Why do people dislike the resources I've used in the past to get into master's and Ph.D. programs?

Question

I'm an autistic Ph.D student (US, 4.5 years in) who's been active on a fair amount of forums and have received a fair number of negative comments in the past month regarding my academic experience. They are particularly focused on the support I received from my parents due to my neurodivergence so that I could gain admission to graduate programs.

I've had a coach all four years of undergrad, my gap year, during my master's program when I submitted my Ph.D. applications, through my second year of my Ph.D., and on-and-off after that.

I have always had my completed materials in hand before they were reviewed. The official term for that is "copyediting," which is permitted in academic circles to my understanding. All coursework, thesis work, quals work, and my dissertation is all my work. I once hired another copyeditor for my quals, but that was to clean up my writing because my advisor at the time picked that apart a lot.

Here are some examples of responses I've had on forums.

1. Me: “My parents knew my undergrad grades (3.25 overall, 3.5 major psych GPA [US system 4.0 = best, 1.0 = pass]) were poor for graduate school so they hired a coach to help me with fleshing out my personal statement and how I should phrase emails and communication to old contacts and others who I'd eventually reach out to as well.”
   Response: So these are the kind of resources first generation, low/middle class aspiring PhD students are up against? Jesus Christ.

Some other responses to similar posts:

2. There's a difference between accommodations and hand holding. Hell, it sounds like they needed the life coach to get into their graduate programs instead of just using assistance.
   I know so many people who if they were given even half the resources and “accommodations” that OP got, could be much farther along both in their personal life and career. How are we accommodating those people who don’t have the money/parental support to make it to 30 without developing any life skills? It doesn’t seem right to “accommodate” someone like OP when all someone else might have needed was a little bit of financial security and career advice to accomplish more than OP has.
   It’s easy to say “yeah, you deserve all those accommodations and hand outs”. It’s a lot harder when you have to ask if someone else deserved it more.

3. To be blunt, you do not seem to have the qualities that I would associate with getting a PhD and working independently. Your grades, lack of direction and the need to use your parents and life coaches all suggest that you are not likely to do well in any career that requires a self-starter who can work independently.

I am trying to understand the perspective of the people making these negative comments, and if there is anything beneficial that I could take away from them? One of the comments is regarding my independence. I would like to be more independent but don't know how, is there anything I can take away from these comments to improve myself in that regard?

Answer 1

The only useful thing I think you can take away from this is to be careful about how you think about, and present, your privilege. Almost everyone is challenged in some ways (e.g., neurodivergent) and privileged in others (e.g., having access to parental and societal resources). Reminding yourself that you probably have some form of privilege^* (Western, skinny, tall, non-racialized, middle class or above, cis, heterosexual, male, majority religion/culture, English-speaking ...^**) is useful, both for your own perspective and when entering discussions on the internet.

That said, some people will be resentful no matter what you say. The fact that there are other people who have had fewer advantages/more, or different, challenges than you doesn't automatically make you a bad (or even undeserving) person.

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^* people who are truly underprivileged in all categories (e.g., poor females in low-income countries) will probably never even have the opportunity to get into arguments on the internet ...

^** These are examples, I'm not necessarily saying that you check any or all of these boxes or that there aren't other important categories (I forgot to include "parents had access to higher education", although that's correlated with wealth/class ...) ...

Answer 2

I am trying to understand the perspective of the people making these negative comments, and if there is anything beneficial that I could take away from them?

People resent the fact that you had resources that others lack, whether the "others" are the people making the comments, or someone else.

As Ben Bolker points out, everyone is advantaged and disadvantaged in some way. In your case, your disadvantage is your neurodivergence, and your advantage is having parental resources that helped. For other people, it's the other way around: they are neurotypical, but may have little or no support from parents, or be actively harmed by their upbringing or family.

It is very hard to quantify different combinations of advantages/disadvantages, and to say which of the people in my previous paragraph is "more" advantaged or disadvantaged. But people will nevertheless get riled up over things like this. Especially online.

What you could usefully take away from this is an understanding that some people will resent the additional resources you have to cope with your neurodivergence. Depending on your personal level of neurodivergence, you may have a harder time understanding and getting to grips with this kind of emotion your situation arouses in other people, so it might be useful to actively remind yourself about this fact once in a while.

Unfortunately, there is little you can do here. I would definitely not share information about additional resources with just anyone out there. But people you work with over some time will learn about this at some point (I am not writing "will find out" on purpose, because that implies that you were actively hiding it before). Some will be surprised and will accuse you of hiding this. Finding the right point in time and the right circumstance to discuss a topic like this is tricky... and therefore even harder for people with neurodivergence.

One of the comments is regarding my independence. I would like to be more independent but don't know how, is there anything I can take away from these comments to improve myself in that regard?

This is actually already something very good you took away. People very rightly point out that you need to become independent. A Ph.D. essentially certifies that the holder is academically mature enough to conduct independent research. There is again a fine line here: some people definitely profit from a native language proofreader, others may get statistical consulting, or employ a research assistant for the literature search. What is still "independent" in a researcher, and what crosses over into "paying someone to do scientific work for me, without disclosing this later on" is sometimes not easy to disentangle. Plus, of course, most people collaborate with others, which is yet different. To advance academically, you will need to show that you can both collaborate with others and lead a collaboration.

It sounds like this is something you might be able to work on. More importantly, it looks like you have already recognized this, which is good.

It is usually better for an endeavor like this to use outside help and support. Since this is really about your academic maturity and independence, a "general" therapist/counselor may not be of all that much help, unless they have some understanding of how the academic world works. This is absolutely a point where an academic mentor would be indispensable. Your Ph.D. advisor's role already is to prepare you for academic independence, and ideally, they have been doing so from the very first day.

So I would recommend you have a good talk with your advisor, explain to them the issue, and ask for explicit guidance on how to move forward. After 4.5 years, they likely (hopefully) have some understanding of you and your strengths and weaknesses. They may also be able to suggest other people who you could talk to, and/or put you in contact.

This of course presupposes that you have a good rapport with your advisor, which is helpful in any case, but especially so in your situation. If this is an issue, we have lots of threads here on this. And if you feel that your advisor is not the best person to mentor you here, perhaps you have met other more senior academics out there (e.g., at conferences) that you feel more comfortable approaching.

Answer 3

These commenters saw your post and thought "I wish your life coach was taken away" instead of "I wish I also had access to a life coach."

This is not an attitude you will ever please.

However, it's not wrong to want more independence. If working with a life coach or copy editor helps you, you should absolutely continue to do so. In my book, deciding to hire a life coach or copy editor to help with a task, and then managing that hiring yourself is a valid form of independence. When a neurotypical person decides that they need a haircut and goes to a hair salon, no one calls that dependence. It sounds like you may have already made this transition- you talk about your parents hiring a life coach to help you apply for grad school, and talk about hiring a copyeditor yourself to help with quals.