Current advisor wants me to graduate with my PhD soon but I don't feel like I learned a lot or obtained enough skills. Should I discuss this with him?

Question

I'm a soon to be 4.5th year Ph.D student currently in a 10 week internship. My advisor wants me to wrap up my dissertation as soon as I can. However, I'm not feeling good about where I'm at right now as far as outcomes go. I'll use myself as an example to illustrate what I've managed to get at the graduate level:

• Three conference posters (2019, 2023, 2024)

• Instructor of record for two online classes where I did my Ph.D, one semester of adjunct experience at a community college, and a full year of teaching as a full time instructor at a small liberal arts college

• Fellowship sponsored by the state where I'm doing my Ph.D for diverse applicants with future faculty and/or staff potential

• 10 week internship at one of the top 10 children's hospitals in the country that's only 20 minutes away from my hometown (and am still struggling to adjust to the responsibilities. My boss wants to discuss authorship with me and says he's happy with my updates, but I'm far behind compared to the other interns for sure).

My rocky experience (e.g., Master's program advisor ghosting me and prior advisees, first PhD advisor dropping me since she thought I wouldn't make it through the program) has certainly illustrated the cracks in my training and severe lack of experience in domains where I'd be expected to adapt quickly otherwise (e.g., learning R Studio). It's to the point where, should my boss at this internship secure the funding to hire two of the interns close to graduating (me being one of those two), I'm not sure if I'm in a position to take it at all. I'm also fumbling a fair amount in SPSS and my advisor has corrected some careless mistakes I've made with the variables.

I know I can't quit because my advisor will never write a letter of recommendation for anything again if I do. I'm considering taking a break from working as I simultaneously work with vocational rehabilitation in my home state (I'm neurodivergent and autistic so I qualify) to finish my dissertation and graduate since I'm convinced I'm dealing with burnout from all of the responsiveness I've juggled in the past two years as well as still recovering from the abuse I experienced from my first PhD advisor.

Even though my advisor wants me to graduate soon, I'm not confident in my skills or what I've learned to feel like I should be in a position to graduate. Should I bring up my concerns to him? Would it also be worth broaching ways I can learn other relevant skills?

Answer 1

I can't think of any reason not to discuss your concerns with your advisor. It sounds like you need reassurance more than anything. Certainly a break at this point seems counterproductive if your advisor thinks you are on the verge of finishing.

You probably have access to some professional help with things like burnout. You seem to have been pretty active. But you might also explore imposter syndrome.

And note, importantly, that your education doesn't end with graduation. If you have a position in academia, learning is a lifelong profession. Don't imagine that you need to know everything to graduate and move on in your career.

Answer 2

To add on to the other answers, I will just offer my perspective on when a student should wrap up their PhD.

In an ideal world, I would like to think that the student has produced a beautiful hypothesis-driven work with all the main parts wrapped up neatly, and some exciting results left over for future graduate students to build on.

In reality, that isn't always the case. Sometimes it becomes clear that the student is not really gaining anything new and is not improving further. This can be due to a lot of things including burn out which is very common (it's a long haul from undergraduate to end of PhD). So at that point, what is the benefit of more of the same? Especially if the PI believes that the student has met the threshold for obtaining a PhD in that program. At that point it is more beneficial to wrap up, take a break, and start fresh somewhere else (whether it is a new job, a postdoc, etc...).

Answer 3

Yes, definitely talk to your advisor about this! If you're feeling too burned out to wrap up your dissertation, tell them this. Maybe you do need a break.

What if you take two weeks away from your PhD work completely, and schedule a meeting with your supervisor for your first day back to come up with a concrete roadmap of what needs doing. You might find it helpful to get a very explicit idea of what your supervisor thinks needs to be done for you to graduate.

As you mention being autistic, you might also contact your institutions disabled student support service and see if they have anything like a "specialist mentor" who can talk through options with you.

If you're struggling with your current responsibilities, can you drop anything? I was very overwhelmed recently and quit every extracurricular very abruptly - until the point that I dropped everything I felt like I wasn't allowed to drop anything. In retrospect, I could absolutely have dropped some of it sooner and not burned out so spectacularly. If you're at the point where you're considering quitting, I suggest dropping everything that isn't absolutely necessary to graduate. What would it take to drop the internship? Obviously it wouldn't be ideal, but it would definitely be better to talk to them now and quit in a controlled manner than flame out suddenly.

Answer 4

Further to the recommendations by other collocutors, it would be important to raise with your advisor the issue of your further employment.

I am not sure how things are done in your specific field, but in most areas it is wise to wrap up a dissertation when either a postdoctoral offer is already there, or at least when the advisor realises that (s)he can fix one for the candidate. Of course, each advisor is different and each situation is special. Still, a reasonable professor will care about their disciples' future career stage. So you may want to raise the issue with your advisor. Can he use his connections to get a postdoctoral or similar job for you? If not, then what are your chances for your getting one this year, in his opinion? In my view, this is a key matter in your situation.

Answer 5

Aside from university timelines/deadlines, when and how you finish is mostly up to you. This assumes you work with your advisor on a schedule for closing out your research & defense, publications, presentations, etc.

I wouldn't worry about an advisor ghosting you since the landscape on student mentoring has changed over the last several decades. When I was a center director in a large university hospital, I couldn't count the number of students who approached me to serve as their advisor because "their advisor ignores them, and won't return emails or calls". Such ghosting was a result of (a) new/young faculty who were unaware of the responsibilities of being an advisor and (b) the dept chair not really knowing the young faculty were terrible advisors. The cultural background of young faculty has a lot to do with it.

Your comfort level for knowledge gained and your skillset for competing in industry is more a reflection of your required/elective coursework and workshops, and not so much your program. Regarding software issues, you might consider attending e.g. summer workshops to get more exposure/experience. To eliminate occurrences where people find coding errors, just start checking your work, since it sounds like you turn things in before you review/confirm they are correct.

I would recommend prioritizing graduation, and curtailing participation in external-outside superfluous, unnecessary activities, which are diluting your focus for now. Spend what remaining time you have in the program on finishing your research and strengthening your skillset for industry. If you work with your advisor on a plan to finish and minimize the perception that you're priorities are "all over the map," then everything should pan out.