I mean just after you hand in parts of literature review or even a short report or anything you have written. Are they critical, do they ever tell you it's not that good, or are they sort of polite like "Ummm it's good" etc

I flirt with mine all the time. I highly recommend it!

Oh at Christmas party dinner all they talked about was their high level research topics and grants. I think that their most social topic was about recent study on dangers of alcohol where they argued about sample size of the study and if the participants were randomly sampled. I mean come on!

I was hanging out with admin stuff most of the night and was afraid that they are all going to say "that's where she belongs, and not in academia".

I have also noticed that the more years a person spends in acedemia, the less "normal" they are (there are few exceptions of course).

This is freaking me out. I am pretty new in acedemic world, and I have naively felt that sudents are very protected. I have also almost complained for some minor mistreatment that I have encountered so far. I'm so glad I kept quiet. I'm also already feeling that academia is almost like an alternate universe, I'm stunned to hear some of the stuff that goes on, it's really really brutal.

True, lots of variables there.... I'm just thinking supervisors own work as in publications, grants, fellowships etc would I guess be higher priority for their future success than supervising a PhD student through to the completion. I don't know. There are just so many sups that couldn't care less...

I have often questioned this. My impression is that it would look pretty bad if the sup is early in their career. But then again I see youngish supervisors put no effort in their supervision therefore increasing chances of no completion.

Hi guys,

I have had this problem since the start of my PhD 1.5 years ago. I just find that I feel really uncomfortable and can't normally chat to other academics at say conferences and christmas parties.

Often they discuss grants and philosophical questions about our area of research. It's not that I don't understand what they are talking about, it's more that I feel like they know so much more, I have nothing useful to add.

I'm wondering if this is the sign that I'm just not smart enough or cut out for acedemia. I generally tend to hang out with other PhD students and postdocs or research assistants or admin staff(if I have a choice).

Does anyone else feel the same?? :(

==Another time my supervisor took over my questions

This is what happened to me. My sup took over questions (which was fair enough because I was completly silent), I just stood there and then when easy questions that I could have answered were asked my sup just kept answering. I actually started talking louder over her so that I get a chance to at least answer something. But it didn't look good. Afterwards people came up to talk to my sup and largely ignored me

As for bringing up the talk I would say my sup and I have a relationship that's bordering on friendship, she tends to be too nice when critising my work though and I hate that. I will see, she might bring it up herself. To be honest I'm suprised she didn't call me at all afterwards as that's the sort of thing she does. Makes me think that I was so crap she just doesn't want anything to do with me anymore. I guess I will see next week.

Cont.

What I was thinking of saying to my sup at the next meeting is something like that I wasn't happy with how talk went, I have expected better and that I want to ask how important it is for me to know answers to questions that guy was asking if they pop up in the future. (as some people have told me afterwards that his Q's were irrelevant and I shouldn't bother). They were certanly in a broader area to what I was concentrating on.

In the perfect world, I would want to share my dissapointment with sup on how things went openly and honestly, and plan how we can avoid same thing happening in the future. However, of course, perfect world does not exist.

Badhaircut you are right in some ways.

I'm generally a negative person. Glass is half empty, expecting the worst etc. I'm not looking for praise from my sup. because I KNOW the talk didn't go well. Any praise wouldn't be genuine. there is no validition when things are shit, they are just shit.

My sup has always told me that I'm a great student (before the talk). This not going well must have been a big dissapointment for her too. To be honest I'm really afraid that they are all laughing about how crap I was behind my back. hopefully, just paranoia.

Everybody here has helped me a lot. I was on the verge of writing 2am email to my sup last night when I got home drunk, but this forum held me back.

Sorry to start a new thread, I'm not able to sleep, still thinking about bad talk I did recently and need a bit of advice.

After the talk, I only briefly saw my supervisor and she said that it was fine, few seocnds afterwards that it was good, really good, but knowing her, by the tone of voice I know that she was just being nice. I was dragged around by other people and didn't really get a chance to talk to her properly . But that's all beside the point.

I didn't talk to her since, I'm meeting her next week and don't want to call before that and be annoying. Should I bring up the talk in the next meeting?

She will most likely just press on with more work, but the talk is really bothering me. I want to get past her being polite and get some true feedback and pointers. I mean I really wasn't able to answer any questions and it's not all in my head.

I'm just wondering what is the diffence between the three as English is my second language. If someone is talking about your work and said "that was fine" or "that went well" or "that was good" which is the best? Or is there no difference at all?

I'm also somewhat annoyed at my supervisor because we were preparing anticipated questions. She assured me that we have covered everything, I'm going to do great etc. We have actually spent hours doing this.

It turned out she didn't really anticipate 90% of the questions asked.

Hell, torture, overwork, stress, left me with addiction to sleeping tablets, never would have imagined it's going to be this hard, also feelings of wortlesness and low confidence.

Having said all that, someting makes me keep going. I have been on the verge of quiting number of times and at some point I might actually do it. Not yet though.

Thanks guys, this all made me feel a lot better.

Yes that guy was a veteran, in fact has 40 years experience in this field. Few people that were there told me afterwards that they thought his questions were largely irrelevant to what I was presenting. However, I still think that they were relelvant enough and definetly want to be able to answer those types of questions in the future.

Even if I can't discuss them in detail that my supervisor did, I can still give answers that are adequate enough.