Hi everybody, I' new here - a 2nd year Ph.D. I'm international and feel very privileged that my mentor believed in me, assisted me and helped a lot during my application and all way through. The problem is the following:

I've just got a not very good feedback from grad committee (which is fine, I've dealt with it, prepared a plan for improvement etc). However, even though I started to see what my current weaknesses are and what skills I need to develop (rather basic ones it turned out!), that is not happening fast.And because of that, I feel a lot of both shame in the process (that I had these holes in not getting the disciplines particular elements in the US) and guilt (as I have a strong feeling that my supervisor is disappointed to learn that).

Has anyone been there? My plan is to continue catching up with that skills and tolerate these difficult feelings as far as I can. But they are poisoning the relationships, that helped me the most in this things. So any better ideas are welcome.

Hi,

I have been there, both in a job and for a time in my PhD. It is very easy to feel this way, but often people don't realise how far they are progressing until other people point it out to them. The most important thing is that you recognise where you are at the moment; do you know what you have to do to keep progressing? Have your supervisors spoken to you/or you them about this? As a former teacher, the important thing to me was that my students knew where they were and what they had to do to improve further - I can't imagine this is much different with a supervisor :)

Why on earth are you feeling shame?
And you should not be worrying about how your supervisor feels either.
This PhD is yours and yours alone and you are going to make mistakes.
Your supervisor's feelings are irrelevant.