Hey everyone,
I’m still newish to this website, so if there’s an appropriate place to move this mods can do what they need to do.
I’m aware I’ve made multiple posts on this website before so I’m hoping this one can be a bit more substantive for others who may be going through a similar thing.
Long story short, I’m one of the rare folks who had a bad BS (3.26 overall GPA, 3.5 major GPA) and MA (3.48 GPA) who managed to get into a Ph.D program despite this. Little did I know how much of a mess this R2 in the mid Michigan area truly is right now at the graduate level at least. I stupidly got a BS since I was told by a lab where I was a research assistant my senior year in high school that the BS was the main way to get into graduate school. I now know that’s not true unless my overall GPA was better. I can’t speak for undergraduate too much, but I’ve heard not good things from there either other than the programs that were already extremely good (e.g., Education since this school was originally a teaching school. Fashion design is another). The president also announced they’re stepping down on Dec. 31st of this year.
After my first year in this program, there have been constant threats to the verbally promised four years of funding I was supposed to receive. I got three years of full funding thankfully. Only reason I didn’t get it this year was because I got a visiting full time position at a SLAC where I’m sadly struggling for reasons I only learned of recently after a stint in partial hospitalization (Major Depressive Disorder - Severe on top of my other conditions like Generalized Anxiety Disorder, PTSD, 3rd percentile processing speed, and ADHD-I).
Despite this, I got help from various sources that my parents hired and some pre-existing family connections too (like my therapist and educational consultant) and managed to get offers from 6/8 Master’s programs I applied to. However, as you can probably guess, its not like my grades made me competitive to get full funding. The only program that did was one where it was a weird mix of clinical and experimental psychology. Turns out I dodged a bullet since many of their students are hired as adjuncts at their own university if they don’t make it into a Ph.D program whatsoever. Where I enrolled had me pay tuition but at the time 80% of their graduates made it to Ph.D programs (me included).
As far as where I am now, I don’t think it’s a good spot overall. I outlined everything earlier to highlight that it was a combination of my own initiative issues, difficulty with staying independent, and some bad luck for reasons outside of my control that led to this (I started my Master’s in 2018 but graduated a semester later due to COVID forcing me to defend a pilot study I did my first year and got a poster in this case).
Here is what I have as far as academic experience goes:
-5.5 (soon to be 6) years of lab management experience
-A fellowship that sponsors diverse students (including neurodivergent ones like me) from the state of Michigan. I’d be thrilled by this if not for the fact that teaching has gone poorly for me.
-Took a graduate stats course at the Master’s level and one at the Ph.D level (since it was a prerequisite to take higher level stats courses), but my first Ph.D advisor wanted me to stop taking classes after my first year so I never took the advanced statistics courses on regression or multivariate statistics.
-Know how to use eye trackers and some associated software for experiment creation (e.g., E-Prime)
-Regressions and correlations
With the exception of my Master’s and the first year of my Ph.D, I was consistently working 10-20 hours a week at most after I was done with classes. For the second year of my Ph.D, it was because my advisor explicitly said she didn’t want to do any other additional projects and to just focus on the 800 Project (this is done as a qualifier for my Ph.D). This was when I started to recur my major depressive disorder as there were talks of funding getting cut in my third year as well. My advisor also dumped me starting in the Spring that year before she moved on to a different institution. She also dumped all projects in the pipeline she wanted me to do with her after I defended my qualifier project.
I had to effectively start over with my new advisor in the 3rd year of the program. Since my stipend was cut in half and I worked at an outlet store part time to compensate, I spent the majority of my time seeking grants and other sources of funding (hence securing the fellowship). I got an adjunct position at a community college near me that I didn’t expect to acquire at all. Then, I shockingly a full-time visiting position at a SLAC despite my inexperience.
As you can see though, I don’t have much going for me skills wise. As I’m applying for jobs right now (including some where I would be overqualified normally), I’m wondering what are some options to get myself out of the hole I find myself in right now. I never wanted to do academia in the first place so I regret taking this visiting position at the SLAC even though I’m saving a lot of money from it (since it’s full pay and not adjunct pay in a low COL rural area) and will fulfill the service requirements for my fellowship. All I need to do is graduate so I can keep the fellowship money awarded to me.
How can I come back from this hole I’m in right now?