I have a good friend with 2 degrees and 2 PhDs - both very good but in different fields. It does happen (although I couldn't face it, personally).

This has been my situation too (and now I'm in my final year). It is very frustrating as it is difficulat to feel confident about one's ability to plan everything at this stage - afterall - that's why this is a PhD surely and not a post-doc.

Looking back, I put up with too much of this for too long. I did request meetings that either were never scheduled or cancelled. My supervisor doesn't really have the expertise in my area to have much input- could that be the case with yours?

I would email with suggested times for a meeting (ie please pick one) and go with a very clear agenda of questions phrased to elicit clear answers. If he can't answer, he should suggest people in the field you could consult (and perhaps email them himself to be sure they make time for you). Other than that, we have just have to carry on using our best judgement.

Agree with Olivia - It's always worth amending and resubmitting elsewhere if you think you have a decent paper. Also - I have been told of some incredibly rude anonymous comments on papers - and papers by very well-respected academics. It happens to the best of people although it is surely very unprofessional

But if you conitnue in academia (and many other professions) it will always be like this - maybe even worse (judging from some of my colleagues). So we may as well get to grips with the time-management now, or else never have a relationship or family (which I see some people opt for in the end).

It is always hard to be efficient with your time when you are completely responsible for organising your work time. Some partner-time has to be protected, but some evenings and weekends will inevitably, for most of us, become work-time. I am married and my husband is very understanding - he also brings work home. My big headache is organising time around my 2 yr-old. You cannot negotiate with a toddler and plead for time to work - you have to be absolutely ruthless with your own schedule and really work during the time available and try not to faff about. I also can't work really late - past about 11.30, as she sometimes gets up in the night and always gets up early in the morning and it's just too exhausting.

Well you do have plenty of time if you are just in your first of 3 years. The plan you've outlined will probably fill all that time up (with a few unforseen scenic detours)- but that's OK.

How many kids do you have and how old are they? My supervisor is pretty positive about my having a baby (had her at the end of my second year and took 2 years out). Just went to see Santa today. I feel very out of sync now with everyone in my dept. My former buddies have all moved on and I can no longer end a long day with a trip to the pub so I'm not really getting to know many people. I miss having a little play time that does not involve jigsaw puzzles or stuffed animals.

I've been doing the analysis for 6 weeks already and haven't even started with SEM yet! Adding more data will mean redoing a lot of it. I also need to update my lit review from a year ago and expand it into a newish area.

I also have a 2 yr-old daughter and only 3 days/week childcare which I think my supervisor has finally registered. He's extremely hands-off.

My MPhil was on a completely different topic. Does yours count as your first year (mine doesn't - not sure how smart a move that was!)- so have you just got 2 years to go? If you were finishing Oct 2009 seems to me you'd be doing well if you were doing the analysis by Oct-Nov 2008.

Yes - we're going to be pretty busy over Xmas! Jill

We have a very similar plan it seems. I had hoped to have finished data collection but alas I have reluctantly agreed to one more round of ads/recruitment in Jan - which destroys my hope of submitting next Oct - but I'm still aiming for end 2008.

Don't agree to impossible deadlines now - it will cause so much stress. Testing 300 participants for 1.5 hours is going to take longer than 4 months surely - you can't force peaple into a tight enough schedule (and people cancel and generally mess you about etc). And you can't do the analysis until the dataset is completed. And learning SEM is not an overnight job (really recomend you find irl guidance for that - the basic idea is straightforward enough it's the details of getting the models to 'work' that needs expertise).

I think that's quite an ambitious schedule - to do all that testing, the lit review AND the analysis by April (that's just 4 months - am I right?). I would have thought you'd be doing well to do the testing (and that's a lot of testing - it will only be possible with very tight scheduling) and some of the lit review. If you are following on from an MSc project don't you upgrade automatically (my supervisor actually forgot to do mine) - or are you registered for the MSc now and planning to upgrade?

Hi - I'm planning to use this also. I have the following books: Structural Equation Modeling with AMOS (Bryne); Latent variable models (Loehlin);Structural equation modeling (Pugesek et al). I'm planning to use AMOS which adds on to SPSS. It might be worth choosing books orientated to your field, as I did (biology, psychology).

Other than that I have contacted other depts to find any possible training and I'm hoping to get some training in another dept next term. Jill