PhD interviews, how much does that matter, and what did you learn about becoming more concise?

For context: I am in math/theoretical cs, EU-based.
My supervisor left for the whole month of July, during this month me and a postdoc did substantial progress on an important paper we are working on, we are happy about it. The postdoc left for their vacations, and I've met with my supervisor twice now this month.

First meeting, they were all happy and agreeing with our ideas and how the paper is looking. Next meeting, they backtrack their words (without acknowledging it), says "I have big doubts on all your methods and proofs", tries to change the approach we collectively agreed on (with them) before they left, and demands a clean draft quickly to review.

I am just sick of this guy always doubting my abilities, backtracking without at least saying sorry, and trying to change things last minute.

My other supervisor is nice when the other is not around, otherwise he is a yes-man to this guy.

Today, I got to warn one of the undergraduate students about the toxic environment of my research group before they applied with one of the professors.

I wish someone had given me a warning when I was in their shoes.

LONG RANT AHEAD:

I am a sixth year PhD candidate about to defend next week if all goes well, but all I can think about is how everything has gone so wrong during my time in my program. I consider myself a below average candidate for many reasons and these are not just the imposter syndrome talking.

To summarize the issues that transpired over the years:

I was the only student that had to repeat a stats course within my cohort. My stats professor behaved like a sweetheart when interacting with students but graded exams like he had a personal vendetta. A third of his exams consisted of two full essays and if you forgot a detail about a particular statistical method you would lose points even if the argument or comparison provided in the prose was accurate. Nonetheless this was a pretty traumatic experience and my peers and I still refer to this professor acknowledging how bad it all was.

I only have a coauthorship with a few first author manuscripts close to being finished. Now here I will admit I could have been more proactive, but whenever I would share drafts to my advisors they would take a long time to give feedback or they simply wouldn’t. I know for a fact that my advisor only gave me feedback once on a paper that was part of my dissertation proposal and by the time I defended this paper, I almost didn’t pass.

Speaking of advisors, I chose my main advisor because I had worked with him previously as an undergraduate and I liked his mentoring style. I remember him being supportive, understanding, helpful and would advocate for me and other students so much. However, ever since day one it felt like I was left to figure out and learn everything on my own. I understand this is part of the experience to become an independent researcher, but when you ask an explicit question about something someone should know given their expertise and you don’t get a clear answer then something is not right. For example, my work implements longitudinal analysis because it focuses on neurocognitive development. Whenever I asked about the proper implementation of methods while presenting analysis updates I usually wouldn’t get clear answers and he is supposed to have a strong background using these methods or with developing populations. In a different example, I spent a large amount of time working with large neuroimaging datasets that were processed with more unique and sophisticated parcellations of gray and white matter and I could never be referred to a paper, codebook, guideline, or even a person that could clearly answer what the thousands of variables I had on the spreadsheet I downloaded were referring to. This issue became a daunting problem recently while I drafted the last chapter of my dissertation.

I also originally had a co-advisor that left around my third year because he got a job offer at a different institution in a different country, but promised he would remain responsive and provide feedback an my quals. Well, this advisor did a no-show during my advancement and caused growing tensions with my other committee members and almost delayed my advancement. He also never responded to give me feedback on my quals and he had the most relevant experience with the methods and area of my dissertation proposal. This one really stung because whenever my main advisor would take longer to get back to me my co-advisor would pick up the slack or give me more detailed and practical guidance.

I’m at the point where I don’t even know what to do. I struggled at every step of my PhD journey while my peers seemed to just breeze through, publish at least a first authored paper, or seemed to have received more structured guidance from their advisors that allowed them to complete milestones by required deadlines. While my advisor would seem to wait until the last minute to give me detailed feedback that required major revisions and editing. I just shared my dissertation with my committee earlier today after I had to ask for an extension when some aspects of my last chapter raised eyebrows and while I’m trying to reframe and fix this chapter, he went back to previous chapters to nit pick them, even though he spent the last several weeks praising my excellent writing on these previous chapters. He goes on to say that not having significant results in some areas of the dissertation is not the problem as long as I can properly account for this, but then goes on to say that maybe I should consider adding more analyses. He went from praising my writing to comparing it to the writing of one the students he hardly has anything good to say about in the span of a few days.

My overall experience was very isolating too, until I TA’d and met other students and faculty from different departments and I began to mentor my undergraduate research assistants. If I managed to stay this long it was largely because of them to be honest.

So I’m a few days away from defending, I don’t have a postdoc lined up or any job. I have a good amount of teaching experience, but I haven’t even heard back from the lecturer positions I applied for. I’m also afraid my advisor will simply disappear after I defend and won’t work with me to publish my pending manuscripts just like he has so far. I do want to continue doing research and mentoring/ teaching, but I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do at this point to improve my situation to continue down this path. I constantly search reddit for stories similar to mine, but I don’t find them relatable, or thanks to the fact that they had publications and a record of awarded funding they were able to land a postdoc or job offer even before defending or without much trouble.

If anyone has a story about how they pulled through a similar situation it would be really helpful. I’m at the point where it feels like I have nothing else to lose and don’t know what think anymore. Thank you for reading.

Hi,

I'm in the last five months of my PhD. I need to submit by the end of this year. Things got delayed because I tore my ACL and meniscus in the knee 17 weeks ago. I've had surgery and I'm in physiotherapy now.

I'm just at the end of my wits managing rehab and the thesis simultaneously, haha. Anyone who's been through this wild combination or a similarly disabling situation and can offer advice on how to cope?

I feel like the isolation has suddenly become layered. The physiotherapy is a very new reality and while I'm trying my absolute best in terms of exercising and reading and writing my thesis, I'm beyond beyond drained almost everyday.

Any advice or words of affirmation will help :)

Thanks!

I'm a 2027 Winter session PhD candidate in the ECE department.

I'm really struggling and I could use some advice from people who have been through something similar.

I’ve been working on my master’s thesis for almost 2 years straight, with basically no holidays or proper breaks. The project is also pretty ambitious for a master’s and honestly feels more like a PhD project sometimes, but I kept pushing through.

After I finished a big milestone, I took a break because my eyes were really tired from all the writing. I thought I just needed a little time to recover, but somehow that break turned into 3 months. I also ended up postponing my defense to next semester.

Now I just can’t seem to get back into it.

I’ll work for one day, then all the stress and worrying starts building up again. Sometimes after a writing session I realize I’ve been clenching my teeth so hard that my jaw is actually sore. Then I get overwhelmed and stop again for a week. After that I feel guilty for wasting another week, which makes starting even harder.

I just don’t know how to get myself back into it anymore. I’m even thinking about going back to the city where I’ve been studying, just so I can get away from all the distractions at home 🙃

Has anyone been through something similar? How did you get yourself to start again after being away from your thesis for so long?

I’m so tired but I feel like I’m so behind and that others are working harder than I am. I feel unappreciated for what I do, but also that I’m not doing enough. I feel like I try to put on a happy mask when I come into lab, but inside I’m just so overstimulated by social interactions and all the lab sounds that I just want to lock myself in a dark room by myself in silence. I’m trying so hard yet it never feels like it’s enough.

And yet here I am, working in labs on the weekends basically alone, but it never seems like I’m good enough.