Should I give a symbolic "thank you, and goodbye" gift to an abusive supervisor?

I don't know much about Chinese culture, so take this answer with as many grains of salt as necessary, but it seems like the best thing to do here is find out what is the minimum socially acceptable gift you could give the advisor without it burning bridges with your lab and the other people you work with, and then give that. If you can get away without giving anything, so much the better.

If you do find yourself socially obligated to give some kind of gift, when you give it perhaps you could emphasize to the advisor how much you're looking forward to doing your own, independent work as a polite way to discourage any further involvement.

Even if this person demands honorary authorship over your work after you leave, it will be much easier to tell them no when you're not working in their lab. The worst they could directly do to retaliate is refuse to give you a reference or letter of recommendation to future employers, and someone who gets their authorships by abusing their students and not doing any actual work is unlikely to be able to do much damage to your reputation anyways.


I would not give a gift - symbolic or otherwise. It seems from your response that you will not (nor value) the contact of this particular supervisor much so there is no need to do so. I would not deliberately demean him - sending a nasty email or attempting some sort of sardonic gift for him but I would not present a gift. That said, if you do decide to give something - I think your fears that this represent some sort of desire to extend the relationship is overblown.

P.S. I am familiar with the Chinese culture but, of course, that should not be taken as being somehow more authoritative than other answers.


I once had a supervisor that I didn't really see eye to eye with. Definitely nothing as serious as you are noting, I just felt like we didn't really understand each other.

So as a parting gift, I gave him some music that I very much cared for and that I knew he would not like or understand. I never explained to him why I gave him that music. It gave me some satisfaction then and it still gives me some satisfaction to this day.