If you missed it, you can find Part 1 and Part 2 here! Now, on to the third installment!

I couldn’t do anything right. I was dumb. I’d just left my Ph.D. advisor’s office for the billionth time. I did not understand the phylogenetic program and how to develop primers. He told me I was a Ph.D. student and so I should be able to figure it out.

I’d been reading so many scientific articles that had used the exact same programs that I was trying to use, trying to determine what I was doing wrong. I was contacting primer companies to see if someone could help explain how I could find the correct sequence I needed (I will admit, everyone who worked at IDT helped me so much).

I would return with my newest findings, until finally my advisor said he would do it. I asked if he could show me how, so that I could learn what I was supposed to do. But he would eventually just do it and not explain why I (and IDT) was wrong.

Matt was struggling with the same issues. We went to the director of the program and asked if this was normal. The director said no. When no change came about, Matt and I  individually transferred to different labs. We were no longer working together.

My new advisor was a lady from Nepal, and I looked up to her as a mentor. I definitely have milked the whole “women in STEM” to my advantage before, and the fact that I was a girl was why she was so willing to let me into her lab. I started researching two different topics. The research, while related more to agriculture, was not up my alley, but I was determined to get a Ph.D. and do well – I needed this lab change to succeed.

Eventually, my topic of research narrowed to using sunflower waste to grow mushrooms. I was working on this as if it were my full-time job. I noticed that all of the other students were from Nepal. As another Nepalese student arrived, it came time to start meeting with my committee. I passed my first meeting (albeit stressful), as they expected with my switch in laboratories, I wouldn’t have a ton of research under my belt. They evaluated what I did have, and gave me advice, directions, and criticism.

After several months, I felt like I was making no progress. My advisor had started assigning her newest student work re-doing what I had already done. They would get the same results as I, but she would keep giving them more of the project, and I less. She then said they would be first author on a paper, and that I should start writing the outline.

I was so discouraged. Graduate school was nothing like I’d imagined. By this point, I’d been here for a year and a half and I was getting nowhere fast. The stipend was barely covering my expenses, and with my advisor assigning my research project to others, I knew something had to change.

I was ready to quit altogether, but I had done most of my coursework and I was so close. So I met with my advisor, and made the difficult decision to drop to a Masters, as I needed to get a job and I couldn’t keep doing this. She agreed, and I would just write a paper-based thesis project (also known as a Plan B Masters)…no research involved.

Nothing I could write was good enough. I had not struggled this much in my schoolwork. I’d thought I’d been a decent writer, but nothing I could do would gain my advisors approval. All of her attention was on her other students, who she would praise in the meetings. I would not get encouragement.

I was so discouraged. All I had to do was write a review of sunflowers. That’s such an easy paper to write! I was reading so much and doing so many revisions, reworks, starting over. My advisor’s advice seemed to keep changing each time I would meet with her, and all I saw were the other students’ successes.

I would go home at the end of the day and call my parents. I couldn’t stay in grad school. I wasn’t smart enough. I didn’t understand what I was doing wrong. I hadn’t made the right decision. I’d fit in so much better in my state job as a food microbiologist. This had all been a waste of time.

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