My most memorable demotivation happened quite recently.
The Story: I was enrolled in a physics Ph.D. program part-time at a local public university. I was quite the unusual student for that program as I was working full time in addition to taking courses. My first professor at this university was great, very understanding if I had to skip class for a conference or whatever. He was great. At the end of my first semester I was extremely motivated. The first professor made me feel like I could move mountains. My second professor however, was a different story.
He was teaching a pretty difficult course and I was struggling along with the rest of the students — Jackson E&M if you’re wondering. I was getting decent marks in the course and felt like I had a good handle on the material. So far, not so bad. I went to the professor after class one day to let him know that I needed to miss a day of class the next week due to a mandatory meeting at work. He kind of gave me a funny look then asked me about where I work, what I do, etc etc. He apparently had no idea I wasn’t a regular graduate student. Fast forward to the next quiz (the following week), I get my score back and it’s significantly lower than before. I went to talk to him about it after class since my answers were nearly identical to another student’s whose score was more of what I expected — I really thought I had missed something major to get a score as low as I did. Instead of pointing out an error in my answer, he proceeded to give me a lecture about how I was wasting my time at my job and those are the scores he expects someone in my situation to be getting. He dropped the line, “school is more important than your job”. I realized right then and there would be no fair grade for me in this course. My job was the reason I was going back to school in the first place.
I try for the rest of the semester, but my heart isn’t in it. I knew no matter what work I presented him, I wouldn’t get the score I deserved. Before the end of the semester I decided to quit the program. I realized that I couldn’t handle 5 more years of those games (that professor taught a lot of courses and graded the EM quals).
What could have been done: I could have called the professor out on his biased grading. Or went and talked to the graduate advisor. Heck, I could have gone to the university’s HR. Although, the professor had tenure, so it’s unlikely anything would have happened.
In the end, I found a better graduate program at a more prestigious university and was accepted before the end of that semester. My current program is much more accepting of part-time students and is filled with people like me — working individuals in science. A much better environment than before!