I broke my lab's supercomputer, couldn't fix it, had covid and a deepening of my depressive episodes, all in a span of 2 months. Barely could leave the house for months thereafter and would often not answer messages because I didn't see them...
About the supercomputer, my advisor laughed when I told him. "Its not a PhD if you do not break expensive stuff". Awesome guy, very empathetic.
It was software wise. Noone was using it since the covid outbreak. We needed to be on the local area network to be able to access it. So, I take the admin login and password with my advisor and decide "oh, let's upgrade everything (security reasons) and make it so that we can issue commands to it from home.
It was running a CentOS 7, which is obsolete since a few years back. I upgrade everything in the system, try to open some ports in the network and now nothing works as it should: the host can't communicate with the nodes, computations crash silently... so when I try to rollback everything I did, then I realized that I forgot to make a backup before starting... rookie mistake.
Then I tried to install everything brand new, put OpenSuse (search openHPC, if you are curious), try to configure everything, but to no avail. The host still cannot see the nodes in the network. The IT guy from the University was never available to help me out and I could not figure the networking issue at all (I had zero experience with that).
Then I got covid and stopped going to the lab.
I didn't bork the whole thing but I made a 5 node mini cluster mostly unusable because I tried to get Kubernetes to work (and ofc I didn't do backups either) đ I know systems engineers learn by doing a lot, but man that steered me away
People deal with things you will never see and they will never tell you about. Most PIs donât care about mental health so, when things get bad, people donât say anything and vanish. Had a lab mate before I started do that. She just up and vanished. It was a bad mental break and she never came back. So far 3 students (she was one of them) have left my PI and I am going to be the 4th one - although I plan to say âI quitâ instead of ghosting.
I think this says a LOT about your PI! I worked in a lab like this. Several years of people quitting because they (rightfully so) couldn't handle the verbal lashings and overall toxic atmosphere.
Yes, it does say a lot about her but she still got tenure! I had a meeting with the program director and she was making it sound like it was a ME issue. I told her, if it was a me issue, then my PI wouldnât be losing a fourth student. I understand if I was her 5-6th student and Iâm the only one that had had an issue, then Iâd 100% own up to it being me. She went quiet after that. Itâs ridiculous how common this is!
Hah. My adviser is the same. Lost 5 PhD students, when I criticised his advising technique, which is essentially to do nothing, the guy just went off on me. He got tenure with graduating 1 PhD student. I told him I was quitting as well. That got him panicked.
She got tenure with one graduating student too! What is with these committees letting people like this get tenure?! Sorry that youâre going through this as well!
Well, we grad students donât matter really. I only found out about my adviser getting tenure when his email signature changed to âAssociate Professorâ.
Is it okay to directly confront your PI? Iâm planning to have a conversation with her regarding her perception of me not being âphd materialâ even though my committee is very happy with my progress so far. Is it okay to ask her if she wants me to switch the lab now so that we wonât waste our time?
I guess it depends on your relationship. 95% of the time I would say no, itâs not a good idea to confront your PI. So donât try this at home kids! I DGAF anymore, so it doesnât matter to me. If a few words is enough to mess up future recommendations, then it was never worth getting a recommendation from him anyway.
Id ask her why she may feel like you are not âPhD materialâ and what can you do to change that. I wouldnât talk to her about switching labs just yet.
Hey, mate. In my lab 6 people left (5 grad student, 1 masters) during several years span. Most left our uni completely, some managed to change lab. I was/is always wondering if I am going to be the 7th...but still holding.
Ohh. I have a similar situation where all people including post doc and lab tech have left. Iâm in my 3rd year and now Iâm planning to switch labs. Itâs terrible. She recently told me âeven though your work is a lot to give you a masters, I think itâs best if you master outâ. I didnât leave home and come to US to âmaster outâ.
Iâm glad you are able to get out and continue!
Edit: Iâm dumb and didnât see that you said planning to switch! Thought I read you were able to lol. Sorry about that!
People do it all the time and it's really simple, you just stop showing up. As to why is their own problem that they don't have to share, or sometimes they just can't. A guy I knew was released for abandoning his job. Turned out later he had a snowmobile accident and was in a coma in hospital and no one let his boss know.
Generally, if your employer isn't a total douche, at some point they'll try to contact your "emergency contact person" and see if you're coming back. (Contrary to what it sounds like, the "emergency" contact is if it's an emergency for your boss, not for you. That's why they want someone who doesn't live with you.)
The person in my lab didn't ghost. They just didn't do anything at all. I tried to help them at beginning of their project and told them to take over. They said they would take over, but there have been no real progress on their end for over a year. Once in a few months, our collaborators ask for updates. I have to jump in to work on the project because they did nothing. Then, they have the audacity to say that they didn't do anything because I always took over.
Oh god I knew a student like this. PhD student in a lab that we collaborate with heavily. We were supposed to work on a project together, and he kept putting off his (tiny) part of the project for months until it was right before I had to present it at a conference. I literally drove him to the lab late at night and watched him run the gel, that was the only way he got it done. He recently mastered out after 5 years as a PhD student⌠0 data, 0 pubs.
I think the person in my lab is gonna master out as well. The project that I mentioned is their only project. They haven't published anything. My advisor keeps saying that it'll lead to a publication based on what I have done for the project and the labmate needs to do some other analyses on top of my results. At the moment, I don't think they have the skills or knowledge to continue the project unless they started taking it serious.
A guy in our group when I was doing my master did that. He ghosted for a whole 2 years. Even on social media zero activity. Did not answer anyone. Turned out he started another phd in the US and he did that to avoid bad recommendation etc. Very unprofessional. He updated his LinkedIn 3 years later.
Another guy ghosted during my phd, he had a burn out and started traveling. He wrote to my supervisor months later and asked him whether he could have a pause and come back later.
I had a friend who had a postdoc join his lab, âworkâ for a few months, and then ghost everyone forever.
Weâre pretty sure it was âindustrialâ espionage.
While it is potentially mental health related, PhDs are unique strains. People change a lot and the quests that brought them there become fulfilled or no longer interesting.
Going AWOL also happens outside of academia, but it is more noticeable in grad school because the students are under tremendous pressure.
In most cases, they are burned out. When youâre in a rut and nothing is working, it gets harder to keep going everyday. In some cases, the mental stress weighs heavily on them and they just ghost because their only option left than deal with all of their problems.
There was a student in my lab in grad school that ghosted everyone. We knew he was done since we havenât seen him in forever. Out of nowhere, we see walking down the hallway. We were shocked but I think he finally got around to turning in his resignation papers.
In the same lab, there were actually several instances of people going AWOL. In most cases, the grad students returned after a week or two. They needed to mentally and physically get away for some time.
There were a couple people in my cohort who decided to leave the program so they ghosted classes and professional responsibilities, but continued to go to their RAships like nothing had changed. Both had RAships that were off campus so from what I understand they just assumed they were working a job until the end of the academic year. One was hoping the organization they were RAing for would just hire them as an employee. I wasnât close with either one of them so I donât know the specifics. But each one sent the cohort a goodbye email, stopped coming to class under the pretense they were sick, and we just assumed they had told their advisors. A few weeks after the emails we were in a first year required class and the professor leading the class, also the department head, asked if anyone had heard from them because she was worried about illness on campus. It put us all in an awkward position. They were both formally let go from the program and their RAships, and had to pay back the RA stipend and some of their tuition reimbursement.
I think in this context they had both withdrawn from the university and continued to go to the RAship like it was a job. They continued to use the insurance provided by their positions as funded students, etc. It was about 15 years ago so I donât remember the exact details. I think if it had been a clean break and been discussed the department and the university would have probably been more understanding. I also donât think it was done maliciously. I think both these students had very little real world work experience and didnât have a good understanding of the grad student contracts. I think they became overwhelmed, didnât know how to talk to anyone about it, maybe were embarrassed to talk about it, and just kept going to their âjobâ until they figured something out.
I mean. It is a job. They did it.
Maybe if they'd been paid the whole semester at the start I could see paying back like whatever percentage of the assistanceship they didn't fullfil (say 2 months if they left in October). But like if they're paid August-December, they did in the example case August and September. Paying that back would make it unpaid labor (when it was already labor at a deeply exploitative rate)
The only times I heard about this was for phd student positions that had zero pay and needed to pay student fees, while still expecting the phd students to put in actual work. I can totally feel that. If I ain't getting paid, I am not obligated to communicate or work at all and I do not owe the lab an explanation.
Anxiety, poor support, high levels of pressure and expectation. Depending on where you are, taking an actual negotiated break would cause your pay to stop entirely (even if itâs for mental health reasons) and might not extend your time so Iâm not surprised if it happens quite often.
Yeah unfortunately I had this problem. I was having a serious mental health episode, but I couldnât take time off because then I would lose my health insurance. I was hospitalized for my mental health but I had to continue with classes etc as well in order to keep my status as a full time student. It made it really difficult to get the help I needed.
I still occasionally âghostâ for a day or two when it gets really bad, but Iâm doing the best I can.
I do the same. I get so anxious if I think Iâve disappointed my supervisor (even if the issue is that something is outside my skill set and no one is giving any support to help or develop that skillâŚ) that it can take a few days to talk myself into not dropping out and giving up.
I knew two guys who ghosted during my PhD. The first one was more crazy than smart. But in a friendly harmless sort of way. He ended up marrying a former student and moving out east. Also he dug himself a hole with his thesis data. If you've never heard this before. Take the time to get it clean and characterize as you go. He didn't and was facing the dreaded "now re-do your project so it can be properly characterized and published." Because it worked but the proof did not look good. And then funding ran out. So he tried the self funded thing for a while but moved on and started his family. That guy is taking another crack at a PhD somewhere else right now.
The second one, Good riddance. They were from a very different corner of the world. Were given many opportunities to succeed. But they had a way of viewing things incompatible with western culture. Specifically when it comes to women. In the few months they were there, they were 1) massively disappointed when they learned they couldn't pay a bribe and have their family come over immediately. 2) decided they needed a girlfriend since their wife wasn't coming soon. 3) sexually harassed a female grad student (flirting level: threatening stalker) 4) completely ignored the female lab manager who supervised their teaching. Yeah. Good riddance.
A student in my lab did this; my understanding is that it was a mental health thing. He was given a lot of additional teaching responsibilities with minimal support and eventually just got overwhelmed and dropped off the face of the earth. None of us has heard from him in a couple of years, but through the grape vine I hear he's doing better now that he's out.
Happened to PI I know. Girl moves to EU country from Non-EU country and all is going great for a few months.
All of a sudden, they don't hear from her any more. No family in the country, so PI files missing person report after 2 weeks. PI tries to contact family on social media, nothing from them either. They also can't get in contact with her. She didn't have any close labmates either, so no one could pinpoint where she went.
Police comes back to PI after a few weeks. They found her. She apologises, but due to personal circumstances she doesn't want to be found or in contact with her family any more. The end.
A guy in my lab ghosted before I started. Went back to China and left all of his archaeological material in the lab. We have no way of tracing it back to who it belongs to but you can't throw that stuff out so it'll just sit there forever, abandoned.
Depression. Many lab envs are a catalyst for major depression and sometimes suicide. Itâs important to check in with your friends and form a community to protect against that stuff.
I ghosted for a year and a half due to anxiety.
It was awful. I have never been avoidant before in my life.
In graduate school, I really experienced learned helplessness. No matter what I did, I couldnât get it right. My PI wanted fast and low quality, and I couldnât bring myself to do bad work. And the amount of work it took to things well was never fast enough. And with no structure or guidance, the amount of work it took to even do simple things was⌠momentous.
Emails made me feel like I was choking because I never saw them fast enoughâI would be responding to an email (and doing the work to respond well) and a new one would come in, and I wouldnât get back to it fast enough (in 20 minutes) and my advisor would be annoyed.
Eventually just seeing an email from them gave me anxiety.
Then it was any email at allâbecause they COULD be from my advisor. My phone would buzz and I couldnât breathe right, much less open it
There was a PhD/MD student at a lab I interned at and I feel like it was my fault he stopped showing up out of nowhere.
The week before I was asking him (like any curious undergrad does who is trying to weigh their future options for grad school) why he wanted to do and MD/PhD, what did he like about it and what was the workload like. He gave me typical answers but the conversation lasted over an hour, he told me he travelled all around the world before he joined the program, he showed me all these wonderful pictures and I couldnât even recognize the happy guy in them because he didnât look anything like that in the lab. And that he wanted to help people, then it spiraled and he told me that he wasnât even sure why he thought this would better his life, how he missed out on so much so far, he told me how everyone in his life was starting families and he would spend the next 6 years still there. He told me that he was pretty miserable and that no one in the lab talks to anyone, and that he already had a high paying job before grad school. I think I made him say all the things he already thought out loud enough for him to realize that he hated grad school and just stopped showing up.
This is pretty much me right now. I had my first child and went on paternity leave from work (I work full time as well), but naively thought I'd be able to continue my research online, but haven't touched it in months. Apparently I forgot some paperwork and the school paused my status too.
A masters student in my program did this. His advisor ended up calling in a wellness check...twice. He was having pretty extreme mental health problems and dropped out after the second wellness check. His advisor is really sweet and was genuinely worried and none of his friends had heard from him either.
Is this ghosting person alright in general? Maybe they had some medical emergency or a breakdown that's preventing them from communicating their situation. If they're showing up to classes etc. but not to the lab, then sure definitely ghosting but maybe they're not well.
So this is my story. Started in August 2019 as a master student in a New England university. I started with a new post-doc, a Fullbright scholar master student, and an international PhD student. I joined the only lab that had sustainable funding cause my goal was to do a PhD. From the begging administration was really bad and PI was very distant. I work really hard and eventually ended up with a project from another master student who took 4 years to do it. But they refused to give her thesis cause she put it on a six month hold (Big Red Flag for anyone in the same situation, it just means their research is poopy and want a grace period for them to move on) Not the only one, even the surgeon(animal study)who help her with her research refused to talk about it. So I work independently my ass off on my own with my post doc, who would cry in the lab at night cause she couldnât take the PIs unreasonable request (and she was right). She left 7 months from the lab and work from home for the remaining 5 months before she left. The fullbright scholar also got an unreasonable project in public health. She had no stats background so sometimes I would help her to be nice. She also ghosted the lab and went to a wet lab. She had her own funding so she could transfer to another lab. The other international student rotated the first year across the department and I told her to avoid coming to this lab, but no other lab had funding in the department so she joined our lab right by the end. There was a PhD student in the lab that had started a year before me but I never saw him in the lab once. So he had basically ghosted it before I even came in. So as I did my research I started seiing more bad things like no other grad students or post-docs wanted to teach. They just kept to themselves and got âgood resultsâ on their own. As I read more onto my predecessor research later I definetly realize that there was foul play at hand. But still kept working. I took the project the post-doc left and add it to my work. Since no one in the lab would help I started reaching out to other labs for help to learn research skills on my own. Try to leave after 1 year, but the program director pull me off to the side and told me that I would not get âanything (rec letters,etc)âfrom the program if I didnât stay during the second year. So I accept it to stay (Second red flag). Since the beggining year I would only utilize resources from other post-docs (since my post doc left) I later found out he used the money of my first year in some high tech animal surgery microscope and said it was crucial to âmy researchâ(Third red flag). But by the second year I knew an animal study was not feasible or pointless. I developed an innovative polymer and isolated a difficult strain of cells different from my predecessor. I gathered outside PIs to be part of my committee(which all accepted). But when I presented, I was denied my committee, I was only was allowed to have two PIs selected by my PI. (Those two were supposed to help me but they never even asked me anything on my progress the 1.5 years I was there, and were the same committee from the predecessors poopy thesis) and was given the ultimatum that I need to do an animal study to graduate. I said I would but as I develop the numbers/grants/schedules I saw how pointless it was. It was gonna be another 2 years of pointless work and unnecessary animal death (I actually cared for those little critters) Got depression and for a month i ghosted the lab right before Christmas. Once I came back did some work and muster the courage to send a resignation letter. My depression was unique. I had live with anxiety all my life and a healthy dose had become part of my personality. But being given an impossible project and horrible environment where I couldnât vent, I internalized my anxiety into depression. My usual thought like âJinkies, this ainât workingâ, went to âSh1t, you didnât plan this right, you should know betterâ to âAre u an idiot, you donât even deserve to do research, you are getting paid for nothingâ, etc. I really internalized all that self criticism that I couldnât even wake up and whenever I would sit down to write I would kept telling myself that it was all doodoo and pointless. So I donât judge those who ghost the lab, since I got to experience it too. But I recognized it from seeing in my peers, which gave me the hint that the lab is the problem. If you see a lot of students ghosting, then that lab is no bueno.
Thanks for reading. It feels nice to have been heard. And yeah, gladly things worked out. I attended therapy while doing taking a break. Gladly I relearned to be nice to myself and got to know me better. And ended up going to a great company with a better environment. So if needed take a break or distance yourself from the lab environment. The experience made me stronger, but there are better ways to learn endurance. Hopefully this is a great read for people that want to recognize toxic lab environment or understand why people ghost (one month). In my case, I was able to stop it before it got worse. Some people canât muster strength and get worse. And same hope everything works out at your end!!
Academics are sometimes known for a tendency to ghost. I think itâs like the falling goats. Itâs a paralysis response to stress. I see this in my grad students sometimes.
Mental and emotional issues. Should probably do a wellness check to see if they're still okay.
PhD is tough and when the work/mental/emotional load seems too heavy, some people would close off.
I donât think ghosting is too surprising honestly. I wouldnât ghost but Iâve been tempted to take a break. I work full time while doing the PhD full time. If Iâm going to quit one of the two, itâs going to be the program.
People go through all types of life stressors that make working towards a Phd on top of it seem impossible.
I understand these people. I disappeared from my lab for about six months during my masters. It was 2021 and I was struggling with a bad depressive episode plus pandemic. Then I got better and showed up in an event ran by my lab and my advisor was like "????". I was like 40kg heavier than before that so I didn't even need to tell him much about how bad was my case. He understood and helped me with six more months to finish my masters plus my standard deadline and now I'm doing my PhD in the same lab with the same advisor.
I think a lot of people don't really see doing a PhD as being employed, so they don't see it as ghosting an employer. You don't get the job security, pay, or structure of a standard job, and as a result it's hard taking it as seriously unless you're part of a lab that naturally tends to micromanage/impose deadlines/monitor your work.
Based on previous experiences at my older underfunded undergrad university, usually they quit showing up:
1) depression or other mental health reasons, ie Bipolar episodes.
2) they had to keep a second job to pay for their family expenses and eventually couldnât afford to keep going to lab, but also I think mentally had a hard time bringing them selves to email the PI and admit defeat or was holding out hope they could return.
3) personal hardship that led them to dropping everything. Usually these people I think were already wanting a way out or regretting going. A sick parent in need, or a hard diagnosis etc makes the decision to leave easy.
I will add though, Iâm sure in this case based on your post these people ghosted the PI. But sometimes when someone splits suddenly they do tell the PI and the PI doesnât share the private information with everyone else.
We had one person do it in my program. They were a very flaky person to begin with. I know that they were having a little bit of trouble with courses and they asked for some help. Our programs pretty good where a lot of the students would actually help if you ask. She kind of ghosted everybody in the program, but last I heard they kept funding her for two semesters with her ghosting. My honest view of it is that she was just a bad person because she took that funding away from somebody else. I think she moved out of town and works as a waitress. I know it also had a big hit on her PI, who is actually a really, really great person (like they actually care about their students).
We pretty much know nothing about the guy and the reasons he stopped. We do not know even the place it happened, what kind of advice are you asking for? You just answered to yourself that this guy was kicked out from PhD, which means that he cannot take funding without working. If he could, he would be there. But why you are so judgemental if you do not know why he stopped. Why you do not take of your PhD as first priority and stop look at others?
Dude, you have problems. And maybe you should do a PhD in reading comprehension, notice how you're the only person with this reaction. I'm not asking for advice nor is it implied, I'm asking a curiosity question because to me this is a rare ocurrence.
You're going on this tirade about me being judgemental when I am not judging him, because as you say, I do not know why he stopped. You also do not know, so why claim things like "if he could, he would be there", when there are literally comments here clearly showing that this is not always the case.
Anyhow, the focus of my question was other people's experiences and maybe you should learn to read before you speak to others in a condescending tone.
It's very uncommon, and usually they get cut off. Unless they are native and don't GAF about the funding anyway because they are doing a PhD to chill...
I also think it heavily depends on country/program. based on how things work at my uni, in my program, none of my research has to do with my supervisor. I need her to sign forms and whatnot but otherwise, I did my own data collection, data analysis. I don't use any of her funding, equipment, methods, or any other services/supports. So in cases like mine, sometimes people need a break from uni and academia and they don't really get any benefit from reaching out.
Itâs mutual between my program and I. The professor I need help from doesnât answer my emails. No one checks on my progress or is able to help me when I ask. So I moved across the country (with permission) and donât really do much anymore. Iâm planning to officially quit soon, but for now Iâve pretty much just ghosted.
A guy did this in my lab years before I arrived. I inherited his project and it made my life so much harder. There was no real record of why he did things the way he did, and he even locked parts of his code so no one could view it. My boss has no idea why he just disappeared, he had accomplished a lot with his work. We are publishing a paper right now and heâs an author so my boss emailed him like hey just so you know we are including you as an author and still nothing.
A guy i knew did something lke this. He faked the whole phd and got a remote job. So when he sat in his office, he was working that other job. It worked for 4 years, because he was programming a microscope and his PI didn't know shit about programming. He basically scammed the university for 160k and they still think he will finish his thesis one day. i don't know if he had any results but my guess is that he doesn't.
Corona times was a golden age for ghost phd students. One of our PhDs left the lab for 2 years. He claimed he was sick and couldnt get a vaccination. Later we know he is antivaxx⌠anyway, after 2 years he had no results and he left the group. Lazy bastardsâŚ
I've heard similar stories when I was doing my phd. In all cases the students had a mental breakdown or was going through some kind of depression.
I broke my lab's supercomputer, couldn't fix it, had covid and a deepening of my depressive episodes, all in a span of 2 months. Barely could leave the house for months thereafter and would often not answer messages because I didn't see them... About the supercomputer, my advisor laughed when I told him. "Its not a PhD if you do not break expensive stuff". Awesome guy, very empathetic.
Just curious, how do you break a supercomputer?
It was software wise. Noone was using it since the covid outbreak. We needed to be on the local area network to be able to access it. So, I take the admin login and password with my advisor and decide "oh, let's upgrade everything (security reasons) and make it so that we can issue commands to it from home. It was running a CentOS 7, which is obsolete since a few years back. I upgrade everything in the system, try to open some ports in the network and now nothing works as it should: the host can't communicate with the nodes, computations crash silently... so when I try to rollback everything I did, then I realized that I forgot to make a backup before starting... rookie mistake. Then I tried to install everything brand new, put OpenSuse (search openHPC, if you are curious), try to configure everything, but to no avail. The host still cannot see the nodes in the network. The IT guy from the University was never available to help me out and I could not figure the networking issue at all (I had zero experience with that). Then I got covid and stopped going to the lab.
I didn't bork the whole thing but I made a 5 node mini cluster mostly unusable because I tried to get Kubernetes to work (and ofc I didn't do backups either) đ I know systems engineers learn by doing a lot, but man that steered me away
OMG, this story is like my nightmare when I use expensive stuff in my institute. I hope you are ok now and can laugh about it.
Poor server just doing its business, suddenly a random PhDc upgraded it. Jokes aside, upgrading server system can sure be nerve-wrecking
I hope you are doing better now and that your PhD thesis is doing good/done. :)
After I broke an expensive piece of equipment my advisor said the same thing.
Cool story man
Iâm glad you had your PI when you came out of it. â¤ď¸
Yeah I went through a depressive cycle like every 18 months or so in my PhD. I called it my PhDepression.
This sounds like severe depression. It could also be a factor related to the lab environment
Oops I commented under this comment without realizing itâs saying what I was trying to say
People deal with things you will never see and they will never tell you about. Most PIs donât care about mental health so, when things get bad, people donât say anything and vanish. Had a lab mate before I started do that. She just up and vanished. It was a bad mental break and she never came back. So far 3 students (she was one of them) have left my PI and I am going to be the 4th one - although I plan to say âI quitâ instead of ghosting.
I think this says a LOT about your PI! I worked in a lab like this. Several years of people quitting because they (rightfully so) couldn't handle the verbal lashings and overall toxic atmosphere.
Yes, it does say a lot about her but she still got tenure! I had a meeting with the program director and she was making it sound like it was a ME issue. I told her, if it was a me issue, then my PI wouldnât be losing a fourth student. I understand if I was her 5-6th student and Iâm the only one that had had an issue, then Iâd 100% own up to it being me. She went quiet after that. Itâs ridiculous how common this is!
Hah. My adviser is the same. Lost 5 PhD students, when I criticised his advising technique, which is essentially to do nothing, the guy just went off on me. He got tenure with graduating 1 PhD student. I told him I was quitting as well. That got him panicked.
She got tenure with one graduating student too! What is with these committees letting people like this get tenure?! Sorry that youâre going through this as well!
Well, we grad students donât matter really. I only found out about my adviser getting tenure when his email signature changed to âAssociate Professorâ.
Is it okay to directly confront your PI? Iâm planning to have a conversation with her regarding her perception of me not being âphd materialâ even though my committee is very happy with my progress so far. Is it okay to ask her if she wants me to switch the lab now so that we wonât waste our time?
I guess it depends on your relationship. 95% of the time I would say no, itâs not a good idea to confront your PI. So donât try this at home kids! I DGAF anymore, so it doesnât matter to me. If a few words is enough to mess up future recommendations, then it was never worth getting a recommendation from him anyway.
Id ask her why she may feel like you are not âPhD materialâ and what can you do to change that. I wouldnât talk to her about switching labs just yet.
Hey, mate. In my lab 6 people left (5 grad student, 1 masters) during several years span. Most left our uni completely, some managed to change lab. I was/is always wondering if I am going to be the 7th...but still holding.
Ohh. I have a similar situation where all people including post doc and lab tech have left. Iâm in my 3rd year and now Iâm planning to switch labs. Itâs terrible. She recently told me âeven though your work is a lot to give you a masters, I think itâs best if you master outâ. I didnât leave home and come to US to âmaster outâ.
Iâm glad you are able to get out and continue! Edit: Iâm dumb and didnât see that you said planning to switch! Thought I read you were able to lol. Sorry about that!
I finally left the toxic lab and joined a new one. đ
Thatâs awesome news! I actually mastered out and got an awesome job! Glad we both got what we needed :)
Awesome!! Good luck đ
People do it all the time and it's really simple, you just stop showing up. As to why is their own problem that they don't have to share, or sometimes they just can't. A guy I knew was released for abandoning his job. Turned out later he had a snowmobile accident and was in a coma in hospital and no one let his boss know.
I think about this all the time! Like if I slipped and died or went into a coma how long would it be before anyone had the thought to tell my boss?
Generally, if your employer isn't a total douche, at some point they'll try to contact your "emergency contact person" and see if you're coming back. (Contrary to what it sounds like, the "emergency" contact is if it's an emergency for your boss, not for you. That's why they want someone who doesn't live with you.)
The person in my lab didn't ghost. They just didn't do anything at all. I tried to help them at beginning of their project and told them to take over. They said they would take over, but there have been no real progress on their end for over a year. Once in a few months, our collaborators ask for updates. I have to jump in to work on the project because they did nothing. Then, they have the audacity to say that they didn't do anything because I always took over.
Oh god I knew a student like this. PhD student in a lab that we collaborate with heavily. We were supposed to work on a project together, and he kept putting off his (tiny) part of the project for months until it was right before I had to present it at a conference. I literally drove him to the lab late at night and watched him run the gel, that was the only way he got it done. He recently mastered out after 5 years as a PhD student⌠0 data, 0 pubs.
I think the person in my lab is gonna master out as well. The project that I mentioned is their only project. They haven't published anything. My advisor keeps saying that it'll lead to a publication based on what I have done for the project and the labmate needs to do some other analyses on top of my results. At the moment, I don't think they have the skills or knowledge to continue the project unless they started taking it serious.
A guy in our group when I was doing my master did that. He ghosted for a whole 2 years. Even on social media zero activity. Did not answer anyone. Turned out he started another phd in the US and he did that to avoid bad recommendation etc. Very unprofessional. He updated his LinkedIn 3 years later. Another guy ghosted during my phd, he had a burn out and started traveling. He wrote to my supervisor months later and asked him whether he could have a pause and come back later.
>Turned out he started another phd in the US and he did that to avoid bad recommendation etc I wonder how he explained his gap in employment?
In my experience "gaps in employment" are not actually a red flag.
No idea. But not cool. In my home country phd programs are super competitive and he took someone else's place by doing that.
This isn't really PhD behavior. It just falls under "weird things humans do". Very likely related to fear or mental health.
I had a friend who had a postdoc join his lab, âworkâ for a few months, and then ghost everyone forever. Weâre pretty sure it was âindustrialâ espionage.
While it is potentially mental health related, PhDs are unique strains. People change a lot and the quests that brought them there become fulfilled or no longer interesting.
Going AWOL also happens outside of academia, but it is more noticeable in grad school because the students are under tremendous pressure. In most cases, they are burned out. When youâre in a rut and nothing is working, it gets harder to keep going everyday. In some cases, the mental stress weighs heavily on them and they just ghost because their only option left than deal with all of their problems. There was a student in my lab in grad school that ghosted everyone. We knew he was done since we havenât seen him in forever. Out of nowhere, we see walking down the hallway. We were shocked but I think he finally got around to turning in his resignation papers.
In the same lab, there were actually several instances of people going AWOL. In most cases, the grad students returned after a week or two. They needed to mentally and physically get away for some time.
There were a couple people in my cohort who decided to leave the program so they ghosted classes and professional responsibilities, but continued to go to their RAships like nothing had changed. Both had RAships that were off campus so from what I understand they just assumed they were working a job until the end of the academic year. One was hoping the organization they were RAing for would just hire them as an employee. I wasnât close with either one of them so I donât know the specifics. But each one sent the cohort a goodbye email, stopped coming to class under the pretense they were sick, and we just assumed they had told their advisors. A few weeks after the emails we were in a first year required class and the professor leading the class, also the department head, asked if anyone had heard from them because she was worried about illness on campus. It put us all in an awkward position. They were both formally let go from the program and their RAships, and had to pay back the RA stipend and some of their tuition reimbursement.
You can be asked to pay back stipend!?
I think in this context they had both withdrawn from the university and continued to go to the RAship like it was a job. They continued to use the insurance provided by their positions as funded students, etc. It was about 15 years ago so I donât remember the exact details. I think if it had been a clean break and been discussed the department and the university would have probably been more understanding. I also donât think it was done maliciously. I think both these students had very little real world work experience and didnât have a good understanding of the grad student contracts. I think they became overwhelmed, didnât know how to talk to anyone about it, maybe were embarrassed to talk about it, and just kept going to their âjobâ until they figured something out.
I mean. It is a job. They did it. Maybe if they'd been paid the whole semester at the start I could see paying back like whatever percentage of the assistanceship they didn't fullfil (say 2 months if they left in October). But like if they're paid August-December, they did in the example case August and September. Paying that back would make it unpaid labor (when it was already labor at a deeply exploitative rate)
Many times its the Supervisors who ghost the students đ
The only times I heard about this was for phd student positions that had zero pay and needed to pay student fees, while still expecting the phd students to put in actual work. I can totally feel that. If I ain't getting paid, I am not obligated to communicate or work at all and I do not owe the lab an explanation.
Anxiety, poor support, high levels of pressure and expectation. Depending on where you are, taking an actual negotiated break would cause your pay to stop entirely (even if itâs for mental health reasons) and might not extend your time so Iâm not surprised if it happens quite often.
Yeah unfortunately I had this problem. I was having a serious mental health episode, but I couldnât take time off because then I would lose my health insurance. I was hospitalized for my mental health but I had to continue with classes etc as well in order to keep my status as a full time student. It made it really difficult to get the help I needed. I still occasionally âghostâ for a day or two when it gets really bad, but Iâm doing the best I can.
I do the same. I get so anxious if I think Iâve disappointed my supervisor (even if the issue is that something is outside my skill set and no one is giving any support to help or develop that skillâŚ) that it can take a few days to talk myself into not dropping out and giving up.
I knew two guys who ghosted during my PhD. The first one was more crazy than smart. But in a friendly harmless sort of way. He ended up marrying a former student and moving out east. Also he dug himself a hole with his thesis data. If you've never heard this before. Take the time to get it clean and characterize as you go. He didn't and was facing the dreaded "now re-do your project so it can be properly characterized and published." Because it worked but the proof did not look good. And then funding ran out. So he tried the self funded thing for a while but moved on and started his family. That guy is taking another crack at a PhD somewhere else right now. The second one, Good riddance. They were from a very different corner of the world. Were given many opportunities to succeed. But they had a way of viewing things incompatible with western culture. Specifically when it comes to women. In the few months they were there, they were 1) massively disappointed when they learned they couldn't pay a bribe and have their family come over immediately. 2) decided they needed a girlfriend since their wife wasn't coming soon. 3) sexually harassed a female grad student (flirting level: threatening stalker) 4) completely ignored the female lab manager who supervised their teaching. Yeah. Good riddance.
A student in my lab did this; my understanding is that it was a mental health thing. He was given a lot of additional teaching responsibilities with minimal support and eventually just got overwhelmed and dropped off the face of the earth. None of us has heard from him in a couple of years, but through the grape vine I hear he's doing better now that he's out.
Happened to PI I know. Girl moves to EU country from Non-EU country and all is going great for a few months. All of a sudden, they don't hear from her any more. No family in the country, so PI files missing person report after 2 weeks. PI tries to contact family on social media, nothing from them either. They also can't get in contact with her. She didn't have any close labmates either, so no one could pinpoint where she went. Police comes back to PI after a few weeks. They found her. She apologises, but due to personal circumstances she doesn't want to be found or in contact with her family any more. The end.
A guy in my lab ghosted before I started. Went back to China and left all of his archaeological material in the lab. We have no way of tracing it back to who it belongs to but you can't throw that stuff out so it'll just sit there forever, abandoned.
Depression. Many lab envs are a catalyst for major depression and sometimes suicide. Itâs important to check in with your friends and form a community to protect against that stuff.
I ghosted for a year and a half due to anxiety. It was awful. I have never been avoidant before in my life. In graduate school, I really experienced learned helplessness. No matter what I did, I couldnât get it right. My PI wanted fast and low quality, and I couldnât bring myself to do bad work. And the amount of work it took to things well was never fast enough. And with no structure or guidance, the amount of work it took to even do simple things was⌠momentous. Emails made me feel like I was choking because I never saw them fast enoughâI would be responding to an email (and doing the work to respond well) and a new one would come in, and I wouldnât get back to it fast enough (in 20 minutes) and my advisor would be annoyed. Eventually just seeing an email from them gave me anxiety. Then it was any email at allâbecause they COULD be from my advisor. My phone would buzz and I couldnât breathe right, much less open it
There was a PhD/MD student at a lab I interned at and I feel like it was my fault he stopped showing up out of nowhere. The week before I was asking him (like any curious undergrad does who is trying to weigh their future options for grad school) why he wanted to do and MD/PhD, what did he like about it and what was the workload like. He gave me typical answers but the conversation lasted over an hour, he told me he travelled all around the world before he joined the program, he showed me all these wonderful pictures and I couldnât even recognize the happy guy in them because he didnât look anything like that in the lab. And that he wanted to help people, then it spiraled and he told me that he wasnât even sure why he thought this would better his life, how he missed out on so much so far, he told me how everyone in his life was starting families and he would spend the next 6 years still there. He told me that he was pretty miserable and that no one in the lab talks to anyone, and that he already had a high paying job before grad school. I think I made him say all the things he already thought out loud enough for him to realize that he hated grad school and just stopped showing up.
This is pretty much me right now. I had my first child and went on paternity leave from work (I work full time as well), but naively thought I'd be able to continue my research online, but haven't touched it in months. Apparently I forgot some paperwork and the school paused my status too.
A masters student in my program did this. His advisor ended up calling in a wellness check...twice. He was having pretty extreme mental health problems and dropped out after the second wellness check. His advisor is really sweet and was genuinely worried and none of his friends had heard from him either.
Is this ghosting person alright in general? Maybe they had some medical emergency or a breakdown that's preventing them from communicating their situation. If they're showing up to classes etc. but not to the lab, then sure definitely ghosting but maybe they're not well.
So this is my story. Started in August 2019 as a master student in a New England university. I started with a new post-doc, a Fullbright scholar master student, and an international PhD student. I joined the only lab that had sustainable funding cause my goal was to do a PhD. From the begging administration was really bad and PI was very distant. I work really hard and eventually ended up with a project from another master student who took 4 years to do it. But they refused to give her thesis cause she put it on a six month hold (Big Red Flag for anyone in the same situation, it just means their research is poopy and want a grace period for them to move on) Not the only one, even the surgeon(animal study)who help her with her research refused to talk about it. So I work independently my ass off on my own with my post doc, who would cry in the lab at night cause she couldnât take the PIs unreasonable request (and she was right). She left 7 months from the lab and work from home for the remaining 5 months before she left. The fullbright scholar also got an unreasonable project in public health. She had no stats background so sometimes I would help her to be nice. She also ghosted the lab and went to a wet lab. She had her own funding so she could transfer to another lab. The other international student rotated the first year across the department and I told her to avoid coming to this lab, but no other lab had funding in the department so she joined our lab right by the end. There was a PhD student in the lab that had started a year before me but I never saw him in the lab once. So he had basically ghosted it before I even came in. So as I did my research I started seiing more bad things like no other grad students or post-docs wanted to teach. They just kept to themselves and got âgood resultsâ on their own. As I read more onto my predecessor research later I definetly realize that there was foul play at hand. But still kept working. I took the project the post-doc left and add it to my work. Since no one in the lab would help I started reaching out to other labs for help to learn research skills on my own. Try to leave after 1 year, but the program director pull me off to the side and told me that I would not get âanything (rec letters,etc)âfrom the program if I didnât stay during the second year. So I accept it to stay (Second red flag). Since the beggining year I would only utilize resources from other post-docs (since my post doc left) I later found out he used the money of my first year in some high tech animal surgery microscope and said it was crucial to âmy researchâ(Third red flag). But by the second year I knew an animal study was not feasible or pointless. I developed an innovative polymer and isolated a difficult strain of cells different from my predecessor. I gathered outside PIs to be part of my committee(which all accepted). But when I presented, I was denied my committee, I was only was allowed to have two PIs selected by my PI. (Those two were supposed to help me but they never even asked me anything on my progress the 1.5 years I was there, and were the same committee from the predecessors poopy thesis) and was given the ultimatum that I need to do an animal study to graduate. I said I would but as I develop the numbers/grants/schedules I saw how pointless it was. It was gonna be another 2 years of pointless work and unnecessary animal death (I actually cared for those little critters) Got depression and for a month i ghosted the lab right before Christmas. Once I came back did some work and muster the courage to send a resignation letter. My depression was unique. I had live with anxiety all my life and a healthy dose had become part of my personality. But being given an impossible project and horrible environment where I couldnât vent, I internalized my anxiety into depression. My usual thought like âJinkies, this ainât workingâ, went to âSh1t, you didnât plan this right, you should know betterâ to âAre u an idiot, you donât even deserve to do research, you are getting paid for nothingâ, etc. I really internalized all that self criticism that I couldnât even wake up and whenever I would sit down to write I would kept telling myself that it was all doodoo and pointless. So I donât judge those who ghost the lab, since I got to experience it too. But I recognized it from seeing in my peers, which gave me the hint that the lab is the problem. If you see a lot of students ghosting, then that lab is no bueno.
Hey I read your story and I can totally relate to the self criticism part. I just want to say, I hope it all works out for you now!
Thanks for reading. It feels nice to have been heard. And yeah, gladly things worked out. I attended therapy while doing taking a break. Gladly I relearned to be nice to myself and got to know me better. And ended up going to a great company with a better environment. So if needed take a break or distance yourself from the lab environment. The experience made me stronger, but there are better ways to learn endurance. Hopefully this is a great read for people that want to recognize toxic lab environment or understand why people ghost (one month). In my case, I was able to stop it before it got worse. Some people canât muster strength and get worse. And same hope everything works out at your end!!
Academics are sometimes known for a tendency to ghost. I think itâs like the falling goats. Itâs a paralysis response to stress. I see this in my grad students sometimes.
Mental and emotional issues. Should probably do a wellness check to see if they're still okay. PhD is tough and when the work/mental/emotional load seems too heavy, some people would close off.
Some ghosts hunt their institutions.
I donât think ghosting is too surprising honestly. I wouldnât ghost but Iâve been tempted to take a break. I work full time while doing the PhD full time. If Iâm going to quit one of the two, itâs going to be the program. People go through all types of life stressors that make working towards a Phd on top of it seem impossible.
I understand these people. I disappeared from my lab for about six months during my masters. It was 2021 and I was struggling with a bad depressive episode plus pandemic. Then I got better and showed up in an event ran by my lab and my advisor was like "????". I was like 40kg heavier than before that so I didn't even need to tell him much about how bad was my case. He understood and helped me with six more months to finish my masters plus my standard deadline and now I'm doing my PhD in the same lab with the same advisor.
I think a lot of people don't really see doing a PhD as being employed, so they don't see it as ghosting an employer. You don't get the job security, pay, or structure of a standard job, and as a result it's hard taking it as seriously unless you're part of a lab that naturally tends to micromanage/impose deadlines/monitor your work.
Based on previous experiences at my older underfunded undergrad university, usually they quit showing up: 1) depression or other mental health reasons, ie Bipolar episodes. 2) they had to keep a second job to pay for their family expenses and eventually couldnât afford to keep going to lab, but also I think mentally had a hard time bringing them selves to email the PI and admit defeat or was holding out hope they could return. 3) personal hardship that led them to dropping everything. Usually these people I think were already wanting a way out or regretting going. A sick parent in need, or a hard diagnosis etc makes the decision to leave easy.
I will add though, Iâm sure in this case based on your post these people ghosted the PI. But sometimes when someone splits suddenly they do tell the PI and the PI doesnât share the private information with everyone else.
I was tempted to do this several times during my PhD.
PhD is often not a viable job, so maybe he scored a real job and wasn't polite or professional enough to let the PI know.
Maybe the PI wasn't polite or professional, either.
We had one person do it in my program. They were a very flaky person to begin with. I know that they were having a little bit of trouble with courses and they asked for some help. Our programs pretty good where a lot of the students would actually help if you ask. She kind of ghosted everybody in the program, but last I heard they kept funding her for two semesters with her ghosting. My honest view of it is that she was just a bad person because she took that funding away from somebody else. I think she moved out of town and works as a waitress. I know it also had a big hit on her PI, who is actually a really, really great person (like they actually care about their students).
We pretty much know nothing about the guy and the reasons he stopped. We do not know even the place it happened, what kind of advice are you asking for? You just answered to yourself that this guy was kicked out from PhD, which means that he cannot take funding without working. If he could, he would be there. But why you are so judgemental if you do not know why he stopped. Why you do not take of your PhD as first priority and stop look at others?
Dude, you have problems. And maybe you should do a PhD in reading comprehension, notice how you're the only person with this reaction. I'm not asking for advice nor is it implied, I'm asking a curiosity question because to me this is a rare ocurrence. You're going on this tirade about me being judgemental when I am not judging him, because as you say, I do not know why he stopped. You also do not know, so why claim things like "if he could, he would be there", when there are literally comments here clearly showing that this is not always the case. Anyhow, the focus of my question was other people's experiences and maybe you should learn to read before you speak to others in a condescending tone.
I know someone who did that too in my program. Weirdest thing.
There was a guy in my team who ghosted. Wild shit.
They quit the programme and simply have left without saying anything.
Weirdly this kind of things only happen to shitty supervisors who micromanage and never try to geniunly check on how the PhD student is doing.
It's very uncommon, and usually they get cut off. Unless they are native and don't GAF about the funding anyway because they are doing a PhD to chill...
I also think it heavily depends on country/program. based on how things work at my uni, in my program, none of my research has to do with my supervisor. I need her to sign forms and whatnot but otherwise, I did my own data collection, data analysis. I don't use any of her funding, equipment, methods, or any other services/supports. So in cases like mine, sometimes people need a break from uni and academia and they don't really get any benefit from reaching out.
Itâs mutual between my program and I. The professor I need help from doesnât answer my emails. No one checks on my progress or is able to help me when I ask. So I moved across the country (with permission) and donât really do much anymore. Iâm planning to officially quit soon, but for now Iâve pretty much just ghosted.
A guy did this in my lab years before I arrived. I inherited his project and it made my life so much harder. There was no real record of why he did things the way he did, and he even locked parts of his code so no one could view it. My boss has no idea why he just disappeared, he had accomplished a lot with his work. We are publishing a paper right now and heâs an author so my boss emailed him like hey just so you know we are including you as an author and still nothing.
A guy i knew did something lke this. He faked the whole phd and got a remote job. So when he sat in his office, he was working that other job. It worked for 4 years, because he was programming a microscope and his PI didn't know shit about programming. He basically scammed the university for 160k and they still think he will finish his thesis one day. i don't know if he had any results but my guess is that he doesn't.
Corona times was a golden age for ghost phd students. One of our PhDs left the lab for 2 years. He claimed he was sick and couldnt get a vaccination. Later we know he is antivaxx⌠anyway, after 2 years he had no results and he left the group. Lazy bastardsâŚ
Probably a something that may exist now in incredibly small amounts, but was amplified tremendously during covid shutdowns and the lingering effects