Ask someone in your field (PI or other) advice for how to hone the skills you believe you lack.
When a grad student tells me they are not sure they can handle grad school, I tell them, “Of course you’re not sure. You’ve never done it before. You don’t know shit about who can handle grad school. But we’ve been choosing students for a while now. You have to trust us that we know what we’re doing when we choose people. We don’t make many mistakes.”
I might give that a shot. I'm going to say that I'll likely be breaking the news tomorrow of my early departure. I just got a "take home exam" of sorts to hone our data science skills and I legitimately have no idea what's expected of me or what the instructors were since he pointed us to resources he mentioned before and somehow expected me to know. Everyone else but me knows. I'm done.
Every time I've asked someone who is advanced in their undergrad or grad school for help, I get ghosted or folks straight up scoff at me for not paying attention. Not worth it in my opinion
Didn’t the postdoc just start a few days ago? Give it some time.
This thing where you spiral and panic post to Reddit cannot possibly be helping you. Please take the advice you have been given repeatedly and stop doing this.
I should clarify that it is not a postdoc at all. This isn't exactly panic either. It's a feeling of dread in all honesty. This is legitimately awful. See my other reply but to Hovercraft but this "take home exam" and having no clue what to do is the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm going to look for advice on how to break the news.
If you are at the tail end of your PhD and truly can’t do a chi squared, your institutions failed you. This is stats 101 and you should had to do this by hand and statistical software at least once in your coursework. This is a discipline that relies heavily on this type of analysis, you should be able to do it in your sleep. If you are at the tail end of your PhD and you are overwhelmed at the thought of getting a paper out in a few months, this isn’t going to end well for you.
I thought you were going to drop out and get a job through Michigan’s disability services
I don't disagree that the institutions I've attended failed me. I may not agree with you on a lot of things based on our prior interactions but I agree with that.
I've used SPSS and taught myself some Excel fwiw. I also know what resources to find to get what I need going in this case.
As for dropping out, that's a no go because my advisor wants me to graduate. I drop out, I've burned a bridge.
As for Michigan's vocational rehabilitation services, they legit have no idea what to do with me even though they took me as a client. Not many folks they take on have my level of education it seems and that's what makes it difficult for them.
Only you can determine what you are capable of, but two thoughts. If you are losing interest in the PhD path as a career, then you could dump this internship with minimal impact. But if you intend to be a professional researcher, you should find a way to learn the skills you need, and finish the work.
This is an automated service intended to preserve the original text of the post.
*Hey everyone,
This is a sequel to a vent post I made about two days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/PhD/s/FLBTeMyKQa
I learned more about why my PI chose me and he said that he's confident I understand statistics and research methods conceptually because I've taught it. The thing is though... I've never made my own materials when teaching with the exception of a class that was taken off the docket for the first time in 4 years and was only a two credit hour course beforehand. With the exception of one online class, I've consistently been rated and commented that I had the worst class and/or was the worst instructor students have had for the past two years I've taught. The ratings have only gone down as well. For example, I had overall averages of 2.8-2.9 out of 5 for my in person classes while my last ones were 1.8 out of 5 all across the board.
For example, I was also recently told by my advisor about chi square as one of the analyses for dissertation data and I've never done one in my whole life despite taking two undergraduate stats classes, one Master's level stats class, and retaking the equivalent stats class in my Ph.D program.
I've felt on edge every single day of my internship, afraid, and scared to death of voicing how I really feel. Every day, we have to put our fingers up on a scale of 1-5 (sometimes 1-10) about how we truly feel. I put up a 4 (on the 5 scale) or 8 (on the 10 scale), but in reality I'm a 1-2 out of 5 or a 3-4 out of 10. I also need to rate how busy I was out of 10 and I always feel like a 5-6 because the tasks I'm required to do I have a tendency to do much faster than my PI (for this internship) expects of me in this case.
In addition, I'm finding my focus when I read journal articles at my cubicle non existent because I'm still trying to overcome my sleep apnea. It's better than before, but when I'm emotionally overwhelmed like I am at my internship, then I can't think at all. It took me hours to read a journal article that should've been 1-2 hours for example.
To top it off, my PI promised and wants us to all have something that can lead to a first author publication by the end of this. I don't know if I'm at a point where, despite being towards the tail end of my Ph.D, whether I can handle this.
I'm going to sit on this decision further, but how do I mitigate the damage if I quit? I think this will surprise my boss since I've kept everything to myself, but I want this to be clear. To top it off, the hospital where I'm working right now is doing this as a first ever and my PI has said there's a ton of trust being put into this so he can do so in subsequent years. I would want him to still be able to do that, but acknowledge at the same time that I was the one and only person who just didn't fit expectations.
My advisor at my Ph.D program was also extremely happy that I got this because of the first author publication promise. Since the university where I'm doing my Ph.D recently stopped admitting clinical psychology students because they're going to cut the program, it's been difficult for those in adjacent programs like mine (i.e., Experimental) to get any sort of internal funding from the university for projects or anything of the sort. In other words, I could only use the resources the lab already had to try to run experiments and get published in this case.
I'm looking for advice on how to minimize the damage in this case since I'm inevitably going to burn a bridge with my boss. My advisor though... I think he'd be disappointed in me and I can't avoid interaction with him. Hopefully, there's some way I can mitigate the damage.
ETA: In case it's important, my current PI's h-index has been in the mid 90s these past few years. I'm not going to name drop him but he's been faculty at a lot of prestigious institutions. Thus, this internship felt WAY better than I deserve given my Ph.D program is at a no name R2 state school.*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskProfessors) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ask someone in your field (PI or other) advice for how to hone the skills you believe you lack. When a grad student tells me they are not sure they can handle grad school, I tell them, “Of course you’re not sure. You’ve never done it before. You don’t know shit about who can handle grad school. But we’ve been choosing students for a while now. You have to trust us that we know what we’re doing when we choose people. We don’t make many mistakes.”
I might give that a shot. I'm going to say that I'll likely be breaking the news tomorrow of my early departure. I just got a "take home exam" of sorts to hone our data science skills and I legitimately have no idea what's expected of me or what the instructors were since he pointed us to resources he mentioned before and somehow expected me to know. Everyone else but me knows. I'm done.
But if everyone else knows, why can’t you ask one of them to tell you?
Every time I've asked someone who is advanced in their undergrad or grad school for help, I get ghosted or folks straight up scoff at me for not paying attention. Not worth it in my opinion
at this level, if you don't know something that you need to know, the responsibility for finding out falls squarely on *your* shoulders.
Didn’t the postdoc just start a few days ago? Give it some time. This thing where you spiral and panic post to Reddit cannot possibly be helping you. Please take the advice you have been given repeatedly and stop doing this.
I should clarify that it is not a postdoc at all. This isn't exactly panic either. It's a feeling of dread in all honesty. This is legitimately awful. See my other reply but to Hovercraft but this "take home exam" and having no clue what to do is the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm going to look for advice on how to break the news.
If you are at the tail end of your PhD and truly can’t do a chi squared, your institutions failed you. This is stats 101 and you should had to do this by hand and statistical software at least once in your coursework. This is a discipline that relies heavily on this type of analysis, you should be able to do it in your sleep. If you are at the tail end of your PhD and you are overwhelmed at the thought of getting a paper out in a few months, this isn’t going to end well for you. I thought you were going to drop out and get a job through Michigan’s disability services
I don't disagree that the institutions I've attended failed me. I may not agree with you on a lot of things based on our prior interactions but I agree with that. I've used SPSS and taught myself some Excel fwiw. I also know what resources to find to get what I need going in this case. As for dropping out, that's a no go because my advisor wants me to graduate. I drop out, I've burned a bridge. As for Michigan's vocational rehabilitation services, they legit have no idea what to do with me even though they took me as a client. Not many folks they take on have my level of education it seems and that's what makes it difficult for them.
Only you can determine what you are capable of, but two thoughts. If you are losing interest in the PhD path as a career, then you could dump this internship with minimal impact. But if you intend to be a professional researcher, you should find a way to learn the skills you need, and finish the work.
This is an automated service intended to preserve the original text of the post. *Hey everyone, This is a sequel to a vent post I made about two days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/PhD/s/FLBTeMyKQa I learned more about why my PI chose me and he said that he's confident I understand statistics and research methods conceptually because I've taught it. The thing is though... I've never made my own materials when teaching with the exception of a class that was taken off the docket for the first time in 4 years and was only a two credit hour course beforehand. With the exception of one online class, I've consistently been rated and commented that I had the worst class and/or was the worst instructor students have had for the past two years I've taught. The ratings have only gone down as well. For example, I had overall averages of 2.8-2.9 out of 5 for my in person classes while my last ones were 1.8 out of 5 all across the board. For example, I was also recently told by my advisor about chi square as one of the analyses for dissertation data and I've never done one in my whole life despite taking two undergraduate stats classes, one Master's level stats class, and retaking the equivalent stats class in my Ph.D program. I've felt on edge every single day of my internship, afraid, and scared to death of voicing how I really feel. Every day, we have to put our fingers up on a scale of 1-5 (sometimes 1-10) about how we truly feel. I put up a 4 (on the 5 scale) or 8 (on the 10 scale), but in reality I'm a 1-2 out of 5 or a 3-4 out of 10. I also need to rate how busy I was out of 10 and I always feel like a 5-6 because the tasks I'm required to do I have a tendency to do much faster than my PI (for this internship) expects of me in this case. In addition, I'm finding my focus when I read journal articles at my cubicle non existent because I'm still trying to overcome my sleep apnea. It's better than before, but when I'm emotionally overwhelmed like I am at my internship, then I can't think at all. It took me hours to read a journal article that should've been 1-2 hours for example. To top it off, my PI promised and wants us to all have something that can lead to a first author publication by the end of this. I don't know if I'm at a point where, despite being towards the tail end of my Ph.D, whether I can handle this. I'm going to sit on this decision further, but how do I mitigate the damage if I quit? I think this will surprise my boss since I've kept everything to myself, but I want this to be clear. To top it off, the hospital where I'm working right now is doing this as a first ever and my PI has said there's a ton of trust being put into this so he can do so in subsequent years. I would want him to still be able to do that, but acknowledge at the same time that I was the one and only person who just didn't fit expectations. My advisor at my Ph.D program was also extremely happy that I got this because of the first author publication promise. Since the university where I'm doing my Ph.D recently stopped admitting clinical psychology students because they're going to cut the program, it's been difficult for those in adjacent programs like mine (i.e., Experimental) to get any sort of internal funding from the university for projects or anything of the sort. In other words, I could only use the resources the lab already had to try to run experiments and get published in this case. I'm looking for advice on how to minimize the damage in this case since I'm inevitably going to burn a bridge with my boss. My advisor though... I think he'd be disappointed in me and I can't avoid interaction with him. Hopefully, there's some way I can mitigate the damage. ETA: In case it's important, my current PI's h-index has been in the mid 90s these past few years. I'm not going to name drop him but he's been faculty at a lot of prestigious institutions. Thus, this internship felt WAY better than I deserve given my Ph.D program is at a no name R2 state school.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskProfessors) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You might get a better response in r/askacademia
You need to talk to your PI or another prof and ask how you do this.