Why I quit my Stanford PhD
PSA: Don't go to graduate school if you are at all human, fragile, fallible.
tl;dr: I was diagnosed with a mental health disorder; on paper, Stanford has a great disability policy. In practice, I was verbally abused and mocked by an advisor for my mental health. A year later, when I found myself six months pregnant and having to go off of all my medications, I went on Stanford’s “pregnancy accommodation”, which in reality gives your advisor complete discretionary power. My new advisor insisted I still needed to work, and three weeks after a traumatic C-section and horrid depression, she tried to cut off my funding and get me kicked out of the country. When I told the chair of my department all of this as I left the department, he said I just couldn’t hack it in a competitive program [read his full email at the bottom]. Bye, Stanford!
The following is long. I have debated for months about what and how much to say publicly. This edition of the story is granular, because the cruelty is in the details. I offer my story to you with trust, please treat it with care.
I started my PhD at Stanford in fall of 2019, those halcyon days when most of us had no idea what an RT-PCR test was, and only those of us living in deeply polluted cities were familiar with N-95s.
My entry into American graduate school was hard, in ways I did not expect it to be. I knew I would hate most things about living in Palo Alto—the ridiculous rents, Teslas on every corner, $15 salads, the fucking Hoover Institute—but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also excited. I’d waited a long time to do a PhD in the US; my advisor and mentor in JNU had told me to apply all the way in 2011. Between 2011 and 2019, I had worked three jobs, gone back to JNU for an MPhil, and applied to graduate programs in the US while writing my thesis. I love what I do (uh, did); I’ve been a field archaeologist since 2008, it has been the only thing I’ve done that I’ve felt not only competent in, but that I truly enjoyed. It was the only “job” for which I would willingly get up at 5 am and go out into sweltering heat. Getting into graduate school felt grand, getting into an institution offering me what seemed like extremely generous funding seemed too good to be true.
And to some extent, it was. Palo Alto is one of the most expensive places in the US, and no matter how many community events you could get free bagels and pizza at, the cost of living pinched—and this was before COVID-19 and inflation. Moving across the world with a partner who by law was not allowed to work in the US meant my stipend had to stretch double. Before everything imploded, and soon after, I saw other grad students go to Mexico, Lake Tahoe, Portland. G and I saved what we could to see our favourite artists live, a dream come true. I am not for a single second trying to pen a woe-me tale; I know how incredibly privileged I was and am to have even gotten to go to Stanford after an already very privileged education in Delhi. I’m just underlining that from the very beginning, our financial situation was precarious at best.
But the other thing that happened in fall of 2019 was that I went to therapy for the first time, a long overdue overture towards repairing my anxiety and depression, and newly estranged family ties. There was a lot to unpack. I was grateful to have found a therapist who took my insurance, and that I could bike to (suburbia when you cannot afford a car is particularly limiting).
Deep in the first lockdown, after trying and failing with two psychiatrists to understand my brain chemistry, I was finally diagnosed with a mental health disorder which, upon its revelation, <whoosh> clarified a decade-plus of misery. Concurrently, in therapy, I had breakthroughs regarding my childhood and upbringing, real, hard work I did twice a week, every week in person, even at the height of the pandemic. These events changed me fundamentally as a person, as a student, a partner. I went on disability accommodation at the university, which allowed me more time to submit papers and some absences when I had reactions to medications—and I wish I could underscore how painful and debilitating calibrating medication can be, nevermind going off of them, as I would eventually have to do.
All this while G and I were stuck in a tiny studio apartment, trying to manage Zoom calls, and studying and surviving during a deeply scary time when we were more homesick than ever before.
That would all have been okay, if I felt like my work had momentum. Obviously, I could not return back to India for the first summer of fieldwork, and then, the second summer was when Delta hit India hard, and travel was clearly impossible again. Concurrently, however, my relationship with my advisor devolved completely. I could go on and on about just what happened with them, but let’s just say it resulted in a Zoom call where he told me to shut up and that I cry too much. This advisor knew about my mental health struggles, how difficult calibrating my medication had been, and the fact that despite all that, I had done excellently on all my classes. This advisor had already worked with me in the field for multiple seasons, and knew I was a goddamn good archaeologist. That Zoom call was the last straw, and I requested a change of advisors. A senior professor, one I had taken several classes with and admired greatly, took over guiding me, and we realized that I had not made any progress of my research for two years, largely my fault and partly my first advisor’s. Unfortunately, I only worked with this senior academic for one quarter, as they retired soon after, at which point I was handed over to a third advisor, another senior professor who had been on leave the majority of my time in the department and who I had never met in person.
Was my work delayed? Certainly. Did I make every effort to catch up and indeed, did by the time fall 2021 rolled around? Also, yes. I was by no means the star student of the department, but I was passionate, hard-working and diligent. I loved what I did, and it showed. I thought that would be enough.
And then, my life was truly turned upside down. I had had an IUD placed as a form of birth control in February 2021, because my insurance would cover it, and it would last me several years. I was told by my doctor that the IUDs are more than 99% effective in preventing pregnancies. Welp. You know what I’m about to say next. It didn’t work, I got pregnant, I didn’t know for months (and months and months), and I found out in January 2022 that I was fully six and a half months pregnant, due to give birth in April. This was after I had just returned from my first trip back to India in three years, where I had gone to my field site, and had found a newfound determination to clear my exams and start my fieldwork.
I never thought I’d have one of those dramatic, cinematic moments that can change your life forever. But there is a before, and an after, finding out I was 27 weeks pregnant, and everything after has been hard and complex. First, I had to immediately go off 90% of my mental health meds, since they are not great for a gestating being. That resulted in a mood spiral unlike any I’d experienced before, and on some days, I could barely function. My pregnancy symptoms had finally started to show up too, so I was aching, tired, paranoid, anxious. My advisor said they understood and that I should follow my doctor’s orders, which was to take it easy.
However, at the end of the quarter, my advisor goes, “Oh, well, since you didn’t actually produce any work this quarter, here’s this random punitive grade that Stanford has; oh, and if you don’t work next quarter, then we can kick you out.” I was taken aback by this, and reminded the advisor that I am supposed to go on pregnancy accommodation the following quarter, given that I was due to give birth in less than three weeks, and they reminded me that, as per the terms of the accommodation, I still had to show some degree progress while on leave. On a Zoom call with me, they said that the terms of the accommodation were deeply unfair, and I shouldn’t have to produce any work, and I agreed, and hinted at the fact that as my advisor, they had the sole discretion to impose this rule. They said to take care of myself.
Well, two weeks after giving birth, I wrote to my advisor, telling them that not only was I recovering from a harrowing surgery, but that G and I were on our own, trying to care for an infant, a monumental task. I was upfront, I was barely sleeping or eating, I was in no position to open a book or my computer. Please, could they show me some grace?
Before they replied to me, I found a hold had been put on my enrollment, and therefore funding, for the summer quarter. Let me underscore for you what that means: I was told by the international office when I joined that if I am not enrolled for a quarter, I have fifteen days to leave the country. I could still barely walk. My child did not have a birth certificate. When I reached out to my advisor about this, they told me that they were following procedure, that I should reach out to the Graduate Life Office about the rules etc, and that I should stop emailing them about this.
That is the last time my advisor ever wrote me. Isn’t that wonderful? Picture yourself in a country not your own, a city that you can barely afford to live in, having a baby you did not plan for and cannot afford, no family or friends to help you take care of a demanding newborn, while you recover from invasive abdominal surgery on no sleep. And then you’re told you may have to leave the country in a month without your baby’s birth certificate or passport in your hand. I scrambled, reached out to everyone I could, had to write a grovelling email to the graduate committee in my department—which was, FUN FACT, chaired by my first advisor—and beg for summer funding, with a promise that I would take a leave of absence for the following academic year, and leave the country. The international office informed us that because the quarter I would not be enrolled for was the summer, thankfully, I would not actually have to leave the country. It bears mentioning, however, that my advisor did not know this.
By the time the graduate committee agreed to fund me, summer quarter was underway and we did not renew our housing, which was a whopping $2,500 per month. So we had to sell everything we’d bought, all the baby furniture we’d bought and been so lovingly gifted, and move across the country with a two-month-old to live out of suitcases in G’s brother’s basement. We spent the next two months applying for our daughter’s birth certificate, and then her visa, and then had to hightail it out of the country by 1 September, which is when my health insurance expired, because of course it did. We moved to Delhi in September 2022, and have been here ever since.
In early 2023, I decided to quit the PhD program. As you can imagine, having to endure another minute in a place and among people that traumatized and endangered my family would have been too much to bear. No degree is worth that. Again, I am incredibly privileged to be able to walk away from what many consider an opportunity of a lifetime. I am cautiously optimistic that I will gainful employment when I am ready, and that I will find meaningful work and community outside of academia; that again is a class and caste privilege I have that I am acutely aware of.
My broad view of what happened to me over the course of my PhD, but specifically last year, is that Stanford liberal academics are a big fan of concepts such as diversity, equity and inclusion, as long as the bottom dollar is not affected. I was told constantly that I could access any resources I wanted, but I had to “keep showing degree progress.” Which, to be clear, I was doing until my life was turned upside down. There was/is a maniacal emphasis in that university on constant production, to the detriment of people’s health and safety. I did not plan what happened to me, my pregnancy was truly a shock, one that honestly took months after our daughter was born for us to come to terms with. I just needed a little compassion, a little time, from academics who write about kinship, and community, and care.
There are hundreds of other big and small cuts on our psyches from our time in America. But this piece is too long already. To end, I want to share with you the truly *chef’s kiss* email I got from my departmental chair when I wrote to them to tell them I am quitting the program, and why. I gave them a simplified version of last year’s events, and begged them to do something so that no other person with a mental illness or pregnant person who doesn’t also have independent sources of wealth has to go through what I did.
Here is their response, in full:
Dear Shobhna
Thanks for your note. I am sorry to hear that you feel that you have experienced various forms of what you call ’toxic behavior’ in our program.
As you will know, our program is highly structured and has many deadlines and milestones that students have to attend to. This is a structure that serves the vast majority of our students very well. For some students, this structure can at times feel like a constraint, the deadlines can be overwhelming and interactions with professors reminding one of deadlines and requirements can feel unfair. However, our program cannot function without this structure - and the many levers of flexibility built into it as well. However, it is obviously not a structure that suits everyone.
For the record, our program is remarkably diverse (in multiple ways) and predominantly international.
I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
very best
Make of that what you will. If you’ve gotten this far, I’d love to hear from you specifically regarding this email. Am I crazy or is this mealymouthed, cover-my-ass nonsense?
I’m still processing what happened, and have been writing this off and on for several months. Taking care of a baby, still not being on all my meds, failing to have found a therapist since returning to India—all of this has made my recovery from a traumatic year slower. A part of me is afraid of being this vulnerable and sharing my darkest moments in a public setting, knowing that this will be read by the very people who hurt me and my family. But at the same time, I think these stories need to be told. Every day, all over Twitter and other social media, we hear about abusive professors, toxic departments, horrible research conditions. Often, people have to hold on to those stories until they are less precariously placed in the university system, or until the abuses are egregious enough to warrant coverage by journalists. I don’t think what happened to me is nearly as bad as what others have gone through within academia. But this is my story, this has been my pain. Thank you for reading. Send our family strength as we navigate a new chapter.
Finally, to quote the brilliant Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom, please remember,
the institution cannot love you.
