That sounds like a shitty situation. Get the advisor thing squared away, prod at your thesis, talk to a lawyer.
Control what you can and seek assistance where you can’t.
Good luck.
Never been a grad student, but a friend of mine is finishing her PhD and another friend has his. Both of them took longer than they thought going in, both were screwed by advisors, both spended a lot more time and money than they thought and a lot more stress than they thought. Its convinced me that a PhD is not in my future just watching her.
Ok… I have a question, and it may be completely ignorant, but…
How do you take out “another 40k in loans” and make 30k a year, and be so broke that you’re overdrafting on a regular basis?
When I was in grad school (8/2002 - 12/2004), I took out 25k total in loans, and was a TA/grader, and was as broke as you describe, but on much less money.
That’s awful! I’m so sorry to hear it.
It sounds like your department is doing a terrible job taking care of its students.
Oh, and:
I believe it’s his roommate who makes 30 k a year.
My suggestion is to take a break for a year, if possible. Try and get back the money owed through legal action as others have said, see if you can move back in with your folks and spend that year working and getting out of the red.
You don’t want all this misfortune affecting your credit. Overdrafting and being up to your eyeballs in debt is probably not going to look good to creditors, and you may save more money in the long run spending a year or so to get back to where you were when you started.
Also, this may be very obvious advice, or it may not be- Flaky people perservere through reliable people. I’m not trying to blame you for putting yourself in a position where you could be screwed by your roomates, but why be the one responsible for the rent? If I had 3 roomates, even if they were folks I knew for 15 years, I would NEVER put myself in that position, because I hate to be held responsible/suffer for someone else’s mistakes. If you ‘restart’ again, keep this in mind. Let some other chump be the one saddled with overdraft fees if you can’t pay all your rent to him. Dont be that guy again.
I always love it when someone else’s problems negates someone elses supposed “lesser” problems. :rolleyes:
Well, I was trying to say that these are all things that can be fixed. bouv, I’m sorry if it came of as snarky. I’ve been at a fork in the road more than once in grad school, **Ivorybill **has good advice.
If you’re going to stay in school, I’d say do the following right away:
- Find a faculty member who can be your advisor.
- Make sure you’re taking the right classes.
then, - Develop a thesis topic
- Assemble your committee
- Declare your thesis topic & committee in official university paperwork.