I am a doctoral candidate in a Ph.D program right now who previously posted this on a throwaway account but I feel I should come clean now and state that it was this account all along.
I reviewed my old resumes recently to see if there was anything relevant I could include from undergrad (as I am about to graduate with my Ph.D sometime in March or May 2024). Long story short, I think I may have embellished and I am not sure whether I did that intentionally or not (I wanted to get into an MA program really bad at the time so maybe). It is getting to the point I am doubting whether I did that on purpose or not. When I've posted about this on other sites, I'm getting responses along the lines of "people do that all the time" and "even if you did it so what" but its bugging me to no end.
I initially thought I had listed just my duties and that the time in which I did them was only 3 months rather than 9 months (I thought I had to list how long I was a member, which I thought was 9 months). The PI was in contact with me about doing things in the lab but was really unreliable (more on that later). However, it turns out I had the following:
Ran participants using an eye tracker and learned related software
Provided feedback for the control and experimental variables used and manipulated
Chose images used in experiment
Ran data and made charts using SPSS that will be in the study once published
For point 1, the “participants” I ran were just other graduate students for testing the experiment before it was set to be run at the start of next academic year. As implied in my previous post, this never happened since the PI was a well intended, yet very disorganized and forgetful (to the point I could not even get an LOR from her because she was so unreliable).
For point 2, I did this during the summer in the lab. I gave feedback on the stimuli they used.
For point 3, this was one I did.
For point 4, I did help run data at one point and made charts in SPSS. Those were going to be the model for a study that the lab was going to try to publish (but never did).
The running theme here is that all of these points were momentary things at one point during the summer and they were things I made bullet points out of anyway and seemingly stretched over the course of an academic year (hence embellished). Knowing what I know now, there was zero way I would have wrote it like this. I now see on my resume in the past few years that I cut point 1 and edited the other points so it was more accurate to the time.
I distinctly remember that I had some doubt at the time when wrote it years ago as to whether I was accurate and just went with what “looked better.” Again, I did most of these things but I am not sure if I embellished or not. Even so, it was probably an accident. I do have one credit hour of PSY 3900, which is Supervised Research in PSY to help folks out.
I was also only in the lab a few hours a week (as in as low as 1-3 sometimes) so I am so doubtful to the point where I am having a lot of stress all over again. I do not even know if I deserved to get my foot in the door somewhere at the MA, let alone the Ph.D level.
I’ve also realized I cited a poster from my undergrad incorrectly. I accidentally said I presented a poster at an undergraduate research symposium when it was actually a bi-annual psychology poster conference. I also put myself as the first author even though I didn’t remember the order that was agreed upon (although I distinctly remember my poster partner didn’t mind the order so I probably just went “why not?” even though that order mattered and I didn’t know it at the time I made the entry). In case it’s also important, I presented this poster for an extra credit assignment in a Cognitive Neuroscience class. The TA for the class guided us through the whole thing and I honestly didn’t feel like I deserved to be an author even though I agreed to help and did a poor job at doing so (given how I walked away with a C in the class overall. I wasn’t a good undergrad student). When I reviewed the old email exchanges, I definitely don’t feel like I deserve it whatsoever and may take it off my CV even though the conference organizers encouraged all of us to list the posters on our CV. Notably, I did state the poster was for extra credit on my personal statements (when I went through and reviewed them again).
Problem is… I got admitted to 6/8 Master’s programs and I’m worried that poster may have given them an impression I did more than I actually did and that could’ve got me in the door when I otherwise shouldn’t have done so.
I also had a different instance one time during my Master’s program where I listed myself as an “Investigator” (this was how the campus where I was a research assistant called it) and was corrected by the MA program director to list it as Research Assistant (even though I was called an investigator by my lab, albeit the duties were the same as a research assistant). The reason for the correction was because the program director said it looked like I did more than I actually did even though I wasn’t a Principal Investigator (some context - the PI for this lab was German so he may have just called his research assistants the equivalent term, investigators, and I didn’t know it since that was my first lab).
When I asked the office manager who is in charge of academic progress a whole year ago about my current Ph.D program enrollment, she said she did not anticipate the CV change would affect my current enrollment in the program. My doc advisor at the time said she disagreed with the advice that person gave me and that I should list the time I was a member, not necessarily restrict it to when I was active. My advisor from my Master's program never replied to my email about his thoughts about the advice.
In case it's important, every other detail of my resume and CV is unchanged and is still the same as it was before. Details about my other, longer lab experience was intact.
I feel so guilty and I don't feel like I deserve even so much as my Master's even though I completed the degree fair and square. Same goes for the Ph.D that I'm completing soon.
ETA: I did see on my personal statement that I mentioned the poster was for extra credit in the Cognitive Neuroscience class. It said, "For extra credit in Cognitive Neuroscience, I presented my lab’s findings using my data analyses."
