Are you on the AllStat mailing list? There are lots of opportunities advertised there, plus courses and lectures that might help you make the transition:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=ALLSTAT

Did you do an analysis based dissertation for your MSc? Maybe developing something from that would be a good way to get back into things?

I'm sorry to hear about the situation you find yourself in. The first thing I would advise is to get some independent advice from a postgraduate tutor type person at your uni to see if your supervisors' assessment of the situation is accurate. You need to be absolutely clear about what the specific perceived issue is. If it is just the writing, and you already have a first draft, I don't see why that couldn't be sorted out in the next 6 months. The fact that they are saying 12-24 months may indicate they feel you need to do more work, which would have different implications. But equally they may have an unrealistic idea of what a PhD should actually contain.

Even if your supervisors have a bad attitude to you, it is not in the university's interests to have you drop out when you want to complete and you're nearly there. There's a good chance they will be able to provide you with the additional support you need to finish on time. So do explore your options with someone independent.

One other thing - you need to be very proactive in seeking support and furthering your career. I am lucky to be in a very supportive department, but I've never been asked to teach or 'invited' to conferences. I've sought out those opportunities myself and pursued them with the support of my department, but they didn't just magically fall into my lap. It may be that if you do need to carry on past your current funding that there may be bridging funds out there or small charitable grants, but it's up to you to seek them out.

Another option you could consider is to get a part time job and write up in your free time. Use the remaining funded work to do as much on the fieldwork/analysis side as possible, and just accept that finishing the writing up might need to be juggled with other employment.

I must admit, I've never heard of the idea of a completion bursary. I suspect it's been introduced as now one of the things unis are assessed on is % of PhD students completing in under 4 years (or some kind of metric along those lines). So I suspect you're being 'encouraged' not to mess up their numbers!

I have no idea whether or not you'd have to pay it back if you go over, though I suspect there may be some kind of penalty. Check with the university as this is sufficiently uncommon I doubt there is a universal policy on it.

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If there's only a few, you could search for the papers on an appropriate database and sometimes the listings have the standard abbreviation. Certainly that's the case for PubMed for (bio)medical sciences.

If you do find a list via other means, do share it cos I think someone had a similar request before and I don't know if any of us had the answer!

Edited to add...
Alternatively, if you're trying to translate back from the abbreviations, you could always post a few here and we could have a guessing game :)

Hi Arifa

Even if we could give you a sample PhD proposal, we wouldn't be doing you a favour. Writing a proposal is an important way for you to find out whether you really want to do a PhD and whether your proposed topic is appropriate. Usually the proposal writing process is done along with guidance from a supervisor.

If you tell us roughly what subject area you are in, maybe someone will be able to give you some advice for how to write a proposal.

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It's entirely understandable that you went for the shorter term solution in order to help you get through this phase in your project. However, to continue with your PhD, I would strongly recommend investing time in longer term solutions like counselling. A PhD can be a stressful experience for even the most confident person, so it's important to find ways of coping with the ups and downs.

You also need to make peace with the feeling that what you're doing is 'never good enough', or reframe that in a more positive way. Even the best researchers don't have it all sussed - which is probably what motivates them to continue. I'd recommend having a read of this: http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full.pdf

You'll find that issues such as anxiety, imposter syndrome, and mental health issues are not at all uncommon in academia. Which is not a good thing, but the point is that you may well find people around you who have had similar experiences and who may be able to give you very relevant support and advice.

Keep going with the masters, you're nearly there. :)

It's always a risk, and not something that will go away once your PhD is over. The chances are that over the course of anyone's research career there will be at least one occasion on which one is 'scooped'. The prospect is more daunting for us early career researchers though.

For anyone, it's a source of frustration, but the consequences may vary by field. For example, I work in population health and although I'd love to be the first to demonstrate a particular phenomenon, if someone else gets there first, I can adapt my work to demonstrate that the relationship holds true in a different population group. In fact, this kind of consolidation is considered a good thing!

As a point of reassurance - when I started my PhD, we were told that our project had to be novel work on the basis of what the state of play was at the start of our PhD. So if, two years after starting, someone else publishes work similar to yours, the PhD is not invalidated, though it makes publication more difficult.

All you can really do is keep abreast of your field, anticipate where others may take their research, and not put all your eggs in one intellectual basket, so that if you do get scooped, you can adapt and evolve your work accordingly.

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It's difficult to get the balance between developing autonomy as a student while recognising your responsibilities as a member of a research group. However, it is always worth trying to keep those in authority happy within reasonable limits.

In general I would say:
- try to give as much notice as possible about working from home. I realise you say you couldn't on this occasion, but perhaps you should have asked just to work at home that day, rather than a whole week, if you weren't going to give much notice. Then negotiate for the rest of the week based on the initial reaction
- if your supervisor says 'no' and wants to you to see him, do not defy him.
- if you take the choice to work from home for the sake of your productivity, it isn't necessarily fair to ask colleagues to do prep for you in your absence. It doesn't sound like there was anything actually stopping you from coming to the lab to do this yourself, and having already upset your supervisor, it would have been a good idea to show up and do it yourself.

He may well be being unreasonable with regard to previous incidents, but he is right to point out that your meetings are not, primarily, for his benefit. If you want to improve your relationship with him, I suggest that you try to toe the line a little bit more.

It's awkward when people interrupt and pre-empt what you plan to say later on. But you are allowed to stand your ground - it's quite reasonable to say 'I will go on to talk about topic X in a few slides, but first I want to lay the foundations by describing Y'. Striking the balance between sticking to your plan and being responsive to the audience can be a challenge, but remember that it's *your* talk and you should be in control of the order etc.

Did you do a trial run with anyone before showing it to your examiners? It can be a good idea, especially showing it to someone who is a little detached from your topic, as they can comment on clarity and order etc. It may well be that your presentation might have benefited from being organised differently, but I think the examiners were a little unfair to keep interrupting you and throw you off course.

I'm afraid it's impossible for us to guess without knowing more. At the end of the day, the university will be looking for specific things in a candidate - if you demonstrate those then you have a very good chance, but if not then it doesn't matter how many candidates there are.

I hope it goes well.

Hi Natalia

Congrats on getting that interview!

To be honest, as far as the 'What are your aspirations/where do you want to be in 5 years time?' type questions go, I wouldn't worry too much. If you want to work in research then say so, but don't get anxious about the finer details. The reality is that during a PhD you will find aspects that you thought would be interesting maybe aren't, and little side questions may become fascinating. So you can't possibly know yet exactly what kind of research you'd want to do post-PhD! The important thing is to show that you have a commitment to and aptitude for research, and that you will use the time to develop your skills with that in mind.

Based on my own interview experiences, I would say make sure you can comfortably talk about your research experiences - the things you've learnt, the strengths and weakness, what you enjoyed etc. This is probably the most important thing. I've had 4 PhD interviews in my time and they were all very different, but I'm pretty sure all of them wanted to know about my research experience. The most recent one (for the project I am doing) started with 'Talk me through your CV' which was a very broad way of inviting me to explain my background, highlighting the relevant bits and acknowledging the weaknesses without getting bogged down in them.

Good luck!

I think Mendeley (similar to Zotero) allows you to annotate PDFs without needing to convert to Word. Personally I still have to print out stuff and underline things if I want my brain to focus, but I do (sometimes!) then write summary notes in Mendeley or MS OneNote.

There's no one right way - just depends on what works for you. I'm halfway through now and I do feel I will need to reread some things - papers I have re-read I find I understand much more now. I wish I could read everything just once and retain all the facts and understanding I need, but alas it doesn't work. Others may differ!