I just passed my first year review in my engineering PhD, and my reviewer gave me what he calls a "shining review". However, my research experience is VERY different from anyone I meet from the faculty, including the following issues:

1.) Other PhD students often ask what group am I working in? My answer is either "I don't know" or "none". I am pretty much working alone, I have no collaborators or colleagues, I am doing no laboratory work, my work is done on a computer. I know what my funding body is and the department I'm registered at, but my group - if any - has no contact with me at all.

2.) My topic is broad (as in not specific enough). I made some little contribution submitting a journal paper and a couple of conference papers, however, the project is not well defined AT ALL, I am left to do whatever I feel like doing. This may sound great for someone, but it stresses me out, as the original project goal is pretty much finished and concluded now, and I have no idea how to continue. I simply don't have a well defined goal or a certain project or task to carry out, and I am left to figure out "some useful contribution to the industry".

3.) I have three supervisors, but none of them are from my field. Our meetings are generally just formalities, and their contribution is limited to helping me choose journals/conferences and checking my papers before submission. Others meet weekly with their supervisor(s), who precisely describe for them what they need to do for next week. I, however, meet my supervisors once a month, and my actual research is never discussed in depth. I have very little feedback on my work, and except for the annual review I had no idea whether what I'm doing is good or is it enough.

Now I feel kind of disheartened and think about leaving. Anyone had a similar experience with his/her PhD? Is this normal/acceptable? Any thoughts?

Hi Ella,

1) It might vary in different departments, but in my department the research area is very broad, so we are divided in smaller "groups". Although I work alone on my individual project, I am part of a group that works under the same supervisor and/or under similar topic. I assume you don't have/use the PhD studying area/office, so you are not aware of the various groups.

2) hopefully in the second year you will define your topic further. I assume you are very familiar with the literature, so you have identified gaps. Well done for submitting peer-reviewed work already.

3) Part of the PhD experience, is to learn how to organise your time, and break down a large project into smaller achievable tasks. Very controlling supervisors that give such weekly tasks to students hinder their progress towards independence because they assume that without tight supervision they are incapable of delivering. It is also possible too that these students are used as research assistants rather than as students, which means they will finish their PhDs in a gazillion years and a half.

Seems like your progress is satisfactory and you are capable of developing your own research project without much supervisory involvement. I assume you feel isolated, so I would suggest if possible to work in the uni a few days per week

Thank you for the answer Dr Jeckyll. I do have a desk in an office with about 20 other postgrads, and I have a work computer as well, I spend every weekday there. Although, I have to add that my desk is in an office that has people from different departments and different school than mine. I sometimes interact with people in that office, and I also meet people from my department sometimes in pub events or at seminars. But they mostly have a very different experience from mine.

You are right that I am kind of independent in my work, and working like that is fine for me. Although what you said about me finding holes in knowledge is not the case. I did a literature review (actually needed more of that than others probably, because my field is too broad), but I didn't find any apparent hole in knowledge that I could fill with the tools at my disposal, that is, without a lab, without full scale testing & site measurements, and without access to software and methodologies from the industry. I do not have these, and when I ask my supervisors to help me with finding a goal that I could be working towards, they just tell me to "work on a topic that you want to be known for". That sounds very nice, but then again I'll have to submit a dissertation and graduate as early as possible as I am planning to work in industry not staying in academia.

You see if I had a topic or a goal or a better defined problem, I'm confident that I could work towards it independently and solve it in the end. But finding the task itself seems to be beyond me, especially considering the constraints on my resources.

Thank you again for your answer, it made me feel somewhat better.

You are indeed in a very strange situation. I'm not sure why your department doesn't get you into a lab. Why isn't this a requirement?

I think every PhD student needs to belong to a lab, have labmates to talk to, and have lab meetings to learn from others who study similar thing. At least you will be publishing papers under your advisors' names. Don't they want to participate a little bit in the research process? To just tell you "work on the topic you want to be known for" is definitely not enough of a mentoring effort. You should talk to your department chair, your dean of graduate school, or anyone who's responsible of getting you to this point. Ask them how you can better your position, how to be more actively involved in a lab. If one of you advisors already have lab space or members you should ask if you can move, visit, join the meeting, collaborate with those people.

In case your major concern is just not being able to find holes to fill. Maybe you can look at previous work of you advisors, pick ones you are interested, give it some thoughts, ask them what are major challenges remained in this area, and how can you solve them. I guess, be more proactive. If they are unable to give you satisfying guidance, move on to other professors in your school. Ask for an appointment and ask them for their guidance. If no one in your department/school has overlapping interest with you, you are in the wrong school. You should use your current credentials (your peer-reviewed work) to transfer to other schools.

Since it's early in your study, you still have time to change advisor or transfer to other departments/school, whatever needed to move you forward.