Dear all,

Thank you very much for the advice you've given me. It basically agrees with what I have been thinking. Since the odds are good that I won't get a job anyway, and will have to stay here, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by souring the relationship with my advisor. And I would be honest with him over my reason for leaving. I do feel pretty loyal to him since he kindly took me on after my troubled/tumultous first year in a different lab. So that loyalty is a big part of why I feel guilty over thinking about leaving. But I will not leave without something definite lined up. It's taking my friends months on end to find jobs, and I don't want to be in that situation.

I am actually in a bit of dilemma over my references. I'm not using anyone from the department (including my advisor, obviously), because I can't have word getting around. I am using one person who just graduated, and if a potential employer wanted more refs, I have a couple of people in mind for refs who also just left the department, but who know me and my work. So that is how I'm planning on handling that.

To OoOoo: What I would try to do in that situation is to find another professor in the dept. whom you trust, and talk to him/her about the situation. There are hopefully some profs who realize that there's a whole wide world of employment out there outside of academia. Try to get advice from one of them. Good luck :-)

Thanks for the reply, Chuff!

That's what I want to do - get a job, then quit. That would be best for me, but makes me feel incredibly guilty. I'd be leaving my advisor in the lurch since I am the only one working on this one of his grant-funded projects. So I guess I'm wondering how *obligated* I am to tell him (as a good person, not really in a legal sense) so that he can start looking for someone to hire to finish the project...

Hi all,

I'm not looking for advice on whether to quit - I've come to that decision on my own, with surprisingly little dithering. Just if you're curious, I've just finished my 3rd year of a Ph.D. program in the U.S., but it will take me 3 more years to finish (this is pretty much a set in stone timetable, don't want to get into that on here though). So I've decided, rather than do this for 3 more years, I want to look for a job. I realize that getting a job is highly unlikely, especially because there is a certain state I'm limited to looking in, but I've decided to try hard, and to leave if I do get one. I did get my master's at the end of last year.

I've generally always felt grad school is a job like any other, and if it's not taking you where you want to be, you can look for another job anytime. So that's my reasoning on that and in a nutshell is why I want out and I am comfortable with my decision.

But I don't know how to tell my advisor. Some of my friends say, "Don't tell him till you have a job in hand." Others say, no, you need to tell him now. My advisor and I do have a fairly good relationship, but I do not think he will be supportive on this. He will be hurt and mad and can be petty. So I don't want to sour the relationship because if I don't get a job, I will want to stay here and finish the degree - something that obviously will be difficult if not impossible if my advisor finds out about this. Thoughts, anyone?

Thanks in advance for input. I can't talk about it with people here in my city, because I cannot risk this getting back to my department.