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I am an undergrad doing social science research with a PI. We received funding to conduct the research topic that we originally submitted for the research grant. I then asked my PI how I should prepare myself for the research that we would be doing that semester, and he ignored my email until two weeks before the semester began. He said he would discuss more during the semester, and that's when we talked about more about our research project. A few weeks later, my PI completely changed our research topic and the research we would be doing after spending weeks on literature review. I brushed it aside and went with the flow. A new research idea that my PI wanted us to do in which I spent writing sections on was completely tossed in the bin. Again, he changed our research topic into something else. With the research grant program, I needed to reach a certain number of hours yet my PI never gave me enough work to focus on my research project simply because 1. He kept changing our research topic every few weeks; 2. I was never fully updated with the work that I should have been doing on a weekly basis. When I did complete work, he would sometimes nitpick at my files and told me to orient them in a different way than what he previously had asked me to do. Other times, he claims that he would look at my work only to never hear from him regarding the progress of my work.
Now I am in my room basically having a panic attack because I do not have enough hours and I will probably face repercussions from the research grant recipients because I did not obtain enough research hours this semester. I got frustrated with the progress made so far because I did not feel challenged whatsoever nor felt like I did anything this semester. So, I also told my PI that I wanted to work in another lab while simultaneously working in his lab for next semester, and he strongly discouraged me in doing so. He even told me that he is wary to have students give presentations and publications who do not focus solely on his lab. Now, I feel stuck and am unsure of what I should do in terms of research. Is this a sign of a bad PI and should I try to join that second research lab anyway despite my PI discouraging me not to? Should I also report this to the grant recipients if I do end up being interrogated on the amount of research hours I have done this semester? I literally feel like I did little to no research this semester at all despite having research funding.
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Now I am in my room basically having a panic attack because I do not have enough hours and I will probably face repercussions from the research grant recipients because I did not obtain enough research hours this semester. I got frustrated with the progress made so far because I did not feel challenged whatsoever nor felt like I did anything this semester. So, I also told my PI that I wanted to work in another lab while simultaneously working in his lab for next semester, and he strongly discouraged me in doing so. He even told me that he is wary to have students give presentations and publications who do not focus solely on his lab. Now, I feel stuck and am unsure of what I should do in terms of research. Is this a sign of a bad PI and should I try to join that second research lab anyway despite my PI discouraging me not to? Should I also report this to the grant recipients if I do end up being interrogated on the amount of research hours I have done this semester? I literally feel like I did little to no research this semester at all despite having research funding.
— Experts please respond to this post —
