Having read the news recently about France’s doctoral programs requiring an oath of ethics upon defending a doctoral thesis, I’m reminded of my master’s research program experiences with an advisor whose abusive personality is an excellent example of why such an oath of ethics should be extended to the entire graduate program and not just the end of it as well as to all people involved in the graduate research process.
My interest in this subject stems from my undergraduate years when I worked closely with Codes of Ethics for businesses. The idea is great, but I rarely see any Codes of Ethics today prominently displayed on any corporate websites or within their business models. I fondly remember the few people who were part of the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at my alma mater while I worked on the other side of the building in the Department of Humanities. For fleeting moments I believed in and had hope for a bright future of ethical decision making across the globe guided by core principles that benefited humanity.
Graduate school is typically a challenge like no other. Those who complete grad school unscathed in some form or another are rare. I’m convinced the solemn, almost defeated, look found upon the faces of graduate students is a reflection of their grueling psychological, emotional, physical, social, and intellectual experiences. Among most academic, I believe, is an implied expectation of ethical behavior in both personal and professional activities. This isn’t always the case as several high profile cases in recent memory have demonstrated.
Making matters worse for graduate students is the occasional exposure to the abusive personality of an authority figure. This extreme scenario represents an illustrative example of unnecessary experiences graduate students may be forced to overcome atop the academic and research requirements of their program. It’s also a scenario to which I can speak directly from personal experience.
Today I want to focus on one of my most demanding graduate experiences: managing my master’s research advisor’s abusive personality. My objective is to prepare new graduate students for the extreme possibilities of their program, inform current graduate students in similar situations to make sound professional decisions, and shed some light on graduate school experiences for everyday people who may never have the exposure.
To illustrate my experience with an abusive authority figure I’ve divided them into useful examples in terms of the Research Process, Thesis Writing Process, and overall Professional Process of graduate work. Let’s begin with what I believe is the most important thing you will achieve in graduate school: character and ethics.
Character and Ethics Building
The best way to manage an abusive authority figure when they act against our interests varies from case to case. I managed one such person with an unexpectedly abusive personality. How I navigated the ups, downs, twists, and turns of numerous situations as a master’s research student is now a source of personal pride in having completed my thesis. It was a character-building experience like no other up to that point in my life and career. It reaffirmed the moral and ethical principles I had nurtured since my undergraduate years.
My published master’s thesis reminds me today of the difficulties I encountered with an abusive research advisor and how I ultimately prevailed. I’ve recently created an online copy of my thesis to remind myself of this win by dealing with blind-siding threats and rising above the dust line to keep my head above water.
I’ll focus solely on managing a graduate research advisor with an abusive personality. It’s a subject not often discussed publicly, but it’s one that illustrates well the complexity many graduate students encounter during their degree programs. It would be great if students were able to merely do their best work during their program and formulate new thinking about a subject matter, but from time to time there are very unexpected personalities in our workspace that deliberately act to tear us down for reasons unknown. They challenge our ethics foundation and may unfortunately lead many astray.
Today, in particular, is a great day to convey the grueling essence of graduate school “life” to both future and current graduate school students as well everyday people who choose to never step foot in a graduate program. A graduate program can be among the most psychologically challenging experiences any human being will ever face in their lifetime, yet a sense of respect for the many people who pursue advanced college degrees continues to dwindle in the media, political propaganda, and other anti-reality corners of our culture.
On one hand, of course, I believe most graduate degree holders err on the side of humble and seek little if any public notoriety for their struggles, achievements, and expertise. Needling into this culture is the ever-present need to “publish or perish” by maintaining high impact factors in your research and other metrics that are about as scientifically useful as our high school GPAs.
On the other hand, the general public is almost entirely unaware of what graduate school is all about. Not only do high profile cases of ethics code violations prominently trend and go viral today, but everyday people have little frame of reference to pay any respect to experts in their fields. Either way, the graduate degree holder is a rare breed of humanity – in fact, only about 1% of the world’s population holds a doctoral degree, and only as many as 6% or so hold a master’s level degree or higher. An illustrative analogy: if you’re right-handed, it’s difficult to comprehend how the 10% of all people in the world who are left-handed experience the world until you try using your left hand for everyday tasks. Here I want to give the reader a little experience in a world you may have never thought of venturing: graduate school.
Ethics in the Research Process
Your master’s thesis is very much a challenge to accomplish for the sake of learning all the ins and outs of a profession. Until the thesis is accepted by your thesis committee, treat it as a fictional beast of beauty and sheer terror. Brewing up this Frankenstein thesis of yours may involve all the life-lessons you’ll ever need to get through the psychological thrillers of everyday life beyond college. Is it worth it? Yes. Will it ever see the light of day after your committee shakes your hand and pats you on the back for a job well done? Unlikely. But it’s yours. Do well with it. It’s an exceptionally useful professional development task unlike any other.
Allow me to jump right into my story. I’ll spare you the details that could fill a novel. I’m no longer fixated on the experience so much as I’m interested in using it as a catapult to a better today for myself. Let’s dig in.
The quality of my master’s research work was stunted by manufactured conflicts with my research advisor. When I began the master’s program, my advisor was on a tenure track. This meant he was eager to publish, had his office door open to students at almost all hours, and he was present in the lab whenever needed. He was focused on achieving tenure, which for some in academia, is the ultimate safe haven from a troubled professional life. No reasonable student would shy away from working with him while he behaved this way. I was interested in the kind of research he advertised on bulletin boards. We got along quite well for a few years. Then he was awarded tenure. Suddenly, he rarely made an appearance on campus. He often skipped classes he instructed by having students teach each other. He rarely came to the lab, and his office door was kept closed. In fact, we’d often knock, heard him rustle around a bit on his squeaky chair, but he never came to the door.
The worst of the research process was my advisor's love of an idea I presented during a group meeting to purchase a particular kind of material for my research work. This was followed an hour later by an absolute refusal to make the purchase when I produced a purchase order for his signature in his office. He said, "I didn't agree to this!" though he specifically asked for a purchase order during our group meeting.
He often said one thing to a group of students that he wouldn’t say to us one-on-one. As a student, I didn't question this, but I should have paid it more attention at the time. This particular incident, however, was egregious as it affected the overall quality of my thesis research. Today his handwritten note in the margin of the hard copy of my thesis draft exclaiming (with an angry red exclamation mark!) his concern that I didn't ask for this material is a reminder of a failed opportunity on my part to push back against his unethical two-minded way of working with students. I’m sure I still have the hard copy of the draft somewhere in my piles of notes.
Be wary of issues like this. They often present in confusing ways. Be careful not to push too hard against an angry ego- and vanity-driven personality, though. Don’t dismiss any hints of ego and vanity expressed by anyone you work with as a graduate student. For example, my master’s research advisor often pointed to a small pencil drawing of himself taped next to his office door, telling everyone that his name meant "handsome" in his native language. This was one of many indications of his personality and character, but we didn’t think much of it at the time. Not only did these personality traits creep into his interactions with students, but they also presented in nuanced statements in published articles.
Ethics in the Thesis-Writing Process
The worst of the thesis-writing process was my advisor's inability to review each chapter of the thesis as I finished it. He agreed to review my written thesis one chapter at a time – a common student-advisor agreement. Though I inquired about his progress with each passing chapter, he ultimately took more than 10 months to complete his review once he had the full thesis in hand. This meant a full year of delay for my graduation. It also prompted a classmate of mine to secretly publish a research paper with our advisor’s name on it because my classmate said he couldn’t wait for months for his review. He said he needed it published as soon as possible so he could graduate. An unacceptable number of months also passed as he waited for review of his thesis.
Keep a channel of communication with your advisor open at all times. Learn what they expect of your work. If they're a mature professional, they will want you to take charge of your work and assist you with time-sensitive tasks like publishing papers and finishing your thesis. Part of your professional development may be to recognize a bad advisor who deviates too often from things you’ve discussed with them.
I didn’t miss any opportunities to inquire about his progress of reviewing my thesis. Instead, he may have had other motives for delaying my graduation, but he never revealed them. We believed he was holding us back so that we could train new graduate students to use the equipment for their research projects. It was clear he would not be in the lab long enough to do this himself
One of few very useful recommendations I learned from a friend years later who was an HR director and often provided legal advice to executives in her company: keep a written record of everything you discuss with your advisor; you never know when you’ll need to recall something. Had I only known then what I learned later.
Ethics in the Professional Process
The worst of the professional graduate school process for me was his relentless personal attacks that included using campus police to question us graduate students about his imaginative claims about items that went missing from the lab. Recall my earlier remark above about manufactured conflict. With hindsight, we should have paid more attention to odd remarks he made from time to time like, "The campus police work for me. They have to do what I tell them to do." It wasn't until we asked each responding officer for evidence that these items ever existed, that they stopped responding to his cries of wolf. We knew the items didn’t exist, but how were we to prove their nonexistence? In response to their deaf ears, our advisor resorted to other forms of baseless harassment that included such mindless things as corrupting my building access account (it took a year for us to figure out that he corrupted the record!) and signing up for pornographic websites with my personal information.
You may ask why I didn’t file a lawsuit against him. As I often told anyone who asked the same question, “He’s doing a great job of hanging himself. So f*** him.” I did my best to maintain records of the things he did in case any of it went to court.
As a graduate student, your best response to any situation is one of ethics and professionalism. You’ve already invested money, time, effort, and sanity in your graduate program. Don’t allow emotions or vengeance guide your decisions when dealing with an abusive authority figure. Often their objective is to create an emotional reaction from you that they can point to as a way to discredit you. The worst outcome is for your entire program to be derailed because of their frailty. In my case, I learned a few years later about the process of how he was hired at the University. Succinctly, he was projecting his professional shortcomings onto students. Some people do this as a way to elevate their own stature.
My exit strategy was one of choosing a path of integrity going forward. To organize my thoughts on the matter at the time, I actually scribbled an entire collection of poetry one weekend titled, Integrity. A few weeks later, after the last rant of his harassment, I created a small, interactive sleuth game on my website titled “Midwestern Conspiracy Theory (MCT),” because he had mysteriously blurted out “I don’t know why you have a Midwestern Conspiracy Theory or something against me!” while going on another diatribe of baseless complaints. A couple classmates and I spent hours trying to figure out what he meant by it. We just thought that somehow, because I’m from the upper Midwest, he felt a need to tie that into his unhinged rant.
The solution of the game, by the way, was determined by a couple high school kids in New Mexico or Arizona – that the main character had chicken noodle soup for brains. The reward for completing the game was an animated gif showing a chef chopping up chicken with his butcher’s knife inside a silhouette of a man’s head. I have looked in my archives, but haven’t found the game files anywhere.
It’s very healthy to step back from interactions with an abusive authority figure and spend time thinking about them, trying to understand what’s going on, and what to do next about it. I learned to do this in high school, and it started my interest in writing poetry. Just don’t spend too much time doing this as you can quickly go down rabbit holes you’ll wish you never ventured. This is why I chose to only complete things on weekends.
Fire a Bad Advisor
My choice to "fire" my abusive master’s advisor came in the immediate wake of his final senseless but well-planned and rehearsed diatribes. A few minutes into his tirade, he attempted to turn the tables on me by calling campus police to report “my student is being belligerent.” He performed his imaginative rant on a day he knew I could turn to no one for help as no higher-ups in our department were on campus. With my advisor's back to the hallway door, I let him loudly lecture me for several minutes to allow classmates in the room and down the hall to listen in on his meandering accusations and demands. I had already chosen to not get emotionally involved and sat there quietly allowing him to hang himself.
Soon a campus police officer appeared in the hallway. The officer quietly stood back, listened in, and rolled his eyes once he realized he had been called him over to handle yet another manufactured crisis. I eventually nodded to let my advisor know the officer was there in the hallway. He promptly attempted to shoo the officer away, saying “I have the situation under control. You can leave. Thank you.” Instead, the officer showed considerable concern and asked if I was alright. I smiled and said I’ll be alright. I knew my time with this advisor was about to end on my terms.
The next day I went to our department’s graduate coordinator to explain, “I need a new advisor for my PhD.” I told him who I would approach since the professor had asked me a year earlier if I needed a doctoral advisor. The graduate coordinator spent an hour or so trying to direct me to a different professor who was well known for getting students through their graduate program with little to no effort. I was uncomfortable with the ethics of this strategy, knowing who my master’s advisor was and how he would steamroll right over this “easier professor.” At the end of the meeting, I stood up, shook the graduate coordinator’s hand, thanked him for his input, and told him I would go over to my chosen professor’s office right away and ask him myself.
The professor agreed. For a couple hours I was able to catch my breath outside his office while overlooking the roadway outside from atop the stairwell in the corner of the building. As I stood there, I found absolutely no reason to change my course of action. I knew I made the best decision. For the moment, I had no responsibilities to tend to. No master’s advisor to report to and no need to care about it. Then, my new advisor rushed out of his office and nervously asked me to “stay here. Don’t move. Give me five minutes. Stay here. Five minutes! Ok?” He went into my former boss’s office (I was also a teaching assistant for much of my master’s degree program) and reappeared five minutes later. “Come with me!” he said, “We need to talk. I’ve heard some disturbing things.”
Once in his office, he closed his door and told me that my master’s advisor had already called him within those two hours just to cut me down, telling him not to take me on as a student. Luckily, as he explained, a friend of mine in Brazil at the time happened to call him just after he got off the phone with my master’s advisor. She explained the issues manufactured by my master’s advisor, that other students came to me when they needed help, and that I was always ready to discuss anything about their research. Her vouching for me was part of the story. My new advisor said he wanted to ask my other boss down the hall who told him “don’t listen to anything [his master’s advisor] said. He’s a good worker.” My new advisor conveyed all these remarks to me.
As we shook hands in agreement with the original arrangement a couple hours earlier, my new advisor said, “don’t worry about [your master’s advisor]. You’re my student now. He can’t touch you. I’ll protect you.” Yes. He used the phrase “I’ll protect you.” The integrity I knew he had was staring me in the face with all the anger, frustration, and fury I later learned he had for my master’s advisor. The road ahead was steep, but I rose to the challenge, and as another professor reflectively told me a few years ago, “you came out on top!”
Final Remarks
If your advisor or professor crosses any comfort boundary of yours in an unprofessional way, do not feel the need to continue working with them. Discuss the matter with higher ups such as a graduate coordinator or chair of your department. Unfortunately, I wasn’t completely aware of the internal politics among faculty at the time. I was directed to an “easy professor” by the graduate coordinator for a reason. If you find that you have to fire your advisor, be sure you have a well thought out plan of what to do next. Do what’s right for you. It is your graduate program, after all. It is part of your life. Your career. Your professional development. Don’t be afraid to step up to protect yourself and your integrity.
Never compromise your ethics in any aspect of your life.
Whether you find yourself in a situation in which you need to change advisor or it’s just the end of your degree program, always have an exit strategy. Invest time in devising this strategy. Have a plan of what to do in the unlikely event that an authority figure asks you to do things that make no sense and have nothing to do with academics nor research. You can’t predict these interactions, so have a plan of handling them before they happen. Most graduate schools have a student handbook that describes how to handle abusive personalities during your degree program. Read the handbook as part of your planning. Know that there are guidelines and that most universities today have resources available to help you as a student – after all, you are very much like a customer at a university. You have rights and you have the right to recourse when someone acts against you.
Prior to my master’s advisor’s tirade, I had a loose strategy to quickly involve higher-ups as a defense against his actions. Because of internal politics, I knew this wouldn’t ever be enough, but I did my best to get others involved whose job it was to mitigate circumstances like this. So, I planned bigger. I planned not only to move on with my academic and professional life with a new advisor, but to do so ethically and with integrity.
Having to endure a relentless ego-driven agenda of personal attacks as a college student is beyond what is already an exceptionally challenging emotional, mental, and social time in a person's life. As students we should be focused on our research, our coursework, and nurturing future career opportunities – not empathizing with an abusive advisor’s frailty at our own professional peril.
On the day I defended my master’s thesis with the thesis committee, my advisor said he didn’t realize my degree was in applied physics and not electrical engineering (his department). Even though he and I agreed to the arraignment when I started (when he was still on tenure track), he forgot it. There were many remarks like this that made it clear he wasn’t paying attention to anything once he was awarded tenure. It’s important to pay attention to these kinds of remarks, but it shouldn’t be your responsibility whatsoever to walk on the eggshells created by anyone’s fragile personality.
What Have You To Say?
If you’ve earned a graduate degree, did the accomplishment make you proud? Did you experience or witness any unethical activities – even nuanced? What life lessons did you learn in grad school? Did you learn something new about yourself? Did your experience reinforce your personal ethics? Did you finish grad school purely unscathed or scarred?