Bad experience with my PhD supervisor Recently, I defended my PhD thesis in one of the universities in this &quot;lovely&quot; world. I was studying in a university out of my country, in a different environment, language, and culture.
During my PhD, I was doing great works .. always motivated and working hard. My supervisor was pleased, and he was telling my colleagues: &quot;Be like him (me)&quot;. I have good relations with my colleagues and they were telling me this after their meetings with him.
Unfortunately, despite the good works that we were doing, I was always mad of my supervisor because of his attitude.
He was always talking about morality and life values, but I didn't see any of these in his personality.
He is a very racist person (he thinks that he is anti-racist!) and he was always offending me with his silly jokes. I never told him anything wrong or replied in a bad way to his jokes, but I tried to show him that &quot;I don't like your jokes&quot;. Also, when I finish writing up any of my papers, he was telling (asking) me that we have to add X. X is a postdoc working with him, and he is a sub supervisor. Unfortunately, X has never been involved in any of my research works, or even giving any suggestion.
The thing that made my relation worse with him is that: at the last year of my PhD, he asked me to work on a project for him (totally out of my PhD topic) because his postdoc cannot continue. In the beginning, I accepted the idea, but then while he was talking, he said: &quot;if you don't work on this, I can't continue funding you&quot;. Actually, this was not the first time he says something similar: he did it during my second year, and he made me working on something for his projects.
At that time, I started working on the project, but I was outraged and upset (because of what he said) .. I didn't finish the work properly (I kept very small things to the Postdoc researcher). Then we had another meeting, and it was a very tense meeting; as a summary, he said that he will stop my fund. This was 5 months before the end of my PhD. In that time, I got an opportunity to work with a company where I did my internship. Actually, he could have stopped my funding during the first 2 months (of the 5 months), but he didn't do it.
After the defence of my PhD, while we were having dinner (a local tradition), he asked me: &quot;why did you refuse my suggestions for more publications when you started working in the company?&quot;, I told him that I didn't want due....I mentioned some of the things that made me upset during my PhD (actually a couple of very general points). He didn't like my answer, and he started replying to some of my claims (he became mad). Anyway, we finished the dinner and we left the restaurant in a very uncomfortable way.
My problem now is that:
Soon I will leave the country where I am because I had awful memories in it and I don't want to stay here anymore. So, I was thinking of sending an email to thank him: why?

He helped me to start my PhD by accepting me and funding my
study.
I don't like the idea of leaving without even saying:
&quot;Bye!&quot;.

I'm still angry about what I've experienced with him. On the other hand, I feel it's my mistake that I didn't stop his lousy attitude since the beginning.
So, what I want to ask is, do you recommend me to send him a &quot;thanking + Bye&quot; email?
Yes, you should thank him. You don't need to work with him in future, but, as you say, he helped you along. He helped you start your career and you can now be independent. If you did good work under his guidance it is worth a thank you, and you may be well positioned for good works in the future.
There are a lot of racists around, of course, and many of them don't understand what it really means. But your bad experience is now behind you and you were pretty lucky (and strong) to overcome the issues.
But you may need a letter from him in the future to continue your quest. Don't burn bridges that don't need to be burnt.

And the jokes of academics are often not as funny as they think and the worldview they have may not be shared as widely as they imagine.
There are, I suspect, hundreds of questions here from people who are in a bad relationship with their advisor but are not finished and so have serious decisions to make about continuing or leaving. You are lucky now to have that behind you.
Good luck.