Hello
Thank you in advance for hearing my story. I am about to finish my second year of PhD studies. After 20 months of work, I had a meeting with my committee they judged that I should "refocus" the research problem, which basically meant scrapping all the work done before. I only had a small publication before that. They asked me to refocus the problem and in two months, they will recheck what has been done. Now those two months have elapsed and the review is very near. I did my best, and I have refocused the problem, although took some dead end alleys, and progress has been slow, as is normal on research.

I got a meeting with my main advisor yesterday just to discuss about the upcoming review. I told him I was going to tell the committee what I have been doing the last two months, including of course, the dead ends I took. He told me, "what do you expect that they tell you? that is a list of failures. What you should do is tell them how you are refocusing" and so and so. I have never been able to really satisfy my advisor, despite his best efforts and mine, seems like we really don't communicate academically, however, in a personal sense, we get along really well.

I have funding for another year (the 3rd one). However, yesterday at the end of the meeting he told me exactly this "two years and no progress. Have you thought of other options?". Immediately, politely but firmly I told him "what other options? do you want us to stop working together?" and he started being evasive, telling such things as "you are an adult, I cannot decide for you" and "I am not like a boss that fires you". I suggested him that maybe we should not do the meeting with the committee and stop immediately, but he said "do the meeting and we'll talk later".

I don't know what to do. I believe I have done progress towards refocusing and I have a reasonable view of the "new" problem, but all the things said before (and others I did not include) are very bad signals. I believe my advisor does not want to lose face, he just wants to bring me in front of the committee and that I fail in front of them just to save face. I am thinking on seriously not doing that meeting (next week) and stopping right now. At least I could save the scarce dignity I have by quitting before I fail. But maybe things can turn out for the better, who knows? I don't know what to do. What do you would recommend? Thank you again.

Hi Peoillo,

I'm sorry that you are in such a crap situation, and that your sup wasn't able to warn you of this earlier.
Of cause I can't advise you, I don't know the particulars of your situation or you. So, my advice is that you work out what you want to do. Don't worry about your advisor losing face, of about the fear of failure. If you want to continue with this new focus and direction, do it. With a year left, you will have to work hard, but you are not without options.

I wish you all the best.
FM

I think you need to get advice from people other than your main supervisor. Have you got a second supervisor, graduate research office or postgraduate tutor? This is not a failing of you in particular, your main supervisor's job is to support and advise, and make sure you're not doing something that isn't up to standard. I have just finished my PhD at the end of nearly 4 years, with only three years funded. If you have to go back to the drawing board to get data then so be it - you can probably go over the 3 year allocated time with extenuating circumstances. You must do something about it soon though, it'll not get better in these circumstances.

Dear Pepillo,

I’m sorry to hear this. In my opinion your supervisor sounds pretty inadequate and frankly unethical to be telling you this right before your review. Some of the best research has come through working through dead ends and refocusing; that’s why it is the best, because it comes from working through a difficult problem. And that takes time. The fact that your supervisor is not able to support you through this stage of your PhD which most of us go through (ok I am in the humanities not sciences, but I also have a math degree so I know well enough what kind of snags science students get into) says more about him than you. As for maintaining dignity by quitting before failing, I have been through two sets of comprehensive exams, failed one and got a distinction on the other one. Failing is not actually the worst thing that can happen to you IMO (or IME, I should say); it’s corny but the only way to really fail is if you don’t give yourself the chance in the first place to succeed. My suggestion to you is just tell yourself how brave you are being by going through with this despite all of your fears and the crap from on high. And make walking through that door your own personal barometer of success, not the committee’s decision. After failing/redoing my first exam, I walked into my second exam a year later being completely convinced that I would fail again, and the only thing that got me through it was telling myself, blindly and stupidly, that I had already succeeded one my own terms by being brave enough to it. Yes it is worth a lot, and yes the consequences will be shitty for you jobwise if they fail you, but you also have other options if this were to happen and your own self worth is separate from their judgment of you. Your committee has no real power (though I know how much it seems as if they do).

Oh, and about failing, the brilliant philosopher Simone Weil has an interesting thing where she argues that being able to pay attention to our failures and think through them (wherever or not any resolution is achieved) is the most valuable and brave work that we can do. http://simoneweil.net/attention.htm . Worthwhile reading
Best of luck to you.
(robin)