You scored mainly in the Water-Sky quadrant. This 'blue' quadrant highlights the 'water' sign of your personality and your tendency to be cool and free-flowing in most circumstances. Water from the sky provides the necessary resources for growth and this is a feature of your approach to life. You will enjoy the freshness of new ideas and actively seek these out, either by talking to others or by reading.

People who map into this quadrant will enjoy examining problems or making discoveries. Consequently, you may sometimes tend to take your time in coming to decisions which affect your day-to-day life. If there are any uncertainties, your natural reaction will be to postpone things until you are sure.

You are unlikely to enjoy conflict situations which, more than likely, will create stress for you. In these circumstances you may well be a 'worrier' and this could affect your health. As a result you will usually move to defuse any potential conflicts well before they occur.

You will be a considerate person and choose your words carefully so that you don't upset others. Sometimes however, you may be so subtle that people don't realize what you are feeling about a particular issue. You may need to check that people fully understand your views and incorporate these into their decision making.

Being a 'sky' person, you may well have a strong imagination which causes you to fantasize about the future. Future possibilities interest you greatly whereas the past is something you can readily put behind you. However, be careful that you don't live too much in the future. There are the realities of day-to-day living to think about.

Methinks you have the PhD blues... it will pass (I am assured) ...make lists and organise yourself, that may help.

Hi Confused: First of all calm down; welcome to lab politics. You may not like your supervisor much but he/she/it remains your boss. You are quite right in wanting to go to a conference outside your immediate area but, as you know, these cost shed-loads of cash. Money is always tight. Therefore, and particularly for international conferences, make sure this conference really IS important to your field. Then suggest you will raise the money from external grant sources, eg: societies, the university graduate funds, etc (that eliminates the arguement of cost). Next stress WHY you want to go, what you can gain from it, essentially defend your reasoning for wanting to go. A well constructed and carefully considered arguement will usually win most people over. Finally, you are two years into your worl so your PhD is becomeing just that - YOUR PhD. You know more about it than they do and so are better able to direct where you want it to go. And if that all fails, you may just have to suck it down and try for it next year :-(

I know thew feeling! Remember that a PhD is essentially an apprenticeship - you are in effect a trainee scientist. The skills you learn doing a PhD are transferable and you can work on what you want once you have your PhD. It may be in your best interests to get the qualification, network like crazy and, once you are "Doc" use those connections to get a job in what interests you the most.
End of the day, what you are doing is like an everyday job (with strange hours and rubbish pay) - sometimes you have to do something nasty to get what you really want.

It has its moments. I joined a completely different field to all my previous expertise so don't worry overly about it. You'll get more interested as you get more into it. Else you're doing the wrong job.

In theory the name doesn't matter although I think ACADEMIC employers will look more favourably on someone from an established, high performance institution in comparison to the newer ones. That being said, it should not detract from the quality of work you are doing. Ultimately, how good your PhD is, and a list of contacts as long as your arm will determine your future employment status.

Some wit, some wit; my Phd for some wit!

@ The coastman: Why do I enjoy your posts again? Mean person... ;-)8-)

You cannot fail a PhD student just because you don't like them. There has to be a justifiable and peer approved reason for a failure.

Sounds more like they were using weed killer rather than a pesticide, but that's just splitting hairs. I may be wrong but I believe you may dispose of chemicals into the water course providing it is (a) non-toxic and (b) well diluted - the latter relates obviously to the quantity of water with which you dilute it. Depends entirely on the chemical. My concern would be any hazardous chemicals entering the food chain in a manner similar to DDT in the 60s and 70s. Does sound odd that they were disposing of the dregs in a confined water source

I get really fed up with all these posts about "racist uk" - what an offence to us normal people! Puccagrannie, define "hate crime"; were you chased through the streets by a gang of armed youths; relentlessly targetted for verbal and physical abuse by other ethnic groups? I'm sure there is no crime at all in China, a wonderful utopia, certainly no persecution of Asian ethnic minorities or non-state authorised Christians (which coincidently could be defined as racism). I am English and African; yes you meet the odd muppet who forgets to engage brain before speaking but we all do it occassionally. So kindly stop tarring everyone with the same offensive brush.

In response to you difficulties as a lone parent student, then yes I agree, the system is biassed against lone-parent and indeed "mature" students. You are hard pushed for time, trapped by commitments in your local area so unable to readily move, ineligible for "student discounts" as you are too old, etc. I heartily sympathise; stick with it though. (up)

Have a chat to a computer shop. Tell them your requirements (memory, chip speed and graphics card - you can always get an external hard drive) and you want it on a student budget. Usually works.

I disagree. If you are going into research (or a research degree) then you should expect to design your experiments, chart the course of your study and formulate your own ideas. Subsequently you should be able to step back and tear them into little pieces and formulate something better; that is the nature of research. If a student expectrs to be told what to do and how to do it, you aren't training a researcher, just spoon-feeding them and that will get nobody anywhere.

Don't go there. Seriously. Do not even think about going there. First, it's an asumption that she fancies you, second and most important, it is highly unprofessional for a supervisor to get involved in your work. She would possibly face censure for any action. Keep it formal, you are an "employee" at the end of the day.
Finally, just to put an opposite spin on it;the sexual tension; keeping things more formal, etc may be a method of subtlty informing you that this relationship is strictly professional.

Anyone know what happened to the fish cam? I spent many many many happy hours trying to find a fish in the view - though personally I think the mods were just having me on saying there were fish in it 'cos I'm sweet and niave...
Perhaps the fish have got their PhDs and gone on to better things?