外乡人

I am a second-year PhD student in environmental science and engineering at a university in China. I have decided to seek your advice because I am in a state of crisis: I fear that my professional relationship with my supervisor has become toxic and is beyond repair. A huge problem for me is the complete lack of academic guidance I have received. I feel my research proposals are consistently dismissed. What’s worse, I am often met with extremely harsh remarks in the process. For example, my supervisor has said that I am “incompetent” and “not even as good as a master’s student”. I get no advice on how I should improve, which has led my attempts at research to run into dead ends repeatedly.