i also went thro a similar experience after presenting my work at 2 conferences. i am hoping to publish on the specific area asap. only last week a professor from Australia sent me a paper covering a great deal of what i was hoping to publish, but his approach is slightly different. i would say, if you can, then publish asap. if you can't and someone gets there before you, you can always be original in the way you look at your topic.

there is a certain poem on phds that says a bit about that feeling. i'll try and get it and put it on here. all the best and don't panic.

thanks loopylou.

i won't be quitting.

wishing you a quick recovery.

and thanks to everyone else for their encouragement. i can finally smile .

i doubt if the guy had read my work by the time he decided to call me for a meeting - otherwise why would he need to read it again? i really hate him right now and i've decided not to let him have such power over me. so i guess, am not quiting. just waiting for him to gather himself.

Jewel - in the light of the circumstances, it would be unwise for me to precise about my subject area. who knows, maybe he's a freak always on this site!

thanks guys. my supervisor had decided that he's gonna take a few days to go thro my work and call me after that with the way to go forward with my work. i hope this time round its going to be a constructive meeting. am tired of going round in circles with a couple of draft chapters which are not organised in any way, because of this first chapter. anyhow, since he's decided that i shouldn't write anymo, i've decided to get on with publishing the article that i had put off because of this chapter. hopefully something good can come out of this to cheer me up. after all, who knows when am gonna be called for a meeting. 2 days, 2 weeks from now, 2 months? am not gonna sit around depressed all day because of some supervisor.

quite possible. i've done two presentations on the same topic different title, and i may be doing it again in summer.

thanks alicepalace, 404 and driventoinsanity. I think that may just be what I will have to do next.

H - I simply make my plans way in advance and just because am having difficulties does not imply that i was never stuck into my thesis.

how do i get external supervision? has anybody ever done that?

i know of two professors who've written a bit directly on my field. both are at different unis. the rest are in Australia. I don't know what I should do coz my area is interdisciplinary and my supervisors seem to be frustrated because they are both specialists in the separate disciplines am looking at. what is most frustrating is that my second supervisor doesn even care and he is the one who is supposed to be dealing with this introductory part of the thesis. i just wish i never came to this uni in the first place.

my supervisor is frustrated with me and my research topic and i've began to wonder whether i have the ability to do a phd in the first place. i've never been a failure in my life and am finding this hard to deal with. i regret each day why i took up this phd. i would have been elsewhere, happy and living, instead of having to content with this supervisor who trushes my work and offers no suggestions on how i could possibly improve it.

hey. for the last 18 months i've been writing my first chapter and i have had to change my supervisor because none of them was familiar with the topic. the new one i got is the same, a bit better tho. i went to see him supervisor today after having send him my work. he reckons that i haven't been doing what he asked me to do. i feel quite discouraged coz i did a good 20000+ words on this assignment that i was supposed to do, then when i go to see him he says he doesn even know what to say to me, coz whenever he gives me instructions i can't follow them or he isn able to explain them properly. i told my supervisor that i would rewrite it and he said i didn need to write anymore coz am writing irrelevant stuff.

what do you mean by age Otto?

thanks guys. i think i will adopt Otto's structure coz really i think this lit review is going to be a good 20000+ words, probably 30,000 coz am just past halfway.

thanks again.

you're welcome.

keep up posted on how you're getting on.

another encouraging word for you.

last week i went to this second and third year phd students talk, for phd students who were frustrated with the whole process. The course moderator identified two problems that research students face in their second and third year: 1) lack of faith and 2) too much research. I think yours is more the second one rather than that first because you already have your notes, you haven't just stopped and given up. We were advised that when your problem is too much research, mindmapping (asking whys and hows) might help you to organise your thoughts and like teek said, divide your existing work into smaller portions that you can handle more easily? hope that helps.

i find that writing up is like the gym - very hard to get started, but once you get going, you start to enjoy it. so just get on with it, you'll find that its not as bad as it seems and guess what, it'll all stop haunting you. when you've been doing your work and you see your thesis growing, you can go out and have fun without a guilty conscience. but on the other hand, the harsh reality is that, if you don't start, tomorrow, you will still be afraid and in cold sweats, and time doesn stop moving. you'll be nearer to the end of your phd. it's up to you to chose which feeling you prefer in the next couple of months/years of your life. i personally decided to get on with it. i know it's hard, but that's why it's a PhD thesis. Believe me, the first draft won't be fantastic, but soon with editting and all your notes, it'll be brilliant!

all the best,
Jojo.