Speaker 1: I think I may have found the five worst academic supervisors ever. I'm going to share with you five stories and you can tell me which one you think is worse or if you've got even worse horror stories, let me know in the comments below. The first case happens here in Australia. A PhD student joins his lab and then mysteriously, immediately, the supervisor disappears for two months. First red flag. This supervisor then goes on just to give loads of work to this PhD student, so much in fact that it delays this person for a year and all the work that he's done seems to only benefit the supervisor. Interesting. This PhD supervisor seems to have a double personality, face to face, incredibly friendly. Then all of the written stuff is critical and maybe a little bit mean. And then when the student approaches the supervisor to ask like, what's going on and how can I do better? And also like, what should I do? The mantra comes out, our favourite mantra from supervisors and that is publish more papers. But this person isn't given any clue or any indication of how to actually do it. So just go away, publish more papers, that's what you need to do. Fast forward 3.5 years and this student has run out of funding. They've run out of scholarship and the supervisor is not looking at their thesis. This is a common, a surprisingly common thing in academia where students get to the end and then they have a just like completely hands off supervisor that's like, no, I've been too busy, I can't possibly look at your thesis. Like, that's your job. This is the thing, is that this student becomes the only PhD student to ever graduate from this supervisor. If only you had known that going in. So that's why you need to do your research. The second case is of a PhD student called Stephen. This PhD student starts and this is where they all seem to kind of like go wrong. In the first few months, the supervisor sort of really shows who they are. This supervisor buries Stephen in a load of work and it seems to only be contributing to the person's theory, the supervisor's theory. Rather than helping Stephen get started with his PhD, after losing a year and contributing to the supervisor's career, all that's happened is that apparently there's a postdoc that has left and he now needs to do that work. So unfortunately, during the time, Stephen finds out that this theorem is wrong. He proves it, but all of a sudden the postdoc then gets back in contact with a counter theory that then he has to prove wrong again. Something fishy is going on here and it turns out that what is happening is potentially the supervisor has made up this postdoc and is actually just sort of like using Stephen to do the work and passing information from this postdoc for him to kind of prove or disprove. Essentially just doing his job for him. Surprisingly, despite the ghost postdoc, Stephen manages to write his thesis and the supervisor says, oh no, I can't possibly look at that because I only look at one thesis at a time. Why is this a common theme? Why is it that supervisors don't want to do the thing that's expected of them, which is look at a thesis to make sure it is able to pass peer review? It is beyond me. And while he's waiting for this thesis to be marked, Stephen has to take up a research assistant role. You know, the money's there and all of a sudden he realizes that the supervisor is pushing out submitting his thesis so that he can use Stephen as a research assistant for his own benefit. And by not submitting his thesis, he can get more and more work out of Stephen and this only finishes when the grant money dries up and can no longer afford to employ Stephen. So this is just an insane story of someone underneath the workings of academia just sort of like changing things so it benefits him and him alone. And the third case starts really bad. Essentially this PhD student starts and finds out that her PhD supervision team have no idea what they're doing. Unfortunately, the student's lab also has no equipment that actually allows her to do the job that she wants and also any request to seek external kind of help or collaboration is refused because they got the money and they don't want to share it with anyone else. So this PhD student is high and dry and essentially on a little deserted island all on her own. Apparently, the male supervisors keep on attacking her gender, keep on mentioning how she's a female in science. Unfortunately, this student ended up dropping out due to mental health issues after being accused of just making stuff up to cause a little bit of a scene despite being given a female researcher later on. So this is just a terrible story of sexism in academia and I think, you know, it does go through academia, this idea that you have to be a certain gender to flourish. And I think the system is set up that way, you know, it is set up so that people can't take large career gaps to have children, to be the primary carer because if you just take your foot off the pedal of academia and an academic career, you are left behind. And I hope that's changing. Case number four starts in a prestigious university. And like all of these stories, there are red flags from the get-go. The first red flag is the student enters the lab and the research environment and everyone is miserable, like super miserable. There's only one cause of that and that is a very, very bad supervisor who is either micromanaging, who is oppressive, who is sort of controlling and expects a lot from their students and that's exactly what happens. The PhD student decides to take a little bit of time off at Christmas but he's met by an email from the supervisor saying that you shouldn't be taking off and instead using that time off to apply for grants. So, this person is just trying to spend a little bit of time and the supervisor is saying, no, you need to work all the time. I've seen this type of supervisor before and just like the supervisors I've seen, this supervisor wants people to be in the lab first, the last to leave out of all of the different sort of research groups in the university and they just want to work you to the bone. And they set up this horrible lab culture of coming in on weekends, of staying super late at night and also rewarding people who, you know, just live in the lab and produce research and it produces this horribly competitive, super kind of burnout environment just so that the supervisor can publish a few extra papers throughout the year. I've seen it in universities that I've worked in and it's probably one of the hardest things to witness. The last supervisor I want to talk about has absolutely no idea how to self-regulate and expects that from their students. They said if you expect more than four hours sleep a night, you're not cut out for science and this is because this person is a workaholic and expects that from their researchers. They want people to adopt the same lifestyle that they've got and look, don't get me wrong, I've seen this sort of person and they are not happy. The supervisor themselves are not happy and they expect others to follow in their footsteps, in their horrible comet tale of misery that they're dragging people along into. And this story ends up with a horrible ending really and that is the supervisor ends up dying from multiple organ failure. Probably brought on by years of no sleep, horrible unhealthy attitudes towards work and apparently even on this person's deathbed they were accusing doctors of sabotaging their work. So it's important to show that you need balance and any supervisor that is expecting you to put your health behind productivity and their career should be avoided at all costs. So there we have it. There are the five worst PhD supervisors I could find online. The stories of PhD supervisors just being horrible in so many ways are so common in academia and it's time to speak up about it. So let me know in the comments which one you think is the worst and add any extra information or stories that you've witnessed because I think by speaking up about it we can make sure that the red flags are obvious to new people, new PhD students starting with supervisors. And also remember there are more ways that you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up for my free newsletter. Head over to andrewstapleton.com.au forward slash newsletter. The link is in the description and when you sign up you'll get five emails over about two weeks. Everything from the tools I've used, the podcasts I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract and more. It's exclusive content available for free so go sign up now and also go check out academiainsider.com. That's my new project where I've got my e-books, the ultimate academic writing tool kit as well as the PhD survival guide. I've got my resource pack for applying for a PhD in grad school as well. I've got a forum, blogs and everything is over there to make sure that academia works for you. Alright then, I'll see you in the next video.