My, I do sympathise. This would drive me nuts.

I would recommend you stalk the module leaders. Not be e-mail, but in person (surely they must have offices/perhaps office hours even? So they cannot escape, they have to BE there at the time...). After all, THEY are failing to do their jobs and THEY are letting you and the students down...

Good luck in any case ;-)

Hi,

I'm another EU country too, did my MA in England and am now doing my PhD in England.

I've got bad news for you though - you cannot get a student loan in the UK. They are not given to postgraduates. Your best bet would be to borrow in Poland, as banks in England will generally not lend money to a newcomer... especially not in the current economic context, and especially not in a place like Cambridge by the way - too many foreign students leave the town after a year with debts of some kind and disappear abroad forever, so it's not even straightforward to open a bank account there.

What I would do if I were you is I would self-fund for the MA and, during the course, whilst in England, look for funded PhD opportunities - it'd be easier to find something if you are actually there, and easier to get funding if you have the MA from an English University. That's what I did, and it worked out fine. Also having the MA was proof of my level of English and really helped me in for the PhD.

There are a few schemes to help with financing the MA, but really you are unlikely to get them - they are scarce, and I think you have to be in the UK a while in advance in order to even apply. You might want to check with the relevant services in your chosen University. In any case there is nothing wrong with, say, e-mailing the student financial / support services of the universities you want to go to, tell them you are a prospective student, and ask them for further details about this.

Well, I suppose it depends a lot on the supervisors. I can imagine some get enthusiastic about pretty much anything. For instance this was the case of my MA supervisor, and I really hope (for her sanity and theirs) that she does not accept to supervise PhD students as easily as she accepts MA students! When I was at university France it was common for lecturers to turn down some topics for supervision, but always on the grounds that they could not offer adequate supervision - although when you started to chat with them at the cafe they'd sometimes end up confessing they simply didn't like the idea of working with specific students for three years. But it's true I've never seen or heard of this in the UK.

That being said I know why my supervisor, here in the UK, is supervising me. To begin with, I tracked him down. I had two potential supervisors for my topic, really, and one is pre-retiring, so I focused on the other. I know he liked the fact that I did my research on that aspect of things too (at the same time recognizing he's one of the few experts in his field), my determination, and my absolute love for my research area (which obviously happens to be his too). He quizzed me a lot during our first meeting. When I said I didn't want to do a PhD as a career move, but that I saw it as a space to explore my topic, I knew I was in from the look on his face. Then it also turns out that with me as a student in his department, there is now scope for a new research group of some kind for next year probably - he'd been wanting to set that up for a while but they really needed at least one PhD student on board, and here I am. Sometimes it feels a bit like there was a chair waiting for me in his office before we even met and, when I finally turned up, the welcome message was 'where had you been? Go on, get working now!'...
All in all I think it happened this way because our research object is very limited and not quite popular in academia to be honest - this means it's easy to produce original work, but also that no one will pay attention to it unless they are of the handful of researchers who already write on the same topic. From this point on, it's really easy to be enthusiastic (that's valid for him and for me) about working with somebody who shares a passion for the same topic...

Hi Cobweb,

I am in the same field as you. I have had to submit a year-plan already, and I am now working on the detailed plan of my first chapter - I need about 15 pages written down within a month, pretty much. Given it is a lit review in my case, taking me to very unfamiliar grounds, and that I want to make a good first(ish) impression, I'm losing it already :$

Hi :)

I have just begun my PhD but have tons of experience in teaching (sadly :p) and even performing (like, playing gigs in front of a few hundreds...). The two experiences are very similar, and the main common point they have is this: you get used to it.

Some people are naturally good at it. I suspect your sup' might be one of those lucky few, but don't feel pathetic about her seeing you like this. I personally think you should not be asked to teach such a large group AND be observed for the first time. What they'd do in, say, an Education department is they would let you co-teach for the first time (with a fellow student generally) or they'd let you be on your own to begin with if you prefer. I usually asked to be on my own at first. I figured that when I was, I felt so responsible that I completely forgot about the stress (and the fear to get killed... but I taught secondary, and in fairly rough neighbourhoods...). It took me much longer to control the stress when observed, especially by staff I liked, so I'm anticipating I'll hate presenting at conferences :$

Think that you've done it now, though it was not easy. You should feel proud and congratulate yourself for going ahead and doing it - you've done the hardest ;-)

Hi PhD Soup,

Just wanted to say, I agree with what the others say below.

As far as I'm concerned I am fairly sure I will stick to the PhD until the end, but that's because I have had the experience of dropping off a course before and have learnt from it.

I stopped a PGCE - which I would have had - in April a few years ago. There were only two months left but I had been considering quitting for a while, and since then I've thought it's one the best decision I have ever made in my life, although extremely painful and difficult at the time. I suppose you need to weigh it all up in your head - is your course worth so much frustration/stress/unhappiness?

The opinion of others does not matter, the experience is yours. Only thing I can say is this: when I was considering quitting my course, everybody was trying to talk me into staying. Then I did quit as I felt my sanity was at stake. As soon as I'd quit I got... congratulations. Yep. Most of my friends and teachers found I'd been really brave to find the courage to quit (it's not easy!), and above all they found I immediately looked much happier and healthier after quitting. That is, even if I actually had not choice but to go work on a building site after this and they found I was completely out of place :p

I guess what I'm saying is, forget about what the others think. They'll always influence you, one way or another, and stir you away from your own feelings and convictions.

Good luck :)

Oooch, that does not sound easy.

I've never had to do a systematic review, but I've had to do similar things - though not for publication. I sympathize, really. What's always worked for me is to get sheets of A3 paper stuck to my wall, and draw plans. Like, for you I would list the 11 questionnaires, and under each one just a few lines (key words really) listing the concepts introduced, the population concerned, the results found and any problems arising. Hopefully, it would help make the whole thing clear as far as the progression of your argument goes (-it's easier to see what makes sense when you can see the whole picture in one glance), and perhaps avoid repeating things (e.g. you might realise it would save a lot of words if you introduced concept 3 before concept 2 and so on).

But then again I don't know if it would help at all for you, it depends a lot on your exact formal requirements, and obviously on the nature of your research.

Good luck in any case ;-)

I'm not doing anything remotely scientific, actually it's closer to Literature... so I don't know if it compares, but at the moment the best I can do is 40 to 50 pages of close-reading per day. It's not as much as it sounds because some passages are not at all relevant for my thesis so I only make very basic notes for these, but still, I actually think it's a LOT. It drains all the energy out of me, and by the evening my eyes feel like they're burning. I think I'll need glasses before I know it. I'm just forcing myself a bit because I want to be done by Christmas with a pile of books I have to read first - they're all between 400 and 700 pages :p

Hey Sneaks,

To me this sounds totally positivist, I fail to see how a gay second coder would make it constructivist per se.

I'm not sure I fully understand what your approach is but I'd present it as positivist to begin with. Then, the problem with that is it is hardly sufficient in itself in social studies, first because the minute you start to interprete your results you normally get away from positivism (you're only human after all), and second because Social Sciences tend to disregard "pure" positivism.

What kind of use do you make with the data you've collected?

ONE book I would recommend as an introduction is "Dictionary of Critical Theory" by David Macey (Penguin). It is simplistic so don't buy it. Plan on spending an afternoon at Borders and read from there (that's what I do!). Check the entries, and some from the undergrad literature around it. There are lots of very simple, very short dictionaries of critical theory and research methods for undergrads anyaway. then just jot down a few approaches you feel may be yours and investigate these further, just to make sure you are right.

Hope that helps a bit :$

Up :-)

I have a more "formal" question about that one.

I have one due Wednesday morning. I've already done most of my homework, and I have most of it written down too, but so far I've followed examples found on the web that are presented in books order. My concern is, I am finding this very redundant, especially as I am to include mine in a year-plan of some kind, and some texts will be useful all year long for different points I have to make. Do you think I can rearrange it point by point instead?

I mean I would go from something like this:
"Text 1: This text blabla informs points 1, 3 and 6....
Text 2: this text ... informs points 2, 3 and 4..."
and so on.

To something like this:
"Point A: I will use texts 1, 2, 3 because...
Point B: I will use texts 2, 4, 5 ..."

It's a bit irrelevant because I'm confident you will be exempt, but also, anyway, I remember now as it happened to me a few years ago: you are exempt from Council tax if unemployed, and I am positive they cut down the monthly amount if you are on a very low income...

Hi there,

You are in the UK, right?

Well, for all I know as long as you are a registered student you are exempt from Council Tax. So if you are still registered with your University (no matter if you get funding) and are a full-time student, you do not have to pay it. All they ask for is proof of (re-)registration for the year, and then you are systematically exempt.

As far as the part-time job is concerned, I'm not a 100% sure, but I suppose there is some kind of limit to what you can earn as a student and still be exempt. But I'm fairly sure you won't earn enough to justify paying it.

If in doubt you should ask your local council, really.

Hope that reassures you a bit :-)

I personally feel any work I do is trivial once I'm pretty much finished. I suppose it is, in part, that the quality of the work never does justice to the time you've spent on it - in your own eyes, that is. The feeling might also come from the fact that you are know your work too well. If you discovered it for the first time, perhaps your impressions would be very different ;-)