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An issue of funding.

M

I am a second year PhD student at the start of my second year. My supervisor and I had a great relationship in the first year, everything was ahead of schedule, and I passed my probationary transfer after 9 months with good examiner reviews.

However, my supervisor's research grant is running out (at the end of this month), and as I had dreaded, he's become more and more unpleasant to me over the span of the last 4-5 months or so. Since my experimental progress is great, he started to nitpick at very small details to catch me out, such as not documenting every single experimental details in my lab journal, or not giving him the experimental results on the very same day I had performed them. He had been putting these things in emails as "Final warnings". Now it's at the point where he wants me to run every single experiment past him before I do anything, like he has totally lost trust in me. During one exchange, he finally mentioned at the end of the discussion he only has funding for me for 2 years.

I'm not sure whether this relationship is amendable - I don't think it is a simple issue of personality clash because it doesn't look like he is able to secure any funding in the near future. He tried to put me through disciplinary graduate committee meetings last week and the committee members for the issues mentioned above and they found me to be performing at a satisfactory level.

I don't know if I can trust him anymore after the disciplinary meeting however; switching to a masters and getting out of here sounds very pleasant to me right now... I could try finishing the PhD in 2 years but (a) not sure if I'm smart enough to get it done and (b) I wouldn't know how to discuss this with my supervisor. What to do?

D

First of all, clarify until when you can receive funding.

Then see what are your options (apply for other small grands? or go self-funded for the last year?)

In any case, not been able to provide your studentship is no excuse of treating you so badly.

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