Hi, just want to seek advice:
My supervisor forces students to work for very long hours and even on weekends/public holidays.
Sure he would not leave any evidence like “you must come on PH/weekends” in order to prevent student reporting to department, but he always says abusive words like “your work is useless and you are not in a proper state/manner of research” without giving any academic advice. He sends messeges at even 3AM as well. In order to MAKE us “voluntarily” work for long hours, he has a series of PUA discourse: 1) you dont have a proper attitude of research 2) I dont know how can you push this kinda useless data in your work 3) I want to help you graduate so must do the work I assign to you 4) I’m treating you with the lowest requirement, but if you still cannot get a positive result then I have no way but let you master out. etc etc. He communicate with us in mandarin for most time. He never holds a group meeting. I cannot learn anything from him. What I learn by myself is useless to him. He somtimes sleeps in his office during office time.
Dont say this is NORMAL for a graduate study, and I have spend almost 3 years in this group. There is no way to change to another group or master out, because I performed quite well in QE. I know I am not the most hard-working student/smart guy, but I really feel low-self esteem after changing 6 projects and being scolded “useless”, “bad data”, “having no proper attitude” for these years, even though I have several sets of good data.
I am considering reporting this supervisor after graduation, especially to focus on his destroy of student’s mental health and self-esteem.
So sorry that I feel very overwhelmed and annoyed. I should’ve focus on my project and graduation requirements, but I just feel so destroyed.