Yes, I honestly think it's mostly about the title. There is also the career side of it, and the salary side of it, and -to a lesser extent, since anyone can do it- the intellectual side of it.

But the title is yours forever. You've done it, you're a doctor, and when you're 60 you'll be a doctor. You wouldn't be a Master or a BA, that becomes irrelevant after a few years.

In my opinion, the great difficulty for the historian is and will always be the structure. My advice would be: come up with a provisional structure, write down your chapters, you'll find out they don't make any sense, then is when you need to do some serious editing. I'm talking 4th year.

Well, being a Doctor for the rest of your life is worth the pain, I think.

I'm with you, but I think it's normal. PhD's are invariably mediocre, they are mediocre by definition. A PhD is a document that shows that you understand and are able to replicate "the system", call it paradigm if you will. Your supervisor is right, and you are right too.

Hi there,

Thanks for your helpful advice, and sorry about the panic.

The reason I'm in this situation is because my supervisor wants to do things by the book. He's the head of the department in a leading UK university. I've four chapters half-finished, in second draft, and according to the regulations you need to have a number of finished chapters to go into writing up. Some supervisors don't care about the small print, others do.

I'm only writing up, and I've been doing so for a year now. As a historian all my data was collected in archives over the second year.

I've been fully funded until now, so it's been a bit of a shock. I'm an overseas student.

The solution is: going part-time, getting a part-time job (which I was looking for anyway), using my credit card to the limit, and paying in installments.

Or interrupting, and being a ghost for a few months.

Nothing too bad in any case. Cheers

I thought you got into writing up automatically as you entered the 4th year.

I just found out (five shocking minutes ago) you don't. Your supervisor decides whether you're ready or not. If you aren't, you're a normal student, and have to pay FULL FEES, in my case, £10,000 as opposed to £300.

My supervisor says I'll be ready in two months. Surely things won't be so different in two months! Well, I'll be £10,000 poorer. Actually, I think I'll have to interrupt it until I find a full time job and save that kind of money. Any ideas???

Thanks again for your response. It's helpful to know that there are people who actually understand what you're going through.

A further comment: People who decide to do a PhD in humanities are usually interested in (or rather obsessed with) words rather than numbers, if this makes any sense.

English is my second language and I find it extremely frustrating (and often embarrassing) not being able to master the language I'm writing in. Anyone in a similar situation? Maybe I should write this in a new post.

Thanks for your comments. The difficult part of a PhD in a "less scientific" discipline is not really knowing how to move forward, I think.

I'm finishing and still (still) struggling with the structure.

As long as there is an introduction and a conclusion, the rest is all up to you, and that can be stressing.

Scientists tend to know their structure from the outset: Intro, review, methods, problem, discussion..., or something along those lines. However, they rely on experiments. If these don't work as expected, they have to start all over again. And that is hard too.

fifi, me too, 10,000 words plus Viva.

Sometimes I think I would quit if I had the guts to be honest.
It's all very disappointing.

But I blame myself too. I don't recognise myself when I work, I've become unreliable with deadlines, I'm never happy after a day's worth of writing, and I'm never looking forward for the next day.

A professor told me that a PhD is 5% intelligence and 95% patience.

I used End note for about two years, until I realised how useless it was.

I'm a historian, which is one of the subjects End note is bad at, to begin with.

But also, I have good visual memory and bad organisational skills, so I keep everything on paper and generally I can find things.

Writing down you references every time takes longer but it helps your memory, and keeps you awake. Endnote makes you lazy.

A tip: use "auto-text" in "Insert", for the most common references, especially if you use footnotes.

In my defense, I must add I wanted to go into Academia, but now I'm quite sick of it. Any sympathetic soul out there?

Hi,

I'm finishing my PhD in history (scary 4th year) and don't know what I want to do with it. Is this normal???