Meet the Manchester PhD student who dressed as their supervisor’s feedback for Halloween

‘Because nothing is scarier than reality’


Savannah Clawson, a PhD student in experimental particle physics at the University of Manchester, has easily one of the best Halloween costumes we have seen this year.

Savannah turned some rather disappointing thesis feedback including “argh! this is tragic” and “a thesis is not a brain dump” into a legendary costume that’s gained a fair bit of twitter attention.

Many comments under Savannah’s post are criticising the PhD supervisor. One Twitter user said, “As someone who advises many theses and grad students etc., this is an unacceptable way to communicate. It’s highly unprofessional and it’s unnecessarily demeaning and dehumanizing. You deserve better mentorship. Period.”

Lots of users are encouraging Savannah to ditch her advisor but praising her creativity. Another user said: ” You’re a genius, I should have done the same!”

Since the first post, Savannah has take to Twitter and said: “As this tweet is getting more attention than anticipated, I would like to point out that my supervisor is great and I’m super grateful that they read my thesis so thoroughly – all comments taken greatly out of context.”

Hopefully feedback from now on will be slightly more constructive but if experimental particle physics doesn’t work out, you could always try your hand at costume design.

Best of luck on the PhD Savannah!

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