If your supervisor is ignoring you is there a more senior academic that you could contact, either the head of department/school, or the head of PG studies? Your supervisor shouldn't ignore you like this, and the situation needs to be resolved. Email someone who can help.

Good luck.

Normally your funding would stop immediately that you leave the PhD. You wouldn't normally have to pay anything back from before that date.

I left a PhD 13 years ago, so have experience of this myself.

I actually caught swine flu in July, after my post to this thread. I was very high risk for complications, due to permanent chemo drugs and steroids suppressing my immune system. So I took the offered Tamiflu - I'd have passed on it if I'd been healthy. The flu symptoms were most severe for a week, knocked me out for a month in total, and I was coughing (worst cough I've ever had) for 8 weeks total. I think I got off lightly.

Having said that, I wasn't swabbed or anything, so we can't be 100% sure I had swine flu. So I was still eligible for the swine flu vaccine (and annual flu one), though I can't have flu vaccines any more because a flu vaccine triggered my life-threatening auto-immune disease in the past. But hubby had the vaccines, as my household contact, to protect me, from any form of flu.

Well done! Thanks for the encouraging story.

I was working for an hour or so earlier, carrying on dealing with thesis feedback corrections.

Good luck tonight Tsipat.

Who is funding you? Is it a research council or what? Normally if it is this situation would be spelled out in the information available to students, for example online.

I left an EPSRC funded PhD 13 years ago. I didn't have to pay anything back, but the funding finished the day I left.

Good luck.

Managed a couple of hours tonight, so really pleased with that. Have been tackling the nasty pile of remaining feedback, and it's got a lot smaller. Hope to do a bit more over the weekend sometime.

Your university/department should also be able to advise you on possible funding options.

I did what you're seeking to do by the way. I'm part-time, so it's a little different, but I self-funded my first year, applied to AHRC part way through, and won funding for the rest of my PhD.

I didn't have an obvious person either, because my area is a bit new. We could have gone for someone who works in the same field, but looked at a different time period. Advantage was I'd met this person and had a pretty good idea of how they ticked. But in the end my supervisor and I recently agreed on someone who's an expert in the time period I've researched (I'm a history student), the overarcing umbrella so to speak, and is also familiar with a lot of the evidence I've worked with. So not in my niche area as such, but very familiar with the context I'm working in, and - I hope - therefore well able to examine me as a result.

Well that's the theory. My viva will probably be in May or soon after, so not long to find out - eek!

I'd ask the supervisor straight out what's going on, and say you're not happy with the examiners. Just write an email.

I'm going through the examiner process myself at the moment. External has been chosen (and relevant form filled out). Hopefully she'll still be the external at the end, and the internal will be ok.

Hang on in there Alpacalover. You'll get there. Good luck with the monitoring committee. I had one of those a few weeks before Christmas.

Been working since 9pm on more thesis feedback editing, but my yellow highlighter pen that I use to scribble out my supervisor's comments to show that they've been processed has almost run out. Will have to send hubby (who works at uni) to buy me a new highlighter pen tomorrow :p

I'll be stopping soon. Good luck to anyone else out there tonight.

Ok not far away then! :)

Thanks Teek! I might be further north than you though. Think Celtic country :)

Good luck Teek. I'm having the day off today, but hope to do at least an hour's work (my modest target 5 times a week) tomorrow night. Am near the end of my easy thesis fixes (reached p190 out of my approximately 200 pages of core text), and soon to tackle the nasty ones.

Well done!