======= Date Modified 06 Mar 2010 18:32:15 =======

Clinical psychology- Alzheimer's disease stuff! KB

======= Date Modified 03 Mar 2010 22:39:08 =======
Hey! Sounds familiar and I'm only in second year! I've always worked very hard but I am now getting to the stage where I have to question how much I can feasibly take on and how much would risk my health and/or sanity. I am exhausted, I can't sleep, I am overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done and everything my supervisor is asking of me, my fitness is decreasing and my chocolate and alcohol intake increasing...in another year I will be a rotund nervous wreck with no social skills and eyebags that cover my entire face :( Fortunately I took some time off tonight to go to a 'science cafe' talk by one of the lecturers from our department and it was completely inspiring. I very rarely lose sight of my goal or my motivation, but I am losing the blessing of having enough time to think about them at the moment, so it was very beneficial to take time out and remind myself why I love my subject. Am guessing in another year I may have changed my mind! Good luck with the writing up- hopefully normal life will resume for you soon! Best, KB

Hey Button! Yeah- I get exactly this! My PhD is mostly quant, but I have a small qual study going on as well which means interviewing my participants, and I have no prior experience of doing this at all! I think that it's good that you can at least see that you're doing this- I showed my supervisor the transcripts of my first three interviews (a bit cringey cos they weren't great!) and she gave me loads of feedback, but mainly pointed out where it would have been better to follow something up in more detail or to re-phrase a question. I agree with Sue- it does get easier and you will start to get a better idea of what you're looking for. I also found it very helpful to do an initial analysis on my first three interviews just to get a feel for how it would work, and having gone through that process has helped me fine-tune my questions and highlight the things that are interesting and that I need to follow up in more detail. To be honest, the only reason I had time to do this going along was because I broke my foot and couldn't go out testing for two months, but I am really glad I had the opportunity- even if you just try to do an initial analysis on the first one or two before you finish interviewing the others, I think it helps. I think the worst thing for me is listening to the recordings and thinking, oh my god, did I really just say that?! Yup, I did. Arse!
It does get easier though! Good luck with it, KB

Hey Teek- yeah, I did Muay Thai and Okamido ('wolf style' - very similar to Thai) for about 10 years, I love my kickboxing! Not able to at the moment as my foot is still recovering from its crash, but hope to get back to it at some point. I really love fighting, the only thing is I am so tired a lot of the time with the PhD that sometimes I don't fight to the best of my ability and that really irritates me, so I have taken more to non-competitive sports for the moment, although the boxercise classes are good fun (no fighting though!). My friends think I am crazy with the kickboxing- in the club where I am there are only lads there plus me, so I would get home after a session and my hands and arms would be shaking so much from holding the pads and punching that I couldn't even hold a glass of water! Great fun thoguh :) KB

I love my exercise and find that it really does affect my mood as well, to the extent where it completely crashed when I broke my foot in December because I couldn't get my exercise fix for months! I do a variety of stuff and find different activities best for different things. I go to the gym a few times a week and do mainly cardio work on the crosstrainer, treadmill and step machine, and a few weights as well- I always take my ipod and find that sometimes I listen to the music and get lost in it and other days I barely hear the music because I am lost in my own thoughts. Often I find I go to the gym feeling stressed about something, usually having got something tiny out of all proportion, and I come out of the gym having mulled it over and got it into perspective, and I feel a lot better. I also do aerobics and kickaerobics classes- I really enjoy these and they're good if you need a distraction as you really have to concentrate on learning the routines so there's no chance of spending the whole hour worrying about your PhD or whatever. They're good fun too, especially if you drag your mates along. I did used to do a lot of competitive sports and was on a few teams (kickboxing, badminton, hockey), but to be honest I find the competitiveness quite stressful, so I have given up all of these now. I hate 'underperforming' or 'letting myself down' and it used to piss me off if I had a bad kickboxing fight or something and actually make me feel worse, so I have gotten rid of the stressful bits now and I concentrate on the stuff that makes me feel good! I also like mountain walking when the weather permits, that's good for getting a sense of perspective and some fresh air as well! I say find something you really enjoy and get satisfaction out of- then you'll stick to it and it won't be a chore! Best, KB

Hmmm, I share your worries Sneaks, although I am only halfway through my PhD so I have a little more time on my hands. At the moment my sup and I are in talks about post-doc projects and potential proposals we could submit for funding. This would be ideal for me (and she is very keen), but in reality the chance of success with these grants is pretty slim. I did have a look at fellowships and in my subject at least, it's pretty tricky without having done a post-doc first, though I guess it varies from subject to subject. So yes, I worry about going through all this and then not having a job at the end of it. How come your supervisor is so unsupportive? Surely most supervisors would welcome potential projects and possible funding with open arms and aupport you all the way, or at the very least write you a nice reference?! Best, KB

Hey Wal...grrrr, that's so annoying, especially given you have hardly any feedback. I would not take it personally, it seems like there are so many factors that influence whether a paper is accepted- was it rejected straight away by the editor or was it the reviewers who made the comments? There could be any reason aside from the quality of the paper that they didn't take it- political reasons, conflicts with other research that the reviewers are keen on, people on the editorial board, topic not quite the right fit...I wouldn't worry- just stick it somewhere else. My supervisor is at the top of her field and even she had a paper rejected from a rather average journal a few months ago. The paper I am about to submit is a rather opinionated and slightly controversial theoretical piece and I am fully expecting it will clash with other viewpoints and am trying to prepare myself for harsh comments and rejection. But my supervisor is confident that we will find a home for it in the end and I'm sure you will do for your paper too. Good luck with it! KB

Awesome, that's great news- well done! KB

Hey! I think a number of things can influence this. One thing I noticed is that a much higher proportion of people got a distinction on the MSc course than got a first at undergrad level on my course, even though the boundary is 70% for both degrees. I certainly don't think the MSc was easier than my BSc- I think part of the issue is that by the time you get to MSc level you have lost most people who got less than a 2.1 in their first degree, and you are also left with people who are genuinely interested and enthusiastic about their subject, so probably put more work into it. I got a first for my BSc and then a distinction for my MSc, but I wasn't that excited about the distinction because quite a lot of people got one, so I didn't really feel quite as proud as I was of the first, which I still feel sets me apart from other people more than the distinction does when it comes to applications and CVs etc. I imagine different people have different experiences though, it might depend a bit on the subject and university. Best, KB

It can depend on where your funding is from. I know people in some subjects who work strict 9-5 weekdays and have 5 weeks off per year (plus a few university holiday days). My funding doesn't come with any conditions at all about time off, but I tend to go with the 5-6 week thing- I take 2 weeks at Christmas, a week at Easter, and a couple of weeks in summer. Having said that, unless I am away I tend to work from home during those holidays anyway, which probably isn't a good thing. But like the others have said, as long as my work gets done nobody is regulating my hours or the days that I'm in or anything, so I could be a lot more flexible with my time if I wanted to be. Best, KB

Hey! I am doing a PhD in clinical psychology and analyse my data using SPSS. I learnt to use it in my undergrad and then took an advanced statistics module on my MSc which used SPSS too. When I was learning stats we had to learn to do a lot of it by hand, to get us used to the theory behind it etc, so we had to use the equations and do everything the long drawn out way then. However, once you know how to use SPSS you will never be working stuff out by hand again and if you have a good grasp of how to use SPSS and how to interpret the output then your knowledge of maths really doesn't need to be that good. I think it's important to go through the process and have some idea of how the stats work and why so that you have a good grasp of what you're doing, but to be honest I bet most people using SPSS wouldn't be able to do any of it by hand any more anyway, so I wouldn't worry too much about it! Best, KB

Yeah, I think you should just ask and explain that you really appreciate his time but would rather channel it into a regular fortnightly slot if it would be possible, so that you can set goals etc and keep things structured. The other thing I find is if I bump into my supervisor in the day, she is often busy and distracted, although she does try to be helpful. When I have her to myself for supervision meetings she is a lot more focused and this way I can go in there with a list of everything I want to ask or want feedback on and know that by the end of the meeting I will have it all sorted! Definitely the way forward IMO! Best, KB

Yeah-I think I'm gonna be in the same boat. My PhD consists of both quant and qual studies, but to be honest, I have yet to see a single post-doc advertised that would seriously interest me, and I had the same issue when I was looking for PhDs. I don't know whether I'm just seriously fussy, but I just can't see anything on a topic that really interests me, so I am going down the route of coming up with my own research study and trying to get it funded with the help of my supervisor, who is keen to keep me on fortunately. This was how I did it for my PhD and I am really enjoying the topic, so at least this way I can hopefully get to design a project that will build on my PhD work and that I will enjoy. If it gets funded...the big if! Best, KB

Hey! Yeah, this is a tricky one. It's one of those circular type things where you kind of already need the experience to get the experience if you see what I mean. I don't have any of that sort of experience although I am currently applying for a small research grant to help cover some of my research costs that the PhD funding doesn't cover. My supervisor said that would look good on my CV if I got it, but this doesn't really compare to winning large grants for whole projects. I don't think research assistant work would really cover this- there are a lot of RAs in our department (Psychology) but they don't seem be involved with grant applications and so on. Could you think about collaborating on a post-doc project and applying for funding as a co-applicant with a more established researcher? This way you could get a position that's tailor-made for you and get experience of writing grant applications... KB