Recently switched from a PhD to a Masters after having lots of problems with my department and being neglected by my PI. It seems academia was not what I thought it was at all. It is mostly politics and dealing with competitive losers or pervs. Not all was bad, but mostly I got stuck with the worst lab mates in both labs i worked in and now im ready to leave forever, but its so hard to focus. I have one foot out the door and I am so over this, not to mention my advisor is way to "busy" to help me which is the least he can do after not helping me all these years I wasted. I'm having a hard time focusing all I can think about is how much I hated my grad school experience (not the friends I made, but the people ive worked with in labs, advisors, departments), STEM sucks.

Hi thesneak,

I understand how you feel, I too am writing up a masters after switching from the PhD program after 3 years (ouch) and it's still taken me that one extra year to get over the hump and finish off all my work to even be worth the masters. I agree the current STEM PhD system is very unfair - some people get handed an easy project with a nice PI who essentially does all their work for them and come away with a Doctorate while others can struggle for the better part of a decade, argue with a crappy supervisory team and leave with nothing. Then when you're done you enter an oversaturated market where everyone is a Doctor so no one cares about your PhD anyway and every postdoc job is on the other side of the world with 200 applicants. STEM does indeed suck.

As for helping you finish your thesis - what size/format does it need to be and how long do you have to complete it? I found the best thing for my self-esteem was securing a job for after I graduate. It gave me confidence that the skills I gained from my work in graduate school weren't useless so my time wasn't wasted after all. People saw all the teaching and computational science I did for the grad work and thought I was very employable regardless of degree!

Hi Penpen,

Sorry to hear you also had a bad experience, but congrats on the job. Right now I don't feel like I want to continue in stem, especially not in my field. I was hoping if I applied for jobs it would motivate me, but the thought of being in a stem field for the rest of my life was extremely overwhelming.

Right now I need a conclusion, for the most part the rest of the thesis is good enough for a rough draft and I have to submit something for a format review later today, but since my PI has ignored me for the past 2 weeks, I'm not sure if he will get back to me after I submit this. So I have till the end of August to get the thesis signed off and I've already hit the minimum page limit, so I just need my PI to pull through.

It's cool I'm getting over it now haha. And it sounds like you're doing well and nearing submission so I congratulate you on getting this far. I can understand perhaps not wanting to motivate yourself with future work yet. In that case, I suggest focusing simply on finishing, so send your PI a few polite emails emphasizing your enthusiasm for completing the project to a good quality and butter them up about needing their expertise if appropriate.

Remember that most don't end up getting even as far as we do, from my interactions with grad students over the years I can tell you that most who get the point of switching from PhD to Masters understandably can't be bothered and leave. Be proud you are still taking on the challenge of finishing the thesis when most wouldn't.

"Competitive losers or pervs"... sounds like good training for university life :D