> He asked me to wrap up or leave within the semester.
That's a really shitty thing to do. Of course he could take another job, but that's no reason to abandon you! He certainly should have kept seeing you regularly, a two-hour meeting per week doesn't kill anybody. Or if that was really not possible, at least he could have arranged to co-advise your thesis with another professor. I'm happy that it turned out good for you in the end. Did your original advisor end up signing your thesis after all?
Although I am not entirely certain, he maybe did hold a grudge. His two other students knew about the move since June, but never shared. This news was broken to me on Nov 5th, 2012. This was not about performance. I had published a journal paper in my doctoral second year, wrapping up a VR project in 2012 (in a decent journal) and was 3.8+ in grad school.
As you could imagine, it was terribly ill-timed for me. I could not transfer to another school. Good schools within the same standing all had deadlines between Dec 1 & Dec 15. GRE applications can take up to 6 weeks to be forwarded. I was dirt poor. My semester fee would have been $11,000 for Spring. I couldn't have paid it. No professor in a niche area as computational imaging, would take you at such a short notice. If I am unenrolled, I was effectively out to the starting line. By this timing, I have a feeling he set me up to fail in the end & crash out.
He did sign the thesis (that would have had been a red flag to the department). He however withdrew financial support immediately effective that day, and didn't accept to be co-author in my journal paper[1] - just me and my pair-coding partner.
That's a really shitty thing to do. Of course he could take another job, but that's no reason to abandon you! He certainly should have kept seeing you regularly, a two-hour meeting per week doesn't kill anybody. Or if that was really not possible, at least he could have arranged to co-advise your thesis with another professor. I'm happy that it turned out good for you in the end. Did your original advisor end up signing your thesis after all?