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[books4jocks]

I am considering leaving my PhD program after this semester. I started grad school 8 years ago in a humanities PhD program, and almost immediately started second-guessing myself. After three years, I took a master's, but, having fallen in love with teaching (writing and reading to 1st year students), I stayed on in a different PhD program in education. I've never wanted to be an academic or a scholar; I'd like to be in a teaching position and do conferences every once in awhile. I'd be happy in a community college. But, I've been plugging away at the PhD, through the birth of both my daughters, because I currently teach in a great department and they only hire PhDs. I figured I should at least give myself that option. My husband has a great local job so we aren't going anywhere. I've nearly quit several times, but held back because it's scary to leave, because I wasn't sure what to do, because I thought it would be worth it.

I've been trying to comp for almost two years, and it keeps not happening. First, I had a baby which understandably derailed things for awhile. Then, I thought I was ready, but my adviser disagreed. I worked very hard all during winter break to pull together the required materials but found out yesterday that the paperwork to test next month was due TODAY.

Obviously, I should have known that and taken care of it beforehand. But, I didn't. I messaged my adviser and she absolutely lost it. She says I have been uncommunicative, that she had no idea I intended to comp this semester, that I've been remiss in numerous ways. Now she is meeting with the rest of the committee to decide if I will be allowed to comp in three weeks, or if not. I've committed, apparently, some egregious mistakes in terms of communication and stuff. I'm baffled because she hasn't said anything about this up until now, but looking at it from her perspective, she's not wrong. I've been flying under the radar mostly out of fear of drawing attention to myself. I've barely had time, between my kids and teaching, to devote any time to comps. I've half-assed the scholarship end of grad school pretty much from day one.

Now that I feel completely humiliated and embarrassed, the thought of comping in three weeks feels impossible, and the thought of putting it off for the nth time feels equally unappealing. I imagine that I will have to find a new adviser (she seemed very pissed), restructure my committee, and work my ass off twice as hard to prove myself worthy. And I just don't know if I want to. I don't know if I have it in me. I'm smart enough, but I know it doesn't matter if I'm smart, it matters if I can play the game. And I think I suck at the game. I'm tempted, so very tempted, to just say f*** it. To withdraw from my course hours, finish up my teaching, and spend some time adjuncting and being with my kids and look for a comm college spot to open up, or something.

I don't know what to do. It's embarrassing to think of explaining this decision to everyone I know, and my family. It feels like quitting. It feels like failure. But I'm not sure that temporary embarrassment is worth the struggle.

[hegemony]

As someone who has been in your advisor's position many times, I think your advisor needs to get a life.  If she's had trouble with how often you communicate with her, or whatever, she needed to bring it up and tell you what she wanted.  And so you failed to notice an important deadline -- it's unfortunate but you're far from the first student on earth who's done this.  It's totally unwarranted for her to blow her top.  She might feel exasperated, she might grumble, she might write you a terse e-mail.  But to call your comps into question just because of this?  Or because of this plus various previously unvoiced dissatisfactions.  Fer heaven's sake.  This is not a game of "Catch someone making a mistake!"  This should be a matter of "let's get this person through the program." 

And frankly, the number of grad students I've had who got exceptions to various deadlines and penalties and ultimatums ... well, it's greater than the number who have not.  That may be lamentable, but it is what it is.  This is not just me granting all these exceptions.  It's the Director of Graduate Studies and the university and all the powers that be.  Because these things happen.

It sounds as if you're a little bit short on confidence (I can even hear you blaming yourself: "Yes, I don't have the right amount of confidence ... I'm inadequate there too ..."  Stop!).  If so, channel the attitude of the most arrogant and full-of-entitlement male grad student of your cohort.  Would that person let a blustery advisor derail him?  Not on your life.  Neither should you.  I'd go to the Director of Grad Studies and lay it all out, calmly and uncringingly.  Sure, say that you're sorry that you overlooked the deadline.  But then calmly ask her/him to help you solve the problem -- you need to be cleared for comps in three weeks.  Oh, and your advisor is too shaken up to help you formulate a useful plan of attack.  Say this with a brief calm shake of your head, as if viewing the problem from millions of miles away.  Then get in there and do the comps.  You haven't been at it this long to let a silly advisor derail you now.  And if that's not motivation enough, think how you will feel later if you quit at this point.  You'll feel awful.  You'll feel inadequate.  You'll feel you failed, and you won't be able to change history.  These things won't be true, but you know you'll feel that way.  Let avoiding that feeling be motivations.  And it's relatively easy to get this back on the rails.

I also think that down the line you need a new advisor, someone who has more patience with this situation.  This woman is not a good match. 

Now go get 'em.

[marigolds]

Yes, hegemony, but...in the program EIGHT YEARS already and hasn't yet taken comps?

OP, you don't have to do this, and it frankly sounds like you don't want to.  Why torture yourself if your family is really more important right now? That is an OK choice--you are not a loser if this particular game is not for you.  And it sounds like it's not.

[crowie]

Your motivations for staying in grad school sound like a combination of a sense of obligation to try to stay in your department because of your husband's employment situation...

I currently teach in a great department and they only hire PhDs. I figured I should at least give myself that option. My husband has a great local job so we aren't going anywhere.

...and a fear of the alternatives...

I've nearly quit several times, but held back because it's scary to leave, because I wasn't sure what to do, because I thought it would be worth it.

...and now a fear of embarrassment:

I don't know what to do. It's embarrassing to think of explaining this decision to everyone I know, and my family. It feels like quitting. It feels like failure. But I'm not sure that temporary embarrassment is worth the struggle.

Obligation, fear of the alternatives and fear of looking bad in front of others are honestly not the greatest of all possible reasons to stay in grad school.  Though you would not be the first person to have been motivated by such feelings.  I think many people during a Ph.D. program go through periods of low motivation, and sometimes a little fear of the ramifications of quitting is what pulls them through and gets them back to remembering their passion.  But passion seems to be what's missing altogether here.  I am not hearing anything about your passion for the subject and your desire to do scholarly research at a Ph.D. level.  Most people in academia "play the game" (and in this case, what does "playing the game" mean, exactly--keeping track of departmental deadlines?  We are not exactly talking high level social/professional jujitsu here) not because they enjoy game playing, but because they enjoy the research process and they know that "playing the game" ensures they can keep doing their research.  It sounds not so much as if you "suck" at playing the game as that, frankly, you don't really want to play the game.  Possibly because at some level you don't actually want the things that playing the game gives you access to.

It may be that you have plenty of passion for your subject and it is just not coming through in what you've written so far.  If that's the case and you do decide to stay in your program then the top two things you need to do differently are to stop trying to "fly under the radar" and stop half-assing your scholarship.  Yes you are busy, but when you get this putative future permanent job in your department once you have your Ph.D. you will only be busier.  The time to learn to juggle personal life, teaching and scholarship is now.  Hegemony's response was wonderfully encouraging and rightly called out your advisor for her aggressive response.  Even if she had many justifiable issues with your choices, blowing one's top is not the way to handle it.  However, if your advisor was truly unaware that you were even intending to do comps this semester that is a sign that your way of communicating with her needs to be completely revamped, whether that means new methods of communication (in-person meetings, emails etc.) or a higher frequency of contact. 

If you decide to quit, adjunct, spend time with the kids and look out for Comm. college jobs, be aware that, depending on your field, many community colleges these days are also looking to hire Ph.D.s--partly because of the oversupply of Ph.D.s on the market, so you may also need to look at trying for work in the high school arena, or other kinds of work with college students such as advising.

[hegemony]

In answer to others' comments, I'd say that eight years is not a bad length of time before comps, considering that life has clearly been happening along the way.  Giving birth to two kids definitely slows down the process.  I've known students with fewer obstacles who progressed more slowly, frankly.  And it doesn't seem that there's any urgency, except that I'm sure you, OP, want the process done. What I'm hearing is that you're not that passionate about research, but you're interested in your subject and you love teaching.  We generally advise people who don't live and breathe academia not to go for a PhD, because the profession requires so much dedication and stamina.  But it seems as if a PhD would be a useful credential for you, and you have the financial support of your spouse, so it seems like a reasonable course of action to me.  People get law degrees with a lot less interest in law than you seem to have in teaching your field.  And the problem is not that you've suddenly developed a dislike of teaching or your field, but that after a series of obstacles (and low confidence, which makes everything seem harder), your advisor has thrown up another obstacle, and it's very discouraging.  But this truly doesn't seem to me like an important enough reason to throw in the towel.  It could well be happily resolved within a week's time.  Then on to the next step.  If you really don't like your material and you don't want to teach, then well and good, maybe time to let go.  But if nothing's changed in that regard, I still say: go get 'em.

[books4jocks]

Thanks for these responses.

I should clarify that during my 8 years I also earned a master's. I've been in my PhD program for 5 years. I'm very passionate about teaching, but less so about research (my field is in education, so caring about teaching is to a great extent caring about my subject matter, I just prefer the classroom life to the researching/publishing stuff). I have always been on the fence about the PhD but as hegemony says, it is a useful credential, and I am sure I'd feel bad if a job I wanted came up but it required a PhD I don't have. I'm not sure that's reason enough to stay, given how competitive every job is, anyway. Although it would be a bit embarrassing to backtrack to high school teaching, I could do that and be content (I work mostly with developmental college students, so it wouldn't be a huge leap). I have my teaching certificate.

It's hard to have perspective on how big a deal this is. I know I've really angered my primary person in the dept, and the dept is small enough that I can't move forward without her involvement in some way in my dissertation process. I can be better about communicating but I don't know if I can recuperate her good opinion. I can see how, from her perspective, I look like a flaky and distracted bonehead, and she's not wrong, I tend to take care of family and teaching first and squeeze scholarship in around that. I have been trying to clear the decks and reduce my commitments so that I can devote more focus to research, but it's been a slow disentangling.

I don't know what I'll do, but I appreciate your replies, which have all been insightful and kind.

[voxprincipalis]

Then, I thought I was ready, but my adviser disagreed.

<snip>

Obviously, I should have known that and taken care of it beforehand. But, I didn't. I messaged my adviser and she absolutely lost it. She says I have been uncommunicative, that she had no idea I intended to comp this semester, that I've been remiss in numerous ways. Now she is meeting with the rest of the committee to decide if I will be allowed to comp in three weeks, or if not. I've committed, apparently, some egregious mistakes in terms of communication and stuff. I'm baffled because she hasn't said anything about this up until now

The "I thought I was ready but my adviser disagreed" bit should have been a giant red flag to you that something was seriously awry. You and your adviser should be mostly on the same page about your progress. If you are not, that in itself is an indication that there is a failure to communicate, because you have managed to get the idea that you're ready for comps while she clearly thinks you are not -- and she did communicate that to you.

All that being said, I think the best thing for you to do is have a come-to-Jesus meeting with her and find out the cold hard truth about what she thinks of your prospects -- which may not be all bad, by the way. But both ignoring her and trying to find another committee and backing out due to embarrassment are just ways of trying to avoid figuring out what the reality of the situation is. It is always better to know than not to know, so I think you need to be strong enough to have that fierce conversation.

Speaking of avoiding and being really honest about what's going on, is the reason that you didn't know the materials were due on that day because you were avoiding dealing with it? (I am avoidant myself, so I am not unsympathetic, but there is no way to fix it other than to stop avoiding.) If so, this is not an indication that you desire/value the degree highly enough to jump through the right hoops.

Lots of people want to have run a marathon, but when they think about what it takes to run each of those 26+ miles, it's a different story.

VP

[brixton]

I love hegemony's responses, and I'm not sure I can elaborate on them.  The only thing I might add is: do you want it?  If teaching is really what you enjoy, try to get to ABD and then parlay it into teaching at the secondary level.  Depending upon the state, sometimes all it requires is teaching certification, sometimes classes in Ed psych, sometimes more.  I've also had friends who've gotten to your level and taught in local prep schools--good, motivated students, and programs are more interested in getting good teachers who have taught at the college level than those with state-mandated requirements and less experience with the student-type they teach.

I guess what I'm saying is you're at a crossroad and it would be worth taking a career inventory of where you are.  If you want to finish, channel, as hegemony instructs.  If you don't have the confidence to do it, a counsellor might help.  But, if as you say you've always had doubts, you're pretty far along.  Your Uni bachground might be useful for a school of kids who are Uni-bound.

[username2]

A lot of advisors will expect you to know the deadlines and figure it out yourself.

I'm sorry your advisor lost it with you, but I'm almost certain that she was annoyed because you did all the work without first checking the requirements and deadlines. It isn't up to her to figure these out for you. In my PhD department, you would have had to communicate about comps at least 2 months ahead of time, to give them time to prepare questions. So if someone would have just done the preparation without letting them know ahead of time, there would be almost zero chance of an exception, and they would push you off until the next semester. It also wouldn't be a big deal, unless that student tried to argue.

What I am wondering is whether your advisor know that you want to go into a teaching focused position. Are you in a higher ranked school where your advisor is expecting you to go to somewhere similar? Perhaps that is her frame of reference in losing it over the comps incident.

But if you can work it out with her to do a good enough dissertation project, maybe you can finish with approval. You can also change advisors. Have some conversations to see who will let you out with just the minimum on research. It happens. However, you need to know that if you do this, you will be unable to ask for letters for research-focused places.

[arizona]

I'm also a little baffled by the "8 years and no comps" thing. OP, can you explain how your department works.

I also entered my program (humanities) without a master's. I earned my master's after two years in the program (which was expected of PhD students) and then we all had to take comps in the first semester of our third year. If you didn't pass your comps, you were not allowed to proceed with your dissertation proposal. Also, 8-10 years was considered a "long" time to finish for those who came in WITHOUT a master's. After 10 years, you were simply booted out.

[macadamia]

1. If your advisor "absolutely lost it", this does not mean that you have to change advisors or stop doing your PhD. I do get the impression that she told you a list of things that she wants you to change about yourself, all served with a lot of frustration. It does not exactly sound like she asked you to quit.

2. I miss or almost miss deadlines now and then through avoidance behaviour. If you do that, you apologize, try to do better, ask for exemptions and live with the consequences. If you quit your PhD because you missed a deadline then it seems to me that you were looking for an excuse to quit. It is *fine* to quit a PhD but you should be honest to yourself about the reasons.

3. Prepare for your comps. Now.

[larryc]

Look, you have come this far, I can't see bailing because your advisor is (rightfully) miffed at you over scheduling your comps.

That said--what the hell is going on with your graduate education?!! Eight years to your comps? You don't know when to file key paperwork? Your advisor feels like you are out of touch, and now has to go to bat for you with colleagues because you did not communicate?

Take this as a wake up call. Get cracking on comps prep, have a plan to do your dissertation quickly, and maintain a presence in your department and a working relationship with your long-suffering advisor.

[books4jocks]

FIVE YEARS -- FIVE years, not eight, to comps. As I  have said twice, I took a master's in my first program and changed to my current program FIVE years ago.

I agree, I've been out of the loop, and it's a huge problem. Thanks all for your advice, I appreciate it.

[academic_cog]

Although it would be a bit embarrassing to backtrack to high school teaching, I could do that and be content (I work mostly with developmental college students, so it wouldn't be a huge leap). I have my teaching certificate.

Why embarrassing? Who the hell would know, your students? New people at a new school? Who the hell would care? You are doing a lot of things in your program because of this embarrassment factor that is, frankly, all in your head. No one else is going to know or care about you having an unfinished degree or how long it took you to get your comps scheduled, how long it takes you to finish or not to finish.

That said, I would say quit. You have the other options (go check out how many community colleges are in the area and who is on their permanent faculty, what kind of credentials they have), don't seem all that interested in research, and don't appear to have the drive, organization and self-motivation that you will need to get yourself through the dissertating process. Once you go ABD, most advisors are very hands-off and expect you to be on top of all the details of your deadlines and data collection. They _all_ will expect you to figure out on your own  how to prioritize and schedule your dissertation work in order to make progress despite work and family commitments.

[hegemony]

I submit that your advisor does not have to believe in you for you to succeed in your program.  She just has to let you go ahead.  And missing a deadline is not reason enough to throw someone out of the program.

It sounds as if your low profile and relatively low involvement in the program have meant that you have missed being on top of things, and along the way your advisor got exasperated with it.  Now, clearly you need to get a little more on top of things, so things go smoothly from here on in.  But whatever your advisor's private opinion, I think it's unprofessional of her to make a fuss.  It's no skin off her nose.  She may wish to have a candid talk and tell you that you need to be more focused or else you won't make it through the program (in fact, that's what she should have done).  But don't mistake her emotional reaction for anything but her own inability to get perspective. As you must know, being a teaching specialist, if we let student flaws drive us round the bend, we'd all be around the bend all the time.

The best grad student I ever had seemed hopeless at several points when she went through our program.  We were tearing  our hair out at her comps.  I'm still not quite sure why her subsequent work has been so much better -- nothing we said seemed to make a bit of difference.  But basically now she's a star in her field, several years out.  I had another student who turned in a terrible dissertation two weeks before the deadline.  I said, "This can't pass, you can't go ahead."  She said, "I will revise this in one week."  I said, "You'll drive yourself crazy trying, but you don't have enough time.  We must postpone."  But she did it.  It was an impressive dissertation and passed easily.  Conversely, some of my extra-impressive grad students never got beyond lackluster work.  My ultimate point is that your advisor cannot accurately predict your level of achievement.  Her lack of support is unfortunate, but as long as you clear each hurdle, her private opinion is irrelevant.  If you want the degree, do some course correction and keep going.