Yes, I agree with Larry, and it kind of helps you to beat the intellectual isolation, the PhD imposes on us...

But I wouldn't do it against the recommendations of my supervisor.

I always get this feeling, especially when I work hard and produce some good quality work. I 've learned to recognise it now and think "good! I am on the right track!". Another sign that work is going really well is when you keep listening the same songs over and over again...

Hi FrogPrincess,

I had a similar experience when I first started my PhD. I was approached by an organisation to produce a report for them as a consultant. This organisation is "cutting edge" in my research area, therefore I considered working there for a while, as it would look good on my CV. Money was not good though. In addition, I am not the kind of person who can not juggle between work and PhD, and I am slow, it takes me forever and a year to produce a 40-page report. For these reasons, I decided to stick to the PhD, and not take extra work. But if you think that you can do both, or that you can easily catch up with the PhD after the internship, why not?

At least I can offer some solidarity. Almost a year in my PhD, and I am redrafting my lit review for the 4th time. I have worked like a slave from dust til dawn, but I am nowhere near ready for my upgrade.

I often feel that if my supervisor had a drunk monkey jumping on broken keyboards in the next room, it would have made substantially more progress than me. I am not even allowed to moan, I knew what I was getting into when I said (with a lisp) " I want to do a pi aith di!"

Hi!
I really feel for you, I 've been through similar situations, and it is a vicious circle you need to break.
Just put a schedule in your life, you will feel so much better. I tend to think that I will be unemployed for ever, as soon as I get a job I suddenly realise all the things I could have done during the jobless window!
You can make a list with all the things you want to do and make a daily schedule. Start exercising in the mornings, take care of the garden, publish this paper you always wanted and never had time. Get any job that will give you a little bit of money and an excuse to go out and meet people. Pub jobs can be fun too!

Taking care of your parents is already a major contribution. (I recently left my parents alone with a nurse when they most needed me.) You have already paid them back, because they are proud of you.

I am sure things will pick up soon.
xxxxx

As far as I know it is much harder to get a scholarship as an international student. I am in a UK university and the vast majority of funded students are home students (UK/EU citizen with at least 3 years in the country).
In any case, I would recommend to apply first for a master in a university with high rankings in research in psychology. Then, once accepted you will have the chance to meet staff and familiarise yourself with different areas of research. Your chances of getting funding increase significantly as an internal candidate. And, you have the advantage of knowing your supervisor before starting a PhD.
I am in a completely different field so my advice couldn't be more specific.

Good luck

I have recurrent thoughts about my life when I buy a fishing boat and sail around the Mediterranean. I will be a mighty sailor and the horizon will be my limit! Of course, after a week without internet I will be transported in the closest rehab clinic for first aids, and in a month's time I will be crying alone in the bathroom to go back to research. In a couple of months I will be throwing myself in my supervisor's feet for forgiveness: " I promise I will publish more often than you change your shirt!" (which luckily is not very often).

What I want to say is that take some time off, try another job before taking any major decisions. It might just be a rebound reaction from awful lot of pressure. I have a friend, who is a tree-surgeon, and spends all his day in the fields and frankly he is quite happy. But, different horses for different courses, they say.

Ahahahahha! Hilarious! Especially how postdoc see PhD students!

Hi!

I would advice to read as specific on your topic as possible. Make sure you keep good notes and easily can go back to the source of information. Keep them in a way that you can easily compare the findings of similar papers together with the factors that might be affecting these results. The better you keep notes the easier it is to write your lit review, or even your discussion later on. Don't get discouraged, a good literature review is hard to write and it might take ages.

Good luck, try to find a studying schedule that fits you and stick to it.

Thanks guys. I think I will try to sort it out even if it makes everyone realise that I am a sad stickler, a miserable perfectionist with no life of my one.

Apostrophes behave themselves, but commas randomly appear between words escaping from places they should be.

Surprisingly enough, the publisher is quite famous.

I think it makes sense especially if you have organised your lit review in these sections and then each of them divided in theoretical and empirical. So, the table would be like a chart of how the lit review is organised.
Good luck. Let's see what other people think about that too.

Hi guys!

I only need to know if I am turning mental. Your words of wisdom please.

I am in a science based PhD. I received the manuscript of a fairly recent accepted publication, which has to be approved by the author. I generally have to add the odd reference here and there, and the comments are really straight forward. I have no problem addressing them, but all the commas and semicolons are completely wrong! This paper was written before I learned how to punctuate properly. Now the whole thing bugs me, why didn't the editor correct commas? What shall I do? Shall I correct it or just leave it like this? What would appear worse, the psycho stickler, who goes around in a red pen correcting commas, or the grammatically ignorant scientist?

Everything would have been much simpler if I hadn't read " eats, shoots & leaves".

Hi Sneaks!

I ve put tables in my lit reviews. I put columns like study, population, method, outcome, comments.
In the population, I write exactly how many were the participants, in the method I write details on the method used. In the comments I might write suggestive and point out the weakness or conclusive if the sample is big etc.
Another way I do it is: I compare penguins population on different factors. So in one column I have penguins population and study while in the rows I put: fish availability, temperature and polar bear numbers. I check if the correlation is positive I put an arrow upwards, if it is negative a downward arrow, if no correlation was found then it is an o and compare the studies. So I can say that 5 studies agreed that if the number of fish increases, then the number of penguins increases too, while only 1 study found no correlation. And this is how I see how different studies conclude on different factors. Hope it makes sense.

Read lots and lots of papers, until your head explodes. Understand how to write a paragraph, how to connect one sentence with the other, how to make clear signals to the reader. There are ways to make your writing more interesting. I had lots and lots of help from my 2nd supervisor, and I also attended academic writing courses provided in the uni for PhD students.The teacher was excellent.
Additionally I learned punctuation and what tense to use in each case!

My 1st supervisor thinks I am a stickler, and I should just get on with writing! I look at him and secretly think his publications, which are impossible to read, because of the repetition of " It should be noted..." every five sentences or so! Try to build a bank of "favourite expressions and words" to describe certain things, like: reported, noticed, argued, concluded, suggested and so on - Avoid "it should be noted..." though :)

Ok, I sound like a smart-ass here. I still have lots of things to learn and writing is hard like pulling a tooth out, but it certainly improves. I write every day, since day 1 of my PhD, and after 2 publications, I still have a long way to go.

I would also suggest to use the "me and my research" file. Sometimes I sit down to write and I can't concentrate; I start writing down random facts that bother my head after a couple of paragraphs, I finally start writing about my research! Sometimes I make myself write non-stop for 20 minutes whatever comes to my head. Even if I produce rubbish, it is very liberating especially for the early research steps.

Generally, read and write as much as you can.

I think that if you the analysis and interpretation of the data you will have done a big part of the work. Talk with the researchers who have collected the data, maybe you can even write a paper as a team. Maybe they don't have time for the conference especially if it is not a very important one.