Today has not been a waste because...

In spite of me thinking that I am a lazy, incompetent fool, my supervisor said that I'd obviously been busy, and that my lab book looks better than a lot of people's.

Recently, I've had to resave my Endnote library and move it to a new location, and now, for some reason, most of the paper attachments are broken and don't link to anything. I still have all the papers, but is there any way to remedy this more quickly than manually going through every entry and reattaching each paper separately?

I think certainly more so for science vs. arts, but humanities is a bit tricky as it can fall into either. I have friend doing a PhD in demography, which probably counts as a humanity rather than a science, but he's done posters before.

Hey Flack,

I'm in year 2 of 4, and fully intend to do a postdoc abroad straight after my PhD. I speak German, so Germany would be good, and I think I could learn Dutch fairly quickly, so Netherlands could be good too. I'm learning Swedish, so Sweden, and possibly Norway or Denmark, would be possibles. Canada sounds great but perhaps too far away. And the US has the best labs but I worry that they treat you like shit.

If I stay in academia, it may well be abroad. If not, I'll probably settle back in England, but only in the north.

I'm feeling really crappy this morning. I've just started my proper PhD (the second year of a 1+3), but I'm still doing experiments from my MRes year, to try to get a paper. It's finishing off a postdoc's work, but my experiments aren't working, my cells aren't behaving (admittedly there are others in the lab experiencing the same), and I'm feeling both incompetent and directionless. I dread meetings with my supervisor, when I have to present a small amount of data, all of it tosh, and generally not enjoying work one little bit. And it's Thursday, which should be the third best day of the week (after Friday and Saturday), yet I feel like crap.

:-(

Ok, I don't know why I'm posting this, and I don't know what the hell it has to do with PhDs, unless you're a chemist doing it or something, but, er, what do you all put in your hair? If anything...

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Ok, first, I see where you're coming from, completely. There will always be people who miss out on uni the first time for whatever reason, and then excel later. However, when a company interviews for staff, they don't go for someone down the rankings at the time of interview, purely in case they prove themselves to be more able than the others. All they have to go on is exam and school performance up to that point. Otherwise, you would have no way of discriminating between people. Should Oxbridge take candidatesd with Ds and Es at A-Level, in case those results were just a result of poor teaching at school, or other issues?

I do agree with you about university being an important part of growing up. However, a hell of a lot of students go to university, drink their way through it, barely attend lectures or seminars, spend their remaining money on designer clothes and iphones, and then complain that a student loan isn't enough for them. You don't need to attend university to live away from home, and while there obviously is a social network there for those that wish to benefit from it, this appears to manifest itself all too often as a drinking society.

Next, careers. I'm passionate about football and love playing. But Manchester United won't let me play. Even FC United of Manchester wouldn't! Yes, being academically amazing isn't necessarily important, and I often met highly academic teachers who were so "head in the clouds" that they couldn't explain anything to children. However, there is such a dearth of teachers in some areas, such as physics, that we are having teachers with no qualifications, and even some who appear to be almost illiterate.

As for your final idea - this is excellent, and one I have often remarked about to friends and colleagues. It could be something along the lines of national service, but non-military. They do something like this in Germany, for those who don't want to join the army. You omitted to mention that it would mean that students wouldn't have to apply for university until they had their A-Level results, thus avoiding the usual excitation and misery of results day, and clearing, which surely suits no-one.

But how will a degree from home work? For example, I can envisage it for an English Lit degree, but engineering? Biochemistry? I belive that, in terms of top universities, the sciences will be open to more people than the arts.

As for research from "post-1992" universities, I can honestly say that in my field (medicine/biochem/molecular biology etc), I have only once or twice come across a paper from a university which I wouldn't think of as being very good all round.

I think that there are a lot of people going to university who shouldn't be.  This whole 50% target is nonsense.  Also, there are a lot of subjects which people just can't expect the taxpayer to fund, because they seem to have no real revenue-generating ability, except in terms of the transferable skills they provide.  I don't believe that education is "a right, not a privilege" beyond that needed for everyday life, i.e. GCSE or A-Level.  On the other hand, if jobs are being cut too, I can't really see where people can go.

It seems to me like we're going to see a big split, with the top universities being even more research-biased, but only available for teaching for the exceptionally bright or rich.  The lower rank universities will become mainly teaching establishments, with little by way of world-class research.

I'm not necessarily opposed to cuts for university teaching, depending on where the cuts are made (although the mooted figure does seem huge).  However, what I AM opposed to is the impact this will have on university research, which seems to be taken for granted by those in power.  In my field, I shall end up doing a postdoc or two abroad I think, and then returning here.  If, as promised, the financial penalties have been paid off in five years, maybe the situation will have improved.  If not, I'll get a job with a drug/chemical/biotech company. In a way I'd prefer to stay in academia, but at least I don't have to agonise over a choice if one option is removed...

Hmmm, I would suggest that your use of English is, in a word, s**t, but then it's probably at about the level of most of the footballers wives who seem to wear this tripe.

Has the bible been peer reviewed?

If you're using the quote as an example of the fallacy of religious texts, I see no problem. Otherwise, it seems a little superfluous. As for the Pope talking about economics - surely his only major economic "experiences" have involved Nazi gold and payoffs to victims of paedophiles?