Finding Somewhere to Belong by C.C. Masters

As a community, we do research in a variety of exciting ways, which mutually support each other. Some people propose fantastic theorems, which take hundred years to prove, others prove or disprove them after hundred years. Some people excel in writing proofs, others design and set up wonderful experiments, collect useful data and find beautiful dependencies within. This is not a pleasant experience, and frankly it's a shame that toxic professors and supervisors are still common in academia.Īcademic research is broad and multi-dimensional. RE the exact words used: I actually recorded the meetings, so my quotes are accurate. How can I know if he is right? How should I proceed? His words really made me think that maybe he is right. I really appreciate him and his opinion, so I took it really bad. 'you have to be realistic and understand you can't really do it', 'if you do it alone it will be difficult for you', 'it is like chess, and you just don't have it') or in bigger conversations.Īs you may understand, I felt horrible after the first time (and I still do, after each of these meetings). Since then, he mentions it in every talk we have. Then, he brutally attacked me: he said I am not good enough for research, that I can get better but it would never be good enough for research career, that 'people are born with the ability to know if their proofs are correct' and since I made some gross mistakes in what I sent, it is clear I 'don't have it' and basically I shouldn’t expect to get as good as people with a research career. However, after a few meetings he started with 'let's have a meta-talk about you'.

The first meetings went well, I learnt a lot, got valuable feedback and I was so happy I had the opportunity to talk to this guy.

This professor is well-known with many achievements in this field. Some of my research problems drifted from my advisor's area of expertise, so I reached out to a researcher from my department about it (who is a world expert in this field). I am a PhD student in a Computer Science department, doing research of a mathematical nature.

Finding Somewhere to Belong by C.C. Masters