Hello everyone,

I am a master's student who is about to graduate. In my research, I was reasonably successful (total 6 manuscripts, 3 published, 3 under review). Before the quarantine, I was all set to continue on for a PhD. I am here seeking advice on what step to take in the future. Perhaps writing it out will help me too - writing is thinking!

When I began my MS, I was (and still am) interested in computer vision. I was able to secure a supervisor but was an idiot and screwed it up. Essentially, I was poached by another advisor but then was told no by him, leaving my without an advisor. I talked to my graduate coordinator and my present supervisor, who was just hired, sought me out. I joined the lab and have given it all. I grew a lot, partially overcome my fear of public speaking and became a better writer.

However, there are many things in the lab that have begun to bother me. My advisor's focus is entirely on the company. This is evident because he is normally only concerned about publications and not about my thesis or other degree requirements. For him, my thesis was a last minute thing. I had kept mentioning that I will begin to write my thesis but he always assigned me a manuscript to author. In the end, I had about a month to work on my thesis and I had to do it while working on yet another manuscript. He realized what my priority was and gave 1 month's work to someone else rather than waiting for me to finish my manuscript. This doesn't bother all much that, it was a mediocre paper at best. What bothers me he doesn't seem to care about the amount I have and the affect on me. The work, unfortunately, also feels a little superfical and does not have rigor. It almost feels like I live in a bubble because there is constant praise about the type of work we do ("Lets go to Nature! Let's try Science!" -- never works) and a dismissive attitude towards other people's research (even in completely different fields. In fact my interest in Deep Learning sort of became a running joke in the lab).

Before I begin to describe the negative aspects, the positive ones are: the PI is young and very ambitious. He is insane about publications and will provide feedback on a manuscript in 1-2 days. The lab is very well funded.

The negatives. As time has passed and new people joined the lab, I began to feel he treated me different than other students. Some of the other students, with less work but perhaps more intelligence than I, are treated with more respect. In group meetings there is usually a condescending attitude towards me, I have been told privately I may have reached my ceiling, the work is endless (I just finished my thesis. I am still expected to work on 1 manuscript and 1 revision on a paper), any compliment I am given is basically routed back to himself and he has told me "anxiety is for babies" when I used the word anxious to describe how I felt about some results - I suffer from a lot of anxiety in general. I am a people pleaser and not a very assertive person. So his words affect me severely and leave me in a dark place. I do not mind constructive criticism and welcome it. I know this because when he comes from a positive place and explains matters to me in a positive tone, I am able to handle the feedback just fine. It does not weigh on me.

I am not an unproductive or bad student. I have a GPA of 3.7, 1 patent, 1 best paper award and a good number of publications. In fact, since the quarantine began I prepared 3 manuscripts, given 1 talk, written 1 patent, in addition to my thesis. However, I do feel my work has lacked rigour and that is on on me. I am not able to handle the pressure of "we gotta publish ASAP" and end up writing papers without fully investigating. However, truthfully, the PI does not see the holes in our work. At times, I feel he doesn't even know much of what we do.

Due to these reasons... I am considering finding another advisor and doing my PhD in another lab (but same department/school). I definitely feel I am missing out on future work here as it a promising technology and I will likely not be able to explore the novel work I ended up discovering here in the lab (hence the patent). But at least I will be working in an area I enjoy (computer vision / machine learning).

Am I crazy for throwing it all away to pursue yet another degree for 4 years?