Questions tagged [interpersonal-issues]
Questions concerning relationships and dealing with problems between people.
464
questions
45
votes
7
answers
11k
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How to explain that I do not want to visit a country due to personal safety concern?
I have been invited to visit a professor in a different country. I am very reluctant to go. The government of this country is currently under investigation by the UN for suspicions of crimes against ...
36
votes
9
answers
15k
views
My adviser wants to be the first author
I am working on a paper after finishing my Masters. I did all the lab research and writing of the manuscript. My professor was only involved to guide me throughout the research and read my writing and ...
1
vote
2
answers
668
views
exam/teaching culture, possible abusive supervisor, research gatekeeping
Apologies for the length, I don't know how to make this shorter. I also don't know where else to turn for advice. :(
I've recently started an MA in what promises to be a brand new humanities ...
1
vote
2
answers
418
views
Polite message for my supervisors who do unfair things that would totally leads me to lose my study [closed]
I am currently working on finishing my PhD thesis. For about 3 years and 6 months of my study, I am suffering from the absence of my supervisors. She always travels for 6 months, sometimes two months ...
8
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Difficulties with behaviour of other PhD students in group
I'm in my first year of a PhD at a top UK university. I am part of a cohort of students, most of whom have come straight from an undergraduate degree and never had any "real-world" experience. I am ...
1
vote
0
answers
285
views
To what extent do doctoral advisors "pick" their grad students?
I am just starting a graduate program in physics. I have read a few posts describing what a PhD student should think about when looking for an advisor, but I have a question regarding the advisor's ...
3
votes
1
answer
698
views
Question on whether I have committed plagiarism (modifying paragraphs from an unpublished document sent as email attachment for PhD thesis)
Background
My colleague and I are both PhD students (My colleague started about 8 months after me) from the same research group (and share the same PhD supervisor) in a UK university. We were ...
11
votes
7
answers
11k
views
Prospective supervisor wants me to do irrelevant videos as a condition for supervision. Can I say yes when I mean no?
This question is the reverse of Dealing with a PhD student reneging on an agreement to appear in social media, in which the student had agreed during interviewing to participate in social media ...
3
votes
2
answers
1k
views
How to deal with bad department chair?
As students we have the right to choose our semester subjects (for the new semester beginning in 2019)
So we went send an email to the department chair indicating what subject we would like to take. ...
3
votes
1
answer
632
views
Supervisor asking me to list a co-author who has literally done nothing [duplicate]
I am in the final stages of writing a paper to submit at an IEEE conference. I am the primary author, in the sense that I did most of the work and most of the writing. I have three other co-authors ...
66
votes
5
answers
16k
views
What can be done about a disruptive classmate?
There is a classmate who repeatedly interrupts the flow of lectures in various ways. We assume he has learning difficulties of some kind due to how he acts and because he has an assistant with him in ...
5
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Supervisor gets PhD student to do his entire job
My master's supervisor delegates most (if not all) of his work to his senior PhD student. Let's name this student X.
X creates all the assignments, midterms, and exams for the courses this professor ...
10
votes
1
answer
665
views
In the EU, how much protection do I have if I report an assault on myself by my department head?
I had a very ugly incident at my corrupt institute (I live in E. EU). In short, I was assaulted by one of the department's heads during my own group meeting on my own grant for daring to "back talk" ...
10
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Is it in the best interest of supervisors that his/her students publish their research results in top journals?
I am a math PhD student in a foreign country. When finishing my papers, my advisor (who is a big name in the field) always proposes me to submit them to a journal. The problem is that so far none of ...
7
votes
1
answer
2k
views
My group members are trying to take credit for the group project that only I worked on. How do I stop this?
Two students (who also happen to be my friends) and I were assigned a fairly difficult (I spent over 40 hours on it) group project.
It felt like they didn't care about the project, and if you looked ...
0
votes
1
answer
198
views
What to do when finding difficulty in resuming study?
Suppose, I completed two semesters and left a university two years ago. I want to resume my study again.
I e-mailed a specific guy in the faculty/department/institute. I need a readmission paper from ...
29
votes
2
answers
8k
views
Etiquette for a female PhD student to reject her male supervisor's invitation to meet outside of work
The role of supervisor is a key role. The relationship between the supervisor and the students should be healthy.
In this context, in India, there is a lot of difference between male and female ...
8
votes
5
answers
5k
views
Could I submit an abstract for a conference prior asking my supervisor permission about it?
I would like to submit an abstract for a poster presentation, I'm just worried that if I tell my supervisor before submitting, she might say I shouldn't do it, because she rarely wants me to be away ...
27
votes
7
answers
15k
views
My supervisor is making me work on something that is not my PhD project. What should I do?
My PhD project is a very little part of a big study that my supervisor is currently running. I am already four months into my PhD and I just have a 3 years position to finish my thesis. So far I haven’...
5
votes
1
answer
1k
views
How do I make the case to regain first authorship?
I am a senior Phd student in a very small lab consisting of me, my PI, and one other graduate student (one year under me). We began at an academic institution working on this paper related to my ...
8
votes
1
answer
2k
views
My supervisor does not want to publish my research
I just graduated from grad school and to say that it has been hell is just a euphemism. My supervisor has been a bully all the time and every thing that I did and didn't please my supervisor was met ...
9
votes
3
answers
1k
views
A potential collaborator and PhD student took a commanding tone with me (faculty) – how should I react?
Background about me
I am an early-to-mid-career teaching-track faculty (four years of cross-curricular teaching experience in engineering) in the USA. I teach courses both at the undergraduate and ...
10
votes
2
answers
3k
views
What can a PI do about a low-performing postdoc?
This is a hypothetical question inspired by a flip side of the situation described here.
Consider a PI on tenure-track position, facing tenure / promotion panel in a few years. The PI has just got ...
29
votes
5
answers
5k
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How do I get over these (possibly sexist) feelings regarding an underqualified labmate? [closed]
Well, this is kind of embarrassing for me and I am judging myself as well.
I have just started my PhD. And there is another woman who has started in the same lab as me. Over the first week, I found ...
37
votes
7
answers
9k
views
1.5 years later, how to make sure unprofessional behaviour by former mentor has consequences?
I was a post doc at a large US university for a year and after took another postdoc position in my home country. My mentor was a tenure track assistant professor. It pretty soon became clear that ...
139
votes
10
answers
45k
views
I slept with my advisor's daughter and she is blackmailing me now. What can I do?
I am doing a PhD in the US. I am in my mid-twenties and will graduate next spring. My advisor was very good and nice to me. He invited me to have dinner at his home many times and then I met his ...
1
vote
1
answer
429
views
How to reconnect a relationship with a professor
Today
I'm currently in my final MSc year, and I have finished working for my thesis. I am under supervision of professor X, which I find myself at ease and actually enjoy what I do. My field is ...
1
vote
1
answer
284
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prospective English doctoral candidate: advice regarding weird relationship with potential advisor
I recently got my BA in English from a top 10 university and am planning on re-applying to the same school's doctoral program this fall. (For personal reasons, I'm constrained to programs within a ...
1
vote
1
answer
215
views
Can a master's student change their mind and look for a different project?
I am a fairly new Master's student (~3 months). A few weeks ago, my supervisor told me to work on project X. I reluctantly agreed to work on X because I was not able to come up with any alternatives, ...
-3
votes
1
answer
422
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Field-dependency of politics and public shaming in academia
I have recently been quite shocked to learn of the blog of an accomplished string theorist, which includes a lot of personal invective against physicists he disagrees with, as well as a lot of non-...
4
votes
2
answers
2k
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How to ask a, probably angry, PhD supervisor for a letter of recommendation after graduation from uni?
I was on good terms with my PhD supervisor throughout my studies. After graduation, I gave a talk at a symposium and my PhD supervisor was in the audience. I was planning to add a few sentences of ...
64
votes
10
answers
31k
views
Telling PhD supervisor I published a paper about my thesis without telling them or listing them as authors?
I am in my 3rd year of PhD. In my program, it is a requirement for PhD students to graduate with a paper that is published in a Scopus Index journal.
Before I entered, and during my PhD, I had ...
25
votes
4
answers
8k
views
As a student, how can I negotiate comfortable and appropriate sleeping arrangements with a stranger for a conference?
I'm an undergraduate student that was offered a role researching for a grant. I was able to get authorship status on a paper and will be attending a conference for it later this year. The professor I ...
66
votes
8
answers
18k
views
While showing my work to my supervisor, an adult website appeared. Am I in trouble?
I will try to make this brief. I am a student at a prominent university in the UK, and while I was showing my thesis work, a website, to my supervisor, the website crashed. Then I was asked to close ...
16
votes
7
answers
9k
views
How to deal with sources whose authors I don't have good relationship with?
I used to have a good relationship with an author, but now it's broken. However, my work is heavily based on the work of that author, and I'm not sure if citing it without informing them is OK here. ...
3
votes
3
answers
607
views
How to avoid personal issues interfering with my Ph.D. studies?
Background
My life had (and still has) difficult problems (chronic disease and its consequences: social isolation, anxiety, having to take extra measures to take care of my health...). As a ...
71
votes
13
answers
36k
views
Dealing with a PhD student reneging on an agreement to appear in social media
Inspired by this question, I have a similar but somehow different problem.
I recently assumed a tenure-track position. One of my strategies for a visible start is to have a strong presence in social ...
2
votes
2
answers
245
views
Rescinding or deferring admission over a break up
I have a full ride for a grad program at a good school
I've recently gone through an awful breakup with a girlfriend of 7 years
I now want to take an extra year before going to school, for many ...
9
votes
2
answers
394
views
Do I need to explain my reasoning when choosing between two offers
I have been lucky enough to have been offered different professor positions in different universities. Both departments have made a lot of efforts to try and convince me to choose theirs (who gets ...
36
votes
10
answers
12k
views
Is passion a must-have for a Master's student?
When I was accepted to become a Master's student, I had virtually no experience in the topics that my supervisor wanted to work in. Lately I've been catching up on background knowledge (I've been in ...
13
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Toxic colleague talks about me to Professors
I am a PhD student with a very difficult colleague - someone I thought was just socially inept, and rude. I was always friendly, giving her the benefit of the doubt, even though she offended me and ...
47
votes
11
answers
25k
views
How can I avoid inadvertently offending my female peers and getting into trouble for it?
Attention has been drawn recently to an incident that occurred at a scientific conference and its sequelae described in this article:
The fuss started when [Prof. X] and [Prof. Y] ended up in the ...
36
votes
5
answers
4k
views
Improving work conditions of student assistants, PhDs, Postdocs etc
I have been following threads on this website for a few months now. However it's my first time posting. I am a postdoctoral researcher from a Western European country who has done reasonably well ...
0
votes
1
answer
175
views
Improve my relationship with this professor?
When applying to graduate school, I didn't asked for a letter of recommendation from a professor who offered one.
Now I have a course with him and he seems to avoid me. How I can fix my relationship ...
7
votes
3
answers
305
views
Negotiating boundaries with a conflict avoidant advisor
My PhD advisor is someone who values workplace/personal life boundaries. Sometimes I feel that he gets mad at me for accidentally crossing those boundaries in small ways. The problem is that he doesn'...
15
votes
3
answers
6k
views
Problem with undergraduate research supervisor, how to proceed?
Setting
I am currently an undergraduate student in chemistry and I have recently started working on an undergraduate research project in a known laboratory in the US. I am very passionate about the ...
53
votes
8
answers
28k
views
Is talking to a professor about personal issues acceptable?
I've been struggling a lot recently with stuff thats been going on, I'm in therapy and receiving help but I'm still having a really hard time. I have a professor who's always asking if I'm doing okay ...
12
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Rules for notifying co-authors about re-presenting a project at a conference
I am a PhD student in molecular biology & bioinformatics in Australia. I have previously presented one of my projects as a poster at a conference. This was sent for review to all co-authors, ...
117
votes
15
answers
30k
views
How to react when encountering students who have previously failed my course?
Context: I am an assistant professor of mathematics at a small liberal-arts college in the US.
I did my graduate work at a large public university, and there I rarely encountered students who had ...
48
votes
4
answers
9k
views
Withdraw manuscript from peer review after finding a major error
I just received a major revision decision (1st round) for a manuscript I submitted to a reputable journal. After looking into one of the reviewer's comments I found a major error in my analysis. The ...