My PhD experience was an absolute nightmare. My not-so-super decided to effectively abandon me from the second week of my being in their group. I was told I was smothering them for asking for fortnightly update meetings. I held on to the promise that they were looking for a stipend for me – my bench fees was paid by scholarship – I would suggest various funding calls to them to apply for, which suspiciously, never worked out. In the end I decided to privately tutor students so that I could get by. The funding never did materialise.
At times where not-so-super felt like meeting up, it was with external visitors where not-so-super would attempt to humiliate me in front of them by trying to say my work/data was rubbish. It was never rubbish – they just didn’t know what was going on because they would refuse to come to update meetings. At one point they shouted at me saying, “If this is the kind of scientist you think this university is looking for, you’re wrong. You’ll never amount to anything.” FYI: I filed a patent and published two papers before the end of my PhD, without any of not-so-super’s input. At times they would be perfectly fine to me when speaking to me 1:1 and at others they would follow me into the communal office space and demand I commit to a deadline, “submit this by Monday, I’m not joking”, when we had agreed to a mutually reasonable time not moments earlier.
I complained about the behaviour I was being subjected to higher up in the department I worked in; I was promised that my complaint would be dealt with professionally. Well it couldn’t have been handled too professionally as my not-so-super took me to the person who I complained to (HoD) under the pretense of discussing my project, only to have them verbally confirm if I was the one who complained about them this time (they must have had a lot of complaints). So much for helping a student out!
Still, I persevered and even found a company that was willing to fund me to take my research further – a 3 year post-doc! I couldn’t believe a company was willing to fund my work, I was thrilled and organised for not-so and reps of the company to meet so that all the contractual obligations could be sorted out. Not-so agreed to come to the meeting, but then didn’t show up on the day; the reps travelled 2 hours to my city to hold this meeting…I called not-so, emailed, text, and left voice messages but to no avail – they had switched off their phone. The deal fell through as the company felt that they had been ignored and not met in the middle and so retracted their offer.
An established academic ruined an opportunity for me.
Towards the end of the ordeal, not-so-super fell off the face of the earth so I had to find an alternative senior to sign off my thesis submission. Just to confirm I checked my own thesis before I submitted it, because there was no way my not-so-super was even looking at the chapters I was sending them, let alone reviewing them. Not-so didn’t even know when my viva voce was. I distinctly remember, after I had just been awarded my PhD, my internal examiner told me that an email had popped up on their computer from Not-so, wondering when my viva was. That is how in-the-loop they were.
You would think that is where the ordeal ends, but there is more…
Some time went by and I got called back into the office by Not-so, saying that there was a job offer lined up for me that I needed to come in and sign a contract. Naively, stupidly even, I travelled in to sign it. When I got to the office though, there was someone else sat with them, they explained to me that the actual reason I was there was not to sign a job contract (and that there was no job contract) but because they wanted me to share my analysed data with the person sat in the office so that they could use it to apply for some funding to extend said person’s contract instead.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Of all the utter BS that I had dealt with in the last three years, THIS was the thing that told me I had had enough (at least of this academic, department, and university).