My phd advisor is making me feel like crap

J

This is my 4th year of phd. I already had a masters before that. I did my masters with the same advisor and he was the one who wanted to me to join him for phd. He claimed to appreciate my efforts and advised me to join him for phd. I knew that the area of his study is not my expertise but it was challenging and exciting. I was the one who came up with a great project which gave him a huge funding within a year. But as the project faced challenges and required more in depth study, he started accusing me of not being productive enough and complaining everything I do. Now the situation is even if I show him great results after putting in every effort I can, he still doesn't looks excited and finds something or the other to complain. Recently I could not meet his deadline and he knew all the way that the delay is not because of me but due to some other reasons. I always kept him in loop and communicated with him on daily basis on the status of the experiment. When I could get the results just 4 days after deadline he called me unprofessional and said that if this was an industry I would have been fired by now. He is making me feel like a failure after everything I did. Should I quit now and still go out with some self respect and a possibility of finding job or should I wait until he starts hating my presence and fires me?

I

Sorry to hear about your predicament: a supervisor cannot "fire" you so the worst he'll do is more of the same. Is there a director of PhD studies in your university/department that you can reach out to in strict confidence? These guys can really help. As you are in your 4th year, you will be expected to submit sometime soon (I'm guessing you're a full-time student???) You will need to discuss this with either your 2nd supervisor or like I said a director of the programme in your department.

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