I have found the isolation very tough and I think you have to be very motivated or not very sociable - preferably both maybe - to get through that. Perhaps you should talk to your careers advice service and see if there are other options that really interest you. That might help you decide.

Myostatin - I'm a refugee from molecular biology and lived with a friend while he was diong his PhD in that field. Actually it is a little odd not to have 24 hour access to the lab and people did go in at crazy hours just to keep things going, feed cells etc. There must be some security issues that have made them restrict access. Usually dept staff and postgrads have their own key to come and go as they need to. Have you asked your supervisor about this?

I met my supervisor 2-3 times/year until the last 6 months when we met about every 6 weeks. I did get angry about the lack of involvement.

Ah but I've had promises before, you know. I'll believe it when I see it.....

I kept one (pretty big...) endnote library and put in a hard copy file code under one of the bits that's not used - I used 'Label' to put the codes and 'alternate journal' sometimes to tag articles I wanted to pull out as a collection. My codes were letters (one or two) for subjects then numbers for plastic wallets. I found that no matter how you organise it - it will be an imperfect system with cross-references all over the place and once you have a code in place you have to stick with it or change the whole lot. It doesn't matter what kind of crazy code you have though as long as it works for you.

I don't think they do though - I think some of them do struggle to cover their costs. I used to be a publisher - and I know how hard it is for most academic books and journals to support themselves financially.

Update - sup has said he will pay if necessary :-x

Guess I won't delete his name just yet then;-)

Some journals, e.g. PNAS, have a cost for submision and publishing. Those of you that have dealt with this - who paid - was it you are your dept? I'm sure I will be expected to pay but it just further infuriates me as my sup will go on as a co-author who has done absolutely nothing and I think that the very least he could do is pay the costs (about 470 dollars in this case).

I have to say I didn't find the drop in status that hard at all. I almost never referred to my previous professional experience - I automatically assumed that it would be seen as irrelavant (although in fact it did come in useful). There were occaisions where I did not care for the tone of voice addressing me - makes you realise how young people are automatically patronised and talked to disrespectfully. But it was not a big issue at all.

The lack of MONEY has been a major issue though and I feel it most keenly now I have just submitted as I'm very unsure about getting a job now, especially as I am unable to move due to my husband's job and daughter starting school.

She's dead wrong about team leaders writing the papers. In my experience, the grunt who did the work writes the papers and everyone else just adds their name. This is way too controlling.

It's usually the funding body that is strictest about deadlines so I don't see where the pressure is coming from exactly - is it something to do with postdoc funding? Otherwise there's just no reason for hime to push you like this. You are in an area similar to mine from the sound of it. That certainly is going to be a very hefty analysis. I'm submitting on Wed (got the bound copies) and that will be at 3.5 years. In order to do that I decided not to do the SEM analysis (no-one in my dept actually knows how to do it so if you have help you will probably be OK but I had some sofware gremlins that I could see stretching on and on) and apart from a review published early on I've left all the paper writing until submission. And I only have one child :p

In theory, I have coded magazine racks for wallets of papers and the codes are also entered into my endnote library. In reality, many of my papers are in the racks or endnote but note both, and then there's the pile that are not entered into either yet. I have had a few problems finding stuff and have got a few papers twice but it sort of works. I like racks and boxes - it's quicker than proper filing which I would just never keep up with.

I think it is irresponsible of your supervisor to expect you to submit in less than 3 years. The average here is between 3 and 4 years and 4 years is becoming the normal expectation. Have his other students finished in 2.5 years?

I had my thesis bound yesterday to submit next Wed so I'm not going to do any work over the holiday. We'll take our 3 year-old to some kiddy-paradise park if it stops raining on Sunday. Visit friends tomorrow. Gardening. Then it's back to business - writing papers, looking for jobs, preparing for the viva....

I imagine it's the same system we have here. Every student has a login to a self-service account that deals with all kinds of admin. I expect they will send you your login id and password later and then you can go to the webiste and login to see how your application is going.