Okay, I don't know who needs to hear this, but as a graduate student, you ABSOLUTELY deserve to have an advisor who helps you to grow in a way that you feel safe.

"But going to grad school is such a privilege--students should be grateful to be there at all."

It IS a privilege. But it's also something most grad students (especially 1st gen & URMs) have fought tooth and nail for.

It's a privilege for your program to have these students.

Going to grad school is a huge sacrifice for students--moving far away from family, taking out massive student loans, taking a pay cut from their industry jobs and/or being expected to live off a stipend that often times barely meets minimum wage (esp. for the amount of work).

Rest assured, your graduate students take their training seriously.

When are faculty and administrators going to start taking student training seriously?

When are we going to STOP equating "academic rigor" with toxicity and abuse? It's honestly such an old argument, it's getting boring, and it's frankly a little embarrassing how few people in respected faculty positions seem to recognize and understand the difference bw the two.

I promise that no grad student is afraid of working hard. We understand that experiments, interviews, conferences, manuscript revisions, assignment grading, etc. don't always stick to a 9-5 schedule.

Grad students understand that they're here to learn, and that that learning process is going to mean uncomfortable feedback to help them push the boundaries of what they know and what they can do.

They CAME here to be stretched and to grow.

And because of that, they deserve to learn from someone who recognizes a few basic things:

1) Grad students are adults, and deserve to be treated as such.

2) For a career in research to be rewarding and sustainable, there HAVE to be healthy boundaries.

Boundaries may look different for different people, but they have to exist.

3) Let's be honest: The stakes of academic research are usually pretty low. They are.

So whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy are so many advisors critical to the point of being cruel?

Between you and me, Dr. So-and-so, get over yourself. Seriously.

4) Grad students do not exist in your sphere to be cheap labor.

Full stop.

And if that's how you see them, then you ABSOLUTELY should not be allowed to "train" them in order to exploit them.

YOU, as a tenure-track (or tenured) faculty member SHOULD NOT take on graduate students if you are not in a financial/emotional/psychological position to teach and train them and to help them grow in the way that works for them.

I get that being a professor is hard. I know you have gross departmental politics and that you're expected to review manuscripts and grants in a professional way, even after receiving cruel and unhelpful comments from your anonymous peers.

You have to manage funding, design and teach classes, go to meeting after meeting after meeting, ALL while trying to move your own research forward and also having a personal life (which you absolutely should have).

So if adding a grad student to this mix is too much, I IMPLORE YOU to not take them on.

Or at least to seriously question if you think that would be the best for the prospective student.

"Well, back in my day....."

I'm sorry about what happened in your day.

But there's plenty of research about how people learn things differently.

If your purpose is to teach, why would you *not* want to teach someone in the way that's going to yield the most fruitful results?

The amount of wasted time and lost productivity and missed potential

NOT because of grad students being deficient in some way, but because their advisors are too (stubborn/apathetic/insert other reasons here) to help them learn effectively is a tragedy.

I started this thread addressing grad students, not faculty, so my dear fellow students, let me reiterate:

You deserve to be safe.

You deserve to be happy.

You deserve to learn and work and grow and stretch in an environment that supports you.

As my last few tweets have revealed (yet again) there is little to no professional recourse for toxic or abusive graduate advisors.

So unfortunately, it seems like it's on us to make the best choices we can and to help each other have the courage to leave a bad situation.

I can't pull the ivory tower down from the outside, and I know that tweeting angrily into the void has limited-to-no utility. I can't change the system, and I hate knowing that.

But I am here for you, my loves. DM's are always open.