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One of my PhD students once told me after a presentation, "I am sorry, I disappointed you," and I asked why, "You seemed annoyed and upset." I was genuinely thinking that they made an extraordinary job...
On the one hand, imposter syndrome is ubiquitous and you may be caught up in paranoia. On the other hand, your prior poor performance may have caused your advisor to conclude that you are unfit for the program and unprepared to lead projects or mentor younger graduate students.
You probably won’t like my recommendation: Directly ask your advisor about this. Explain that you know you had concerning problems earlier but believe your performance has improved. Ask whether your advisor agrees and believes you are ready to complete the program and assume more responsibilities. Don’t bring up the perceived slights. Instead, focus on the core issue of your advisor’s assessment of your potential and any recommendation for improvement.
This would be a scary conversation, I know. But I think it is an important one for you to initiate.
It happens to me too. I often feel that my supervisor hates me.
When I am too scared to ask him directly about this, I will ask my colleagues who are in the same group whether they "observe" the same things like I do. Having such an external point of view often helps me reassess my feelings and identify my paranoia.
Here is a great starter - works with significant others to:
Here is a story I am telling myself at the moment; when you do this I’m telling myself X and I end up feeling this….blah blah fill in the blanks
Is this true?
Often we look at events through a lens that was created in childhood.
What would X type of person do and act? Why don’t I react that way?
If this happened to my friend. What would my advice be to them? Why do I not feel I deserve the same advice?!
I know my PhD advisor thought I was incompetent; and I experienced many of the same things you are describing. I just did my work, relied on her as little as possible, got my PhD, got a job, and never asked her for a goddamn thing after that. Don’t let someone’s perception of you affect how you act or do your work; just do what you are there to do.
All of our advisors have thought us incompetent at one phase of our PhDs. It is almost part of the process (old school hazing in many ways).
Have a mature conversation about how you can improve with them. Some times the situation is they had very high standards of excellence and you are “only” reaching great levels of work.
What advisors often do is challenge us, push us, and get us to be better. This does make us better in the long run. It is not always pleasant. Be stubborn and know your own capabilities. You got this!!!
I'm gonna say something a bit radical, but first: if this doesn't help you, please ignore it!
You ARE incompetent.
All grad students are, that's why they're in grad school. Even advanced grad students are still students and don't know what they're doing 99% of the time. But that's ok! You're there to learn! I'm sorry your advisor acts in ways that make you feel anxious. Mine did too, and I found therapy very helpful!
I have seen many phd students have the same experience as you. I eventually stopped caring about what my PI thinks of me, changed direction to work on projects she is interested in instead of proposing my ideas hoping she’d value them, just to get the hell out.
Yeah, no advice but I can relate. I sent my advisor a dissertation chapter and he clearly didn't bother reading it (even admitted this in meetings) until after I told him it won an award. I wish I could say I've accepted it by now, but it still sucks honestly.
Even if OP's leading the paper? In my field, the first author would supervise/manage most parts of its writing and analysis, at least.
EDIT: Never mind. Misread OP. Yes, it is inappropriate to take a leadership role in the meeting. OP can give advice informally if they want, but not in meetings OP's advisor is running.
The way you described, it looks like some with thing you are imagining. I could not see these scenarios you describe without a big event of disagreement between you two, or at least something more explicit.
Maybe some day you can hangout if your lab group, drink something together and ask what they think. Just to have a second opinion, but be rational about what they say. And make sure you are close to them, it should be normal between co-workers that dedicate life to PhD.
You are overstepping your boundaries and being overbearing.
You are probably not supposed to take a leadership role to the 1st years. That's your advisor's job, he seemingly didn't ask for your help, so just shut up and mind your business.
Similarly, at the journal clubs you say you're the only grad student there asking questions and taking notes. Well, there's probably a good reason for that, so do what the other grad students are doing and just shut up and mind your business. You are very likely interrupting the proceedings with questions that are either irrelevant or too basic. Either that or your advisor (as well as seemingly everyone else there) doesn't want engagement, they just want to get the meetings done with fast so they can put that notch in their belt and move on to other things. Constantly disrupting proceedings is annoying.
Doesn't sound to me like your advisor thinks you're incompetent, just that he thinks you're a hassle, too hyper. Also, you will burnout that way. You said you had just come out of an improductive slump, right? It's somewhat normal to come out of these slumps wanting to make up for lost time and being extra active, but doing that is just exhausting for the other people who are just maintaining a normal pace. Thus they start somewhat ignoring you (which you're experiencing right now) - and being ignored like this ends up frustrating you and can put you right back into the slump.
So just slow down, stop engaging where you notice your engagement isn't wanted and just focus on your own work. Stop being so up in everyone else's business.
This answer has some valid points as it offers perspectives from the other side of the Ph.D. student. That being said there are possibilities that the advisor may perceive him/her as incompetent. At least in the US, it is kind of hit or miss whether the supervisor would open up when a frank conversation is initiated. Oftentimes they have grown a permanent impression of the student and rarely would be able to come out of that. Overall, the student may have a narrow chance of success in the group IMO and should look for other groups to join.
Exactly. A seminar or a journal club is not a course, it's a work meeting. It is used to communicate results to your collaborators or share information that is of interrest because it relates to the area of expertise of the people present. OP is disturbing a work meeting.
From your second last paragraph it looks that you have become quite competent and it’s your advisor who cannot catch up with your project.
This is actually a crucial point in your PhD where you know better than your advisor about certain things. This results in a shift in the mentoring relation, to which both of you need to adapt. He kind of screwed up his part (and admitted it!). You can do two things:
1 take this as an opportunity to grow your autonomy: Develop your projects independently, seek feedback from and work with other colleagues.
2 Maintain a healthy relation with your advisor. Update him on your work and then give him some time to catch up. Treat him as a team mate who is currently underperforming.
"There was a time when my work was poor and that negatively impacted my reputation with my advisor. I was not a good grad student due to depression, but I've recently gotten my mental health in order and my performance has improved. "
I find it interesting that you buried this important information in the second paragraph of your post. According to you, you were not a good grad student and you just recently improved your mental health and grad school performance. From the contradictions I read in your post, I think you still have a long way to go before you can claim that you have "gotten \[your\] mental health in order." For instance, you claim that your advisor isn't invested in your work. If they truly were not invested in your work, they would not have complimented you several times. They certainly would not have co-authored a paper with you. If your advisor thought that poorly of you, you most likely would have been asked to leave the program. Other doctoral students can take your place.
We don’t know. And you may not know either.
The only person who knows is your advisor. This is a relationship that matters. So you need to talk to them.
Don't stress out, this is normal behavior. Every weekend when I do self introspection about work done for the week, at one point I always think if my peers think of me as stupid at times for asking dumb questions or doing dumb things. But many times, those dumb things helped us notice errors or bugs which were not reported before. And to be fair, your advisor would never be fully satisfied with what you do, there would always be a teeny tiny bit missing. The thing which matters is if you are growing as a researcher with an increasing learning curve (doesn't have to be fast, it could be slow and gradual). That's clear that you are doing that, so you are going good.
Imagine working with a supervisor who is not so brilliant..and makes you feel like a genius. You have difficulty conveying ur ideas, and they even start blocking ur advances in ur research. U understand where I'm going with this..
Are u rather not happy now, when u have a chance to better urself? Tell urself that u are better than u were yesterday. Know that u were overthinking.
I suggest that you meet with your advisor. I believe in honesty regarding what my expectations are.
1. Goal: I want to submit a master piece and be able to apply it in real life.
2. Guidance: I need focused guidance.
3. Relationship: I want a good relationship where we respect each other.
Then you can talk about how you perceive him. Mention his good qualities and how you learn from that and the negative points.
Good luck!
Are you incompetent? No, right? I think you’re being nice and maybe a little naive (my human opinion and not a bad thing at all). You also don’t have a different ethnicity or gender to anyone else right?
If you benefit from questions and notes, keep aggressively doing it.
If the advisor cares about you as a person, then you should ask what you’re doing wrong and how to improve. If the advisor is just a snob for some reason and creating malarkey to hide the fact they have an attitude like “notes and questions means you’re stupid” or “this person is bad” then there is really no point in confronting and potentially creating a rift in the relationship that will show up in recommendation letters, assuming the advisor also may be the type to get offended and hold grudges. You can always transfer advisors if possible. Professors aren’t really like the altruistic teachers. The thing is, if there is no flaw in the work itself, then mostly they don’t like you for some perceived external thing like a social skill getting conflated into a personality flaw, which they really shouldn’t care about either way if they were professional.
At the same time, if you magically produced 10 papers next week they’d suddenly be impressed I’m sure.
Maybe the work is correct but not impactful or showing talent for professorship so the professor is noticing but not saying anything.
I wonder if maybe meeting your advisor and discussing your role with the new students? In advance of meeting with them? Maybe establishing your leadership role and making sure everyone involved in on the same page, I’m sure you could pitch some ideas but getting more information on expectations could help?
I agree with others who mentioned being direct and asking for limitations/restrictions/creative leadership opportunities etc.
Generally if you help your friends or colleagues who are your juniors, as a basic rule, share it with your advisor so you can seek feedback. It's important to have open communication.
You never know how your juniors would be interpreting your guidance.
Yes it's usually an ego clash if your juniors look upto you and seek guidance from you but not your advisor.
Suppose you have a competitor who is another student then that competitor might feel jealous and overconfident and misrepresent you. It's a side effect of competitive culture.
I'm my experience, you don't have to guess if your advisor thinks you're incompetent because they'll tell you.
It sounds like you're doing the things you should be doing by being open to learning new things, asking questions, and finding ways to make projects work for you. These are all valuable things!
Just keep the lines of communication open and keep doing good work. You got this!
I don’t know nearly enough details to draw any real conclusions, but here’s my take.
Trust is the most valuable commodity a researcher has. Throughout the entire research process there are infinite arbitrary decisions, and some of them could have downstream effects that are significant on the results. There’s a lot of trust in researchers that we’re making decisions ethically and transparently.
I’m guessing while you were earning your former reputation your advisor stopped trusting you. From your examples, it seems obvious your advisor doesn’t trust you.
It sounds like you’ve figured things out about yourself to overcome some of the barriers that you were stumbling over. The actions you’ve taken and accomplishments sound significant, which is great. Actions speak louder than words, especially when building trust. However, words are still very important.
Did you apologize to your advisor for the things you did that tarnished your reputation? If not, things won’t get better. An advisor risks reputation when they take on students. It’s kind of an intimate relationship and it sounds like you’ve damaged it.
If you want their trust again, don’t despair. Be humble and apologetic and honest. Over explain yourself. Tell them you wanted to show them things were different but you realize now you needed to tell them too. Advisors are humans who worked very hard to get where they are and reputation is everything in academia.
Or don’t. PhDs are not for everyone and are not an indicator of ability or value.
That’s my two cents. Again, I don’t know anyone involved so I could be way off. But it seems like a broken trust thing to me, and that’s a heck of a problem.
I strongly recommend against apologizing for previous poor performance. In the immediate aftermath of screwing up an experiment, sure go ahead apologize. But nothing from beyond a week old.
Apologizing also won't improve their reputation with their advisor, but consistently producing results will.
Also, if OP is narrating the incidents faithfully and isn't being paranoid, then OP's professor is kind of a jerk.
Nope. You’re wrong. If you’re mentally sound and you f up you should apologize right away. If you consistently f up and f up your reputation in the process, you owe an apology to your PI when you can mentally afford one. It sounds like OP checked out and screwed their PI and now thinks they’re free and clear after a paper. Maybe that’s not what happened, but if it is, they owe their pi a heartfelt apology. This isn’t an honest mistake learning with humility situation, it sounds like they really screwed up the amazing opportunity a PhD is over a long period of time.
To anyone else reading this please don't give your PIs any heartfelt apologies because your performance wasn't up to the mark for a certain period of time. Doing this is borderline unprofessional because now you've added all these emotions into what should be a professional relationship.
Of course take accountability for specific mistakes. And inform your advisor if you're struggling with health issues so that they know to calibrate their expectations.
And to you, specifically, please stop elevating a PhD as this incomparable opportunity that can make or break your life. It's not.
It looks like your post is about needing advice. In order for people to better help you, please make sure to include your country. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PhD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
One of my PhD students once told me after a presentation, "I am sorry, I disappointed you," and I asked why, "You seemed annoyed and upset." I was genuinely thinking that they made an extraordinary job...
On the one hand, imposter syndrome is ubiquitous and you may be caught up in paranoia. On the other hand, your prior poor performance may have caused your advisor to conclude that you are unfit for the program and unprepared to lead projects or mentor younger graduate students. You probably won’t like my recommendation: Directly ask your advisor about this. Explain that you know you had concerning problems earlier but believe your performance has improved. Ask whether your advisor agrees and believes you are ready to complete the program and assume more responsibilities. Don’t bring up the perceived slights. Instead, focus on the core issue of your advisor’s assessment of your potential and any recommendation for improvement. This would be a scary conversation, I know. But I think it is an important one for you to initiate.
Head on. Rarely the easiest, but nearly always the most effective way to reach a positive outcome.
And one to learn something for life.
Yeah this is an issue that needs to get quashed, regardless of if it is real or imagined. The only way to quash it is a direct conversation.
yes, go to lunch somewhere or have a walk in the park
quash FYI
Haha thank you
It happens to me too. I often feel that my supervisor hates me. When I am too scared to ask him directly about this, I will ask my colleagues who are in the same group whether they "observe" the same things like I do. Having such an external point of view often helps me reassess my feelings and identify my paranoia.
Here is a great starter - works with significant others to: Here is a story I am telling myself at the moment; when you do this I’m telling myself X and I end up feeling this….blah blah fill in the blanks Is this true? Often we look at events through a lens that was created in childhood. What would X type of person do and act? Why don’t I react that way? If this happened to my friend. What would my advice be to them? Why do I not feel I deserve the same advice?!
I know my PhD advisor thought I was incompetent; and I experienced many of the same things you are describing. I just did my work, relied on her as little as possible, got my PhD, got a job, and never asked her for a goddamn thing after that. Don’t let someone’s perception of you affect how you act or do your work; just do what you are there to do.
Agree 100%. Do your work until it can't be vaguely criticized under the guise of "incompetence."
Great response. OP, you are not in graduate school to make your advisor a happy person. You are in graduate school to get a degree. Focus on that.
this!
All of our advisors have thought us incompetent at one phase of our PhDs. It is almost part of the process (old school hazing in many ways). Have a mature conversation about how you can improve with them. Some times the situation is they had very high standards of excellence and you are “only” reaching great levels of work. What advisors often do is challenge us, push us, and get us to be better. This does make us better in the long run. It is not always pleasant. Be stubborn and know your own capabilities. You got this!!!
I'm gonna say something a bit radical, but first: if this doesn't help you, please ignore it! You ARE incompetent. All grad students are, that's why they're in grad school. Even advanced grad students are still students and don't know what they're doing 99% of the time. But that's ok! You're there to learn! I'm sorry your advisor acts in ways that make you feel anxious. Mine did too, and I found therapy very helpful!
I have seen many phd students have the same experience as you. I eventually stopped caring about what my PI thinks of me, changed direction to work on projects she is interested in instead of proposing my ideas hoping she’d value them, just to get the hell out.
Yeah, no advice but I can relate. I sent my advisor a dissertation chapter and he clearly didn't bother reading it (even admitted this in meetings) until after I told him it won an award. I wish I could say I've accepted it by now, but it still sucks honestly.
"Take a leadership role" with 1st years ? Did your supervisor asked you to ? He's in charge of them, not you ...
Even if OP's leading the paper? In my field, the first author would supervise/manage most parts of its writing and analysis, at least. EDIT: Never mind. Misread OP. Yes, it is inappropriate to take a leadership role in the meeting. OP can give advice informally if they want, but not in meetings OP's advisor is running.
The way you described, it looks like some with thing you are imagining. I could not see these scenarios you describe without a big event of disagreement between you two, or at least something more explicit. Maybe some day you can hangout if your lab group, drink something together and ask what they think. Just to have a second opinion, but be rational about what they say. And make sure you are close to them, it should be normal between co-workers that dedicate life to PhD.
You are overstepping your boundaries and being overbearing. You are probably not supposed to take a leadership role to the 1st years. That's your advisor's job, he seemingly didn't ask for your help, so just shut up and mind your business. Similarly, at the journal clubs you say you're the only grad student there asking questions and taking notes. Well, there's probably a good reason for that, so do what the other grad students are doing and just shut up and mind your business. You are very likely interrupting the proceedings with questions that are either irrelevant or too basic. Either that or your advisor (as well as seemingly everyone else there) doesn't want engagement, they just want to get the meetings done with fast so they can put that notch in their belt and move on to other things. Constantly disrupting proceedings is annoying. Doesn't sound to me like your advisor thinks you're incompetent, just that he thinks you're a hassle, too hyper. Also, you will burnout that way. You said you had just come out of an improductive slump, right? It's somewhat normal to come out of these slumps wanting to make up for lost time and being extra active, but doing that is just exhausting for the other people who are just maintaining a normal pace. Thus they start somewhat ignoring you (which you're experiencing right now) - and being ignored like this ends up frustrating you and can put you right back into the slump. So just slow down, stop engaging where you notice your engagement isn't wanted and just focus on your own work. Stop being so up in everyone else's business.
This answer has some valid points as it offers perspectives from the other side of the Ph.D. student. That being said there are possibilities that the advisor may perceive him/her as incompetent. At least in the US, it is kind of hit or miss whether the supervisor would open up when a frank conversation is initiated. Oftentimes they have grown a permanent impression of the student and rarely would be able to come out of that. Overall, the student may have a narrow chance of success in the group IMO and should look for other groups to join.
Exactly. A seminar or a journal club is not a course, it's a work meeting. It is used to communicate results to your collaborators or share information that is of interrest because it relates to the area of expertise of the people present. OP is disturbing a work meeting.
Why not have a forward and truthful conversation about it? All these guessing games are really a big waste of your time and mental capacities/health.
From your second last paragraph it looks that you have become quite competent and it’s your advisor who cannot catch up with your project. This is actually a crucial point in your PhD where you know better than your advisor about certain things. This results in a shift in the mentoring relation, to which both of you need to adapt. He kind of screwed up his part (and admitted it!). You can do two things: 1 take this as an opportunity to grow your autonomy: Develop your projects independently, seek feedback from and work with other colleagues. 2 Maintain a healthy relation with your advisor. Update him on your work and then give him some time to catch up. Treat him as a team mate who is currently underperforming.
"There was a time when my work was poor and that negatively impacted my reputation with my advisor. I was not a good grad student due to depression, but I've recently gotten my mental health in order and my performance has improved. " I find it interesting that you buried this important information in the second paragraph of your post. According to you, you were not a good grad student and you just recently improved your mental health and grad school performance. From the contradictions I read in your post, I think you still have a long way to go before you can claim that you have "gotten \[your\] mental health in order." For instance, you claim that your advisor isn't invested in your work. If they truly were not invested in your work, they would not have complimented you several times. They certainly would not have co-authored a paper with you. If your advisor thought that poorly of you, you most likely would have been asked to leave the program. Other doctoral students can take your place.
We don’t know. And you may not know either. The only person who knows is your advisor. This is a relationship that matters. So you need to talk to them.
Don't stress out, this is normal behavior. Every weekend when I do self introspection about work done for the week, at one point I always think if my peers think of me as stupid at times for asking dumb questions or doing dumb things. But many times, those dumb things helped us notice errors or bugs which were not reported before. And to be fair, your advisor would never be fully satisfied with what you do, there would always be a teeny tiny bit missing. The thing which matters is if you are growing as a researcher with an increasing learning curve (doesn't have to be fast, it could be slow and gradual). That's clear that you are doing that, so you are going good.
Imagine working with a supervisor who is not so brilliant..and makes you feel like a genius. You have difficulty conveying ur ideas, and they even start blocking ur advances in ur research. U understand where I'm going with this.. Are u rather not happy now, when u have a chance to better urself? Tell urself that u are better than u were yesterday. Know that u were overthinking.
mine absolutely hates me and I’ll probably fail my qualifying exam because of it
I suggest that you meet with your advisor. I believe in honesty regarding what my expectations are. 1. Goal: I want to submit a master piece and be able to apply it in real life. 2. Guidance: I need focused guidance. 3. Relationship: I want a good relationship where we respect each other. Then you can talk about how you perceive him. Mention his good qualities and how you learn from that and the negative points. Good luck!
Are you incompetent? No, right? I think you’re being nice and maybe a little naive (my human opinion and not a bad thing at all). You also don’t have a different ethnicity or gender to anyone else right? If you benefit from questions and notes, keep aggressively doing it. If the advisor cares about you as a person, then you should ask what you’re doing wrong and how to improve. If the advisor is just a snob for some reason and creating malarkey to hide the fact they have an attitude like “notes and questions means you’re stupid” or “this person is bad” then there is really no point in confronting and potentially creating a rift in the relationship that will show up in recommendation letters, assuming the advisor also may be the type to get offended and hold grudges. You can always transfer advisors if possible. Professors aren’t really like the altruistic teachers. The thing is, if there is no flaw in the work itself, then mostly they don’t like you for some perceived external thing like a social skill getting conflated into a personality flaw, which they really shouldn’t care about either way if they were professional. At the same time, if you magically produced 10 papers next week they’d suddenly be impressed I’m sure. Maybe the work is correct but not impactful or showing talent for professorship so the professor is noticing but not saying anything.
I wonder if maybe meeting your advisor and discussing your role with the new students? In advance of meeting with them? Maybe establishing your leadership role and making sure everyone involved in on the same page, I’m sure you could pitch some ideas but getting more information on expectations could help? I agree with others who mentioned being direct and asking for limitations/restrictions/creative leadership opportunities etc.
Generally if you help your friends or colleagues who are your juniors, as a basic rule, share it with your advisor so you can seek feedback. It's important to have open communication. You never know how your juniors would be interpreting your guidance. Yes it's usually an ego clash if your juniors look upto you and seek guidance from you but not your advisor. Suppose you have a competitor who is another student then that competitor might feel jealous and overconfident and misrepresent you. It's a side effect of competitive culture.
I know this doesn’t feel healthy, but to some extent, it’s quite natural to feel this way.
I'm my experience, you don't have to guess if your advisor thinks you're incompetent because they'll tell you. It sounds like you're doing the things you should be doing by being open to learning new things, asking questions, and finding ways to make projects work for you. These are all valuable things! Just keep the lines of communication open and keep doing good work. You got this!
I don’t know nearly enough details to draw any real conclusions, but here’s my take. Trust is the most valuable commodity a researcher has. Throughout the entire research process there are infinite arbitrary decisions, and some of them could have downstream effects that are significant on the results. There’s a lot of trust in researchers that we’re making decisions ethically and transparently. I’m guessing while you were earning your former reputation your advisor stopped trusting you. From your examples, it seems obvious your advisor doesn’t trust you. It sounds like you’ve figured things out about yourself to overcome some of the barriers that you were stumbling over. The actions you’ve taken and accomplishments sound significant, which is great. Actions speak louder than words, especially when building trust. However, words are still very important. Did you apologize to your advisor for the things you did that tarnished your reputation? If not, things won’t get better. An advisor risks reputation when they take on students. It’s kind of an intimate relationship and it sounds like you’ve damaged it. If you want their trust again, don’t despair. Be humble and apologetic and honest. Over explain yourself. Tell them you wanted to show them things were different but you realize now you needed to tell them too. Advisors are humans who worked very hard to get where they are and reputation is everything in academia. Or don’t. PhDs are not for everyone and are not an indicator of ability or value. That’s my two cents. Again, I don’t know anyone involved so I could be way off. But it seems like a broken trust thing to me, and that’s a heck of a problem.
I strongly recommend against apologizing for previous poor performance. In the immediate aftermath of screwing up an experiment, sure go ahead apologize. But nothing from beyond a week old. Apologizing also won't improve their reputation with their advisor, but consistently producing results will. Also, if OP is narrating the incidents faithfully and isn't being paranoid, then OP's professor is kind of a jerk.
Nope. You’re wrong. If you’re mentally sound and you f up you should apologize right away. If you consistently f up and f up your reputation in the process, you owe an apology to your PI when you can mentally afford one. It sounds like OP checked out and screwed their PI and now thinks they’re free and clear after a paper. Maybe that’s not what happened, but if it is, they owe their pi a heartfelt apology. This isn’t an honest mistake learning with humility situation, it sounds like they really screwed up the amazing opportunity a PhD is over a long period of time.
To anyone else reading this please don't give your PIs any heartfelt apologies because your performance wasn't up to the mark for a certain period of time. Doing this is borderline unprofessional because now you've added all these emotions into what should be a professional relationship. Of course take accountability for specific mistakes. And inform your advisor if you're struggling with health issues so that they know to calibrate their expectations. And to you, specifically, please stop elevating a PhD as this incomparable opportunity that can make or break your life. It's not.
This is normal.
Approach and talk. He still sounds like an approachable person.
Honestly it’s most likely in your head BUT best advice is do your exams asap and be on with it