I attempted as well and don't have access...sorry :(

I find academia to be riddled with extreme impliciticity and enigma so there is a lot of grey area that I have been unable to navigate. I am a straightforward, concrete thinker and I have never really been intimidated by others in my program because I always felt maybe aloof to a certain extent but also that collaboration was better off; and the fact that everyone had their own different projects was enough for me to steer clear of that rash behavior. I trusted easily, shared freely and helped without quid pro quo (or even considering it). My eyes have opened since then.

Couple all this with the fact that I had a kid, and although I don't believe I suffered postpartum psychosis, others believe I did when I felt my computer was possessed while working on my thesis. I had to be hospitalized because I became suicidal and I had no evidence for proof of my sanity.

I know I am an intelligent girl. My creativity, my writing ability, my knowledge and thirst for it demands attention. I am not arrogant. Quite the opposite I still am extremely (most of the time) lacking in confidence and grounded by insecurity. But mostly because I am humbled by the world of knowledge. Oddly, while I feel, that the wealth of knowledge academia holds is insurmountable, it has been a place where I was set up to fail in learning. Because I navigated the book smarts of academia fairly well but fell apart in my social endeavors; I really honestly don't know. I have never been formally diagnosed with asbergers but while institutionalized the psychiatrist and psychologist hinted at it several times. I know that a formal diagnosis holds no clarity or a degree for me. It has almost little to no relevance I think unless if others understand or see it or help me cope through it. But I feel that no one has and in fact they have dropped me...I can't say it is because I am an odd girl....I honestly do not understand why..but aren't we all in higher knowledge simply odd people in general?

Anyway, I don't know what I am looking for from you all. I guess simply an ear. Maybe advice. Maybe sympathy. In the end I am just a lost person left to work fast food I'm sure for the rest of my life...

Hello,

My chair for my project has stepped down. I have begged him to reinstate himself (twice) as my advisor and allow me to finish the degree. My coursework is complete and my advisor, despite saying that my thesis was at a dissertation level, refuses to mentor me any longer. I am at a loss as to why. I was an extremely insecure student and I teaching aid for three years at my university, but I know I blossomed (as per my student evals) and my own internal feelings toward my thesis (which I grew to love). I had 3 objectives one of which I was in the process of both defining and getting results for and the other 2 had (IMO) publishable results and a fairly decent start on the manuscript with respect to all of the sections. I had been given a fairly large set of data which I transformed into my project with at least 1 novel concept and 2 concepts that although had extensive publications on, had never really been applied to our location. As many can attest to, writing a thesis/dissertation is not exactly a linear process where you define your project, then establish an experimental design, obtain results and discuss the implications of all of it. I worked on all parts simultaneously depending on where I felt comfortable with at the time and in the end never really even got a proposal passed to continue on to finish my thesis (despite being fairly advanced in the stages of my writing). I never was able to obtain funding and so I worked almost voluntarily in my advisors lab.

He was a good advisor and then he simply began to withhold information and point out my flaws in front of my committee members. For example, he only sent me half of the edited pages for my thesis from another committee member. He also would not tell me how he wanted the thesis formatted, and any time I sent him a clean edited version of my draft, he would (I think?) put odd references in my reference section and delete some of the citations I had utilized. I in return became confrontation about it and demanding of the time and information that I never received from him any more and this back and forth ensued until I felt we both became stagnant with the project. Now I am left with no one to edit my work, advise me or bounce ideas off of. I do not understand what to do. I went to the head of the department and he told me to find a new advisor. But there is no one at my university that specializes even remotely in what I wish to pursue. I have attempted to contact other advisors at other universities to continue my work (or work in a similar area) but I keep getting rejection after rejection (and I do not know if it is because my advisor is giving me a bad rap with them) or because I am going about it all wrong. My advisor told me to find a mentor first before he would recommend me to someone and this to me seems so a** backwards.

I just want to say this before I start. I have had several mentors and been to a decent university as an undergrad and as a masters student. I recently got dropped from my second MS program (frankly I do not understand why because my mentor said my work was at dissertation level and I myself know my work could easily be published). Frankly I do not know if he is going to publish it without giving me credit and frankly I do not know if it is my fault for being preyed upon like this...?

Anyway,

I don't know if this is taboo to discuss or if I am paranoid and delusional. But numerous times I have gone to a professor with questions and been able to disentangle information without even addressing the question directly. Once I went to a philosophy/logic professor with a very specific question that had a very specific answer (kind of a math question). He seemed busy because there was someone else (similar in age) talking to him even though it was office hours. He looked at me and walked away. I drew several diagrams on his board of the math/logic problem and my mastery of the question. At the time I simply walked away arrogantly thinking it was my own internal understanding that brought me to an answer my question.

But nearly 2 degrees later I have been through this again and again although very much abstractly because my field does not have concrete answers (like the logic/philosophy/math question that I described prior). I have been slow to take advantage of my mentors due to personal insecurities but now I crave people with higher knowledge because (and I may be delusional) I really do believe they have an ability to transfer knowledge without conflict (IF AND THIS IS A BIG IF: THEY DESIRE). They withhold information to retain you in order to do their grunt work in higher level programs.

I also believe these professors have an ability to put their students under hypnosis (if the student is focused, trusting and naive enough to allow it). I went to my chair once (the one who dropped me) extremely distressed because our relationship had seemed strained for some time. But I laughed somewhat as if I was insane (and I may be?) or because he had hypnotized me by making me focus on certain things (which I obliged to do because I'm an idiot?)...

Does anyone have a similar experience?