Hey everyone,
I’m posting here since I’ve messed up my graduate school experience really bad and it recently came to a head. I went through a stint in partial hospitalization earlier this semester, while I still taught at a small liberal arts college (I still have my job there), and now have a treatment plan that me and my doctors must now follow. It’s been immensely helpful, thankfully.
I’m a fourth year Ph.D student in Experimental Psychology who is basically one of the “unicorns” who got in with a questionable academic record (3.3 BS, 3.48 MA GPA and 3.25 years of research experience and one graduate conference poster prior to my Ph.D). Suffice it to say, I didn’t exactly have a good graduate career and who I’ve consulted (career services and even my own advisor) has not helped me in the slightest. Currently, I’m a visiting full time instructor at a SLAC and have a fellowship where I need to teach full time for a year in exchange for funding. I thought this position would give me some spark to get back into the game but it’s done the opposite and made me more jaded. I also have a conference coming up that my advisor wants me to go to despite having a public panic attack at the exact same conference last academic year. This past summer I wasn’t working at all sadly.
Notable “mishaps:” -Waiting on my MA advisor to say something before I did anything (he never even read my program progress reports). I wound up racking up a multitude of “red flags” that I had no idea were a thing by the time I applied to Ph.D programs (low Master’s GPA, C+ grade in a core course that I did not remediate, no additional 10 hours of research or teaching related work in the second year of my program that I could’ve applied for my first Spring semester).
-Despite this, I got an interview at an R1 (got rejected cause I bombed the interview) and accepted at an R2. I feel like I hit my stride my first year of my Ph.D program by getting all As and A-s in my program. However, I was told to work on nothing but my quals project my second year of my Ph.D and didn’t do any additional projects or conferences. My advisor eventually dumps me due to a misunderstanding and I was fortunately picked up as an advisee by the department chair. Although the department chair wanted me to work on additional research projects, this never happened because I couldn’t focus at all. I now know this was due to borderline cognitive functioning assessed via the RBANS. That and the severe autistic burnout I had this past summer meant no additional research projects whatsoever.
I’m in a bind now since I got a competitive fellowship that awarded me $11k and I need to complete a year’s worth of full time teaching as well as graduate with my Ph.D or I have to return the money. Thankfully, I will fulfill those requirements via a visiting instructor position at a SLAC this academic year (which I’m not doing well at all). What could I do post Ph.D that fits within the limits of what I can reasonably do? My CV is only 3 pages and I don’t have much going for me. I’m not eligible to go on disability either but I can get a Schedule A hiring letter at least.
Being brutually honest with myself as well, I would go as far as to say I did everything wrong.
I never did multiple projects, never collaborated with others in the department, and always worked on one major project at a time (even now that’s the case).
Here’s more things that went wrong:
-Not taking additional research assistant experience when I had 10 hour assistantships at the MA level
-Not being mindful in class the first year of my MA program (hence the low overall MA GPA)
-Cs in Spring seminars both years of MA program’s presentations (which gave me a B and B+ in those classes and hurt my overall GPA)
-Accidentally overstated my undergrad research assistant experience as 9 months rather than 3 months due to a misunderstanding on my end, but the programs I applied to took it as is anyway
-Went into an MA program that gave an assistantship without a tuition waiver despite it being thesis based. The reason I did this? That specific program had 80% of students who were interested in a Ph.D program get their foot in the door. I regret this big time since I had a fully funded offer on the other side of the country for a Psychology MA program (no specific subdiscipline) that was more clinical based but it would’ve prevented me from taking out $24k in student loans for just tuition in the Experimental Psychology (now called Psychological Science) program I attended at a well known regional college in the NC state system. It would’ve been only $8k for a Master’s overall if my first year was in-state tuition but it wasn’t. I didn’t learn till after the fact that the admit rate from their program to Ph.D was that high since those students got into R2 Ph.D programs for the most part (which I’m in right now)
-All of the other “notable mishaps” on my old post
Ph.D stuff:
-Not doing well at a visiting instructor position at SLAC (see my other posts on this account if you want to know the details but it’s not necessary to review them)
-Not doing other work outside of my quals project, even though my advisor wanted me to work on it for 7 hours a day and indirectly discouraged me from pursuing additional research or more work. Since it wasn’t like I was being monitored at all, I could’ve done so much more.
-Never collaborating with anyone else and doing one project at a time.
External factors:
-MA program and its awful funding
-COVID (obvious, but needs to be stated since I didn’t have much going for me from 2018 to February 2020 and COVID happened at the same time). Even if I had more initiative, COVID would’ve stopped any additional studies I planned during my MA since in-person subjects were a necessity
-Ph.D program and its awful funding. Got a $14k a year stipend (it was modest given I’m in a low COL rural area in Michigan). This got knocked down to $7k by my third year and I used the whole tuition waiver to pay off the rest of my program. This meant this year wasn’t funded for me and is why I decided to be a visiting instructor at the SLAC.
-MA advisor not really giving me much advice at all and gave me a bit too much freedom to my own detriment that was part of the reason for my currently awful resume and CV
-First Ph.D advisor dumping me over a misunderstanding about lab procedures by the end of the second year of my Ph.D program (this was partially because she knew of the budget cuts coming). She (my first advisor) dumped all projects she wanted to do with me (keep in mind they were submitted to the IRB, but I wasn’t allowed to work on them at the time) after my qualifier project was done and passed. This didn’t happen though and, for the rest of that Spring 2022 semester and Summer 2022, I didn’t work on additional projects with who would by my new advisor until he saw that I passed my qualifier project.
How did someone like me get into an MA and then Ph.D program if I didn’t take much initiative and have bad social anxiety?
I had a career coach help me write and edit materials accordingly so I knew how to sell myself to get in the door. I had an LOR from someone I did RA work in high school, a family friend who was a professor who taught full time, and a graduate student whose stats class I got an A in (my undergrad didn’t do plusses or minuses). I also reached out and contact folks in programs in 2018 by meeting with them virtually via Skype at the time. They looked out for my application. It was difficult for me to do it all on my own. There was also that error for lab experience that worked out in my favor. I also had lab experience my senior year of high school for internship credit and that helped too.
I’m working with this career coach again and have been for over a year now since I originally thought I was going to finish early with my old advisor, but that didn’t happen after the fallout. Thankfully, the career coach was able to help me with remaining professional in the midst of the fallout and not make things worse. Since I recently finished data collection and need to analyze the results soon, I just need to analyze my data, write up everything (Results and Discussion), then defend it hopefully in a couple of months. I haven’t done anything towards it for the past few weeks due to how behind I am in teaching (still) and grading after my stint in partial hospitalization.
For my final thoughts, I know some are going to say Imposter’s Syndrome and that I have more than what I’m giving myself credit for in this case. However, I don’t think that’s the case here. I truly had barriers (both my own and outside of my control) that got in the way and now I’m in a weird position. I definitely wished I didn’t do graduate school or a Ph.D at all in hindsight since I never had Imposter’s Syndrome but was completely and totally out of my depth given all of the outside help (my parents hired a life coach who I’d speak to weekly or as needed since they didn’t want me to take a break from undergrad at all or they wouldn’t support me), mental health that’s only got worse (PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder—Severe), and extremely low productivity on my end.
What can I do to salvage my situation and find work that may be potentially more suited to what I have?
For those wondering, I’m working with a vendor through vocational rehabilitation so they can officially find me jobs and (this is the biggest thing) apply to them for me. I’m meeting them tomorrow to go over the resume, CV, and cover letter they made for me as well as what work would be reasonable for me given my current skillset and level of functioning. I also have a Schedule A letter and am applying for job listings in the social science categories (e.g., Social Science Analyst) for disabled individuals specifically so I don’t need to go through competitive hiring at all.
I’m in the US.
I guess the first question is do you like academia? Or do you like research? The two aren’t always the same. Personally, you couldn’t get me to do a job in academia if you paid me—which is funny because they barely pay anyone! I love research, I love complex cutting-edge stuff, but I hated hated hated academia. I never thrived there. The corporate environment, however, has been my natural space. It may be the same for you—have you tried different types of organisation? I can tell you from experience that research-centric corporate life is much slower paced and more secure than academia, with the downside of less creative freedom during work hours (until you get to mid level).
Honestly more than anything it sounds like you just maybe need a rest. People think a rest is a career-killer but it absolutely isn’t. And even if it was, it’d be much less of one than a burnout is. Maybe take a couple months to decompress—though I understand that financing such a rest is rarely easy.
I do a lot of hiring outside of academia and honestly a lot of your major worries are something I don’t even look at in a CV anyway. Don’t feel like you’d sabotaged or blown anything because you haven’t. Even within Academia, we all have our stuff. You’d be surprised how many well-known academics have had ‘wobbles’ that aren’t public knowledge.
Feel free to inbox me if you need more detailed advice. I’m not US based so unlikely to be useful for specifics, but always happy to hear spitballed ideas :)