I am a woman of 40(ish) who will finish my PhD in two years and I am feeling positive about my future career. I do not have an academic career previously but hope my life experience and career as a journalist will stand me in good stead. I am trying to get as much experience now in teaching undergraduates, courses for the public and possible open university work in order to get a good job afterwards. But I do not think age is a major barrier. I have worked in the real world for about 12 years but when I have finished my PhD I will still have more than 20 years till I retire. With your experience pre-PhD I do not think you have anything to worry about at all. Most of the people I know doing PhDs are in their 30s or 40s.

I'm a second year PhD.

Thanks for the advice. I think having cake while marking is particularly good advice. I was intending to mark all those on the same question together but the suggestion of alternating is good.

I have a big pile of essays to mark and wondered if anyone had any advice. As I have posted previously, I am teaching a subject which is new to me so I'm worried that I won't know whether an essay is good or not because I'm not an expert on the topic. Some of the essays are on areas which have not been touched on in the seminars I run so I know even less about it. Obviously I can see where the grammar, spelling, sentence structure, referencing and arguments fall down. But if someone made a completely false statement about something I might not even realise!

PCGeek, thanks I like your attitude!

Thanks for all your replies. She is my ex-supervisor because she was standing in while my proper supervisor was on sabbatical. She does not have any postgrad qualifications but is an expert in her field so I detect maybe a hint of jealousy or something. I suppose I don't need to worry about her so much now. But I am just annoyed that any problems I am having now are due to her lack of supervision. It seems that she wants to embarrass me into looking as if I don't know what I am talking about by having not told me things at previous meetings and also saying my lit review was fine then delighting in criticising it and my lack of knowledge in some areas in front of other people. Oh well I wont have to have dealings with her until my next panel in August and my main supervisor is so much better so I will concentrate on working with her.

I do not expect to be spoonfed, in fact I did my degree with the Open University while working full time and my masters mostly by directed reading so I have been working independently for most of my academic career so far. What does anyone else think of her attitude or is this normal.

I just wanted to vent my feelings about my ex-supervisor but still a review panel member. I had to present a revised lit review but she continues to criticise and be so negative. She just picks on particular authors/articles that I have not included and keeps saying I should put more journal articles in. I have spent ages looking through all the relevant journals and have highlighted all the articles I think are useful for my research. So I don't know which other ones she is referring to. So I asked her and said I would appreciate it if she could point me in the direction of some of these authors she had mentioned and their work. She is obviously an expert in her field and may know more than me at this stage so I think asking her for help is justified. However she said I was not an undergraduate and she would not spoonfeed me! I thought that was particularly unhelpful and the way she said it was actually quite nasty.

LostinOz, we seem to have things in common. I am coming to the conclusion that doing a PhD is much harder than I ever imagined and I don't know if I can or want to carry on. I am so tired all the time and whatever I do is not good enough. But I'm beginning to wonder whether the fact that I feel I am behind is due to my previous supervisor not helping me enough during my first year so it is only now that I am having to work so hard to catch up. I know I should not blame others but we discussed poor supervisors in a previous thread and I do think that is something to do with it. What annoys me now is she sits on my panel and criticises me and is so negative. Today she complained that I hadn't included certain authors in my lit review. She is an expert on this particular area so I said I would appreciate it if she would point me in the right direction for their work. But she said I was not an undergraduate and so I should find out myself.

It's no criticism of her personally but I found it very reassuring that the concerns were there as if I fail the interim panel next week, I think I may make a complaint about the supervisor (other people I have spoken to have suggested I would be within my rights to do this). Having the back-up of an AHRC report would definitely strengthen my case.
Sorry for going on so much but LostInOz, I think there are times when you can criticise your supervisor for not guiding you. Obviously you need to work independently but if the supervisor can take no blame for anything, then what is the point of having one, if anything they say should not be relied upon.

Then at my 1st year panel, my work was ripped to pieces by her and the other two members. I've had to completely re-write it but now with my proper supervisor back in place which has made me see even more how useless the first one was. But as with you, you do trust what your supervisor says on certain things and for feedback on work what else are you supposed to do. That aside, the fact she said one thing to me privately and then the complete opposite at the panel was extremely annoying. If I'd known what I was doing wasn't right then I would have changed my perspective earlier, saving me lots of time.
The most interesting thing though is that because I am part of a wider project we get AHRC feedback on reports sent to them, and the AHRC have actually expressed concern that I have been getting proper supervision and training because I have had a replacement supervisor.

Hi LostinOz, I have had a similar experience with a supervisor so I slightly disagree with some of the comments on this aspect of your concerns. She had never supervised before and was brought in to replace my main supervisor who was on sabbatical. I worked very independently because she didn't really know what I had to do - she didn't even realise I had to do a literature review. I had to show her stuff I had done for my MA to explain. Anyway, I sent her drafts of the review and we had a couple of meetings where she said I was on the right track. She didn't make any major criticisms though. As my supervisor, who has published a lot herself, I accepted this feedback.

Wow, I actually managed to write my paper at 6am this morning. I had already put the powerpoint slides together last night. I was presenting at 9.30am and I was there and ready. People asked loads of questions and spoke to me afterwards saying it was interesting and it was an interdisciplinary conference so even people who knew nothing about my subject were interested. I am so proud of myself for managing to get everything done in time and to a reasonable standard. I feel that I can take on anything now but think I am going to relax this evening with a glass of wine.

I'm putting the slides together and then hope that they will jog my memory on what I want to say about each as I don't think I have the time or the energy to write out everything I want to say. I'm hoping that my presentation will come across better if I'm not actually reading everything from a script.

I've got a conference paper to give tomorrow and because of other work I had to finish I am only just starting it now. I feel like I could just cry and am so tired yet know I have to at least attempt to do something. It all seems so overwhelming.