<p>There is a guy in my lab that I need to work with on a regular basis that is confusing me and driving me nuts. He is about ready to graduate, but seems in no hurry. He will not get results into the professor on schedule, and does not seem to care. Literally, results take months longer than what seem to be necessary or requested. When I ask him about this, he seems ticked that the professor wants results, and says he has other things to do. His research is close to being the core of a good thesis, but seems to make no effort to get the thesis done. The professor has made it crystal clear that the guy needs certain results to graduate.</p>
<p>So what is up with this? Any ideas out there? The guy seems to be struggling with finding a job after the PhD or getting a good post-doc. I almost wonder if he is purposely delaying the process to find a good job afterwards, but I’m not sure.</p>
<p>This affects me because we are both funded from the same grant, and if he doesn’t leave it may eventually effect my funding. Also, if his results aren’t as good as they could be, the same grant I’m on could get cancelled in the long run. This seems unlikely though. Finally, a paper should happen when he finally gets results with my name on it too somewhere 3rd, 4th, or 5th author.</p>
<p>Any thoughts or solutions to this situation would be helpful?</p>
<p>I can’t speak to your particular example, but certainly many PhD students delay graduation to improve employment prospects by giving themselves time to publish more, improve their thesis, make more connections, etc. If you could graduate in 4 years with one ok publication or 5 years with two or three good publications, wouldn’t you take the extra year? </p>
<p>Of course, this is all assuming that the extra time allows you to put in more work. If you’re just not doing work or doing it extremely slowly, that’s not going to help at all. But in principle, delaying graduation can be a big benefit.</p>
<p>I know a number of foreign students who are planning on delaying graduation as long as possible since they’re making more now as grad students than they will when they go back to their home countries with a PhD.</p>
<p>I’ve also known a number that have had their thesis practically done, but have delayed on finishing due to the less than stellar employment prospects at the moment.</p>
<p>This isn’t always secret. A lot of graduate students work with their professors to delay graduation. Sometimes they can’t get a job, and they need the stipend and/or health insurance that being a graduate student will provide. Sometimes they stay on to publish more and teach more classes so they look better to employers. If he’s struggling with getting a job or a post-doctoral position, that’s probably why he’s dragging his feet. (Although it’s in his best interests to publish at least some of his results sooner rather than later; more good publications can only help him get a job.)</p>
<p>I had a friend who was planning to delay - all her research was done, and she just had to write some of her later chapters (intro and lit review were done too, I think, as were methods). She was taking her sweet time writing. But then she got a job offer, and she quickly finished up and defended her dissertation in a couple of months.</p>
<p>There’s also a possibility that he’s feeling depressed or anxious because of his inability to find a post-graduation position, and he’s not thusly motivated to finish his degree.</p>
<p>And then there’s just writers block. Some people never get their PhDs because they can’t bring themselves to complete the dissertation. Research is one thing, and writing a coherent and relevant dissertation is quite another.</p>
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<p>Really? If you publish, you shouldn’t be struggling for words too much, in my mind.</p>
<p>I think it’s more than just struggling for words. It is distilling everything into a dissertation. For some people, a journal article is much more manageable, and there’s a lot less perceived pressure. I know two people who bailed out at the dissertation stage (one tried for three years) and left their programs ABD. And I also know someone who took 9 years to get his PhD – his advisor cut off his funding the last year to prompt him to finish. :)</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the good responses.</p>
<p>-This guy is an international student who is struggling to find an opportunity after his PhD. At one point he wanted a post-doc with our advisor, but that didn’t seem to be forth coming. It is kind of a downward spiral. The more the guy delays, the more upset our advisor becomes and less likely a post-doc becomes.</p>
<p>-It is an engineering PhD dissertation. The challenges are the results and the simulations to understand the results. The challenge is not writer’s block. Often once the results and the simulations are good, the writing of a dissertation may take 1 month. I will agree that the guy seems depressed.</p>
<p>-My big question is whether or not this guys delaying affects me, and what I can do about it. I may be over thinking things, and this may not matter to me. I just need to endure very painful meetings with this guy and our advisor. What do you all think?</p>
<p>I’d go talk to the advisor. Let him know your concern regarding funding of the project as a whole</p>
<p>I would be surprised if his progress would affect yours. You may have to do more work to leapfrog past him. Or, as Boogie suggest, you might have to talk with your advisor about how his procrastination is affecting your own work/results. If at all possible, find a way that you don’t have to depend on him. My husband is a crackerjack programmer because he discovered that he couldn’t count on another graduate student to provide the necessary code on time. It happens. </p>
<p>One more note: only talk to the advisor if the other student is affecting your research. The advisor is likely already dealing with him and doesn’t need someone else to remind him of the problem. He will want to know, however, if his other students cannot complete their own part of the project, as seems to be the case here.</p>
<p>Really? If you publish, you shouldn’t be struggling for words too much, in my mind.</p>
<p>Dissertations are very different from publications. Publications can be 20-30 pages, sometimes even shorter if they’re brief reports. Dissertations can be 100+ pages and require a whole lot more background research and synthesis of information. They’re very different skill sets.</p>
<p>he challenges are the results and the simulations to understand the results. The challenge is not writer’s block. Often once the results and the simulations are good, the writing of a dissertation may take 1 month.</p>
<p>I’m not in your field but I’m assuming that you’re a junior graduate student, and since you are, you have no idea what the challenges are of dissertation writing. I have also never met anyone who has written an entire dissertation in 1 month. Sometimes it takes that long just to write a chapter. Stop worrying about his progress and start worrying about yours - talk with your advisor to see if your funding is threatened. Ask the student if he needs help doing the simulations and take a greater role in what he’s doing to speed it up. Write your own papers. You can’t do everything by yourself when you work on a collaborative project, but there are things you can do and you certainly shouldn’t be stressing yourself out about another students’ degree progression.</p>
<p>Also, any PI worth his salt wouldn’t let the progress of one graduate student threaten his entire grant.</p>
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<p>That easy to tell I’m a junior grad student?! Too bad for me. Seriously!</p>
<p>I’m not trying to worry about a situation I shouldn’t be here. I just don’t quite get this academic thing yet. I walk into a room and see an interaction between a professor and student, and I honestly don’t get it. This bothers me so I ask stupid sounding questions here on CC in the hopes that other will be able to decipher it for me.</p>
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<p>Agreed, good point.</p>
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<p>Where do you publish and what is your field? Most of the ones I read (condensed matter physics and a little bit of electrical engineering) tend to be 3-5 pages. Also, your opinion of dissertation writing appears to be department or field-specific, because nobody I interact with is very concerned about thesis writing. In fact, I know of more than one person who crammed it into roughly a month.</p>