I'm really glad it helped. All the best with your research :)

Ps. I think a secondary supervisor might be *especially* important given that you are the main one's first PhD student.

Hi there

Four months in is pretty early and a lot of people feel quite lost during the first year (and beyond), so don't worry too much! The upcoming "attestation" (sounds scary! I think we called it progress report at my uni) is a great opportunity for you to get together with your supervisor and explain the situation. It might be that you can't see any gaps through looking too hard (wood for trees kind of thing). Either way, a good conversation should stimulate some thought. You could maybe share what you've learnt from the literature and then brainstorm together about some possible directions & hammer out some broad research questions (for you to then go away and further refine). This is what I think would be a good plan at this stage anyway.

Not sure if it helps to share this, but for my "progress report" I didn't have any data - just a short lit review and research questions followed by an outline of my planned studies (methods). I also had a timetable to outline what stage I was at (I was at the start of submitting ethics stage I think) and the anticipated dates for major milestones such as recruit participants, analyse data, write paper 1, etc. Actually, I didn't carry out any of the planned studies except for the first one. But it is helpful to have something on paper and some ideas you could pursue.

Getting a secondary supervisor is definitely a good idea if possible. It is super useful to get more than one person reviewing your drafts etc later down the line. And you might find them more helpful/supportive than the main one. Most universities encourage it I think. Is there someone in the department who you get along with well and whose research you like? Or someone in a related department or at a different uni? If you come up with some potential secondary supervisors, you could chat about this with your main supervisor and hopefully go from there.

Hope some of this helps. No negative vibes felt! :)

You are no longer registered as a full-time student. Therefore if you meet the UC criteria (not having x amount of savings etc etc and agreeing to seek for a jobs for 35 hours a week and demonstrate this - in normal circumstances anyway) then you would be eligible to receive UC.

You could try creating the template of your thesis on Google docs and see if it does everything you need it to? I had issues getting my page numbers to display on landscape pages in my masters thesis, and that was with Word. So I think I'd be inclined to stick with Word, just in case Google docs couldn't do things I needed it to in those final days (or hours in my case) before printing the thesis.

Hi there

This is a design flaw / something to consider that could affect your results. But it is not something that by itself is likely to affect the outcome of a viva.

By the way, did you counterbalance the order in which participants were exposed to the two conditions? That is, did half of them see Interface B first, and the other half see Interface A first? If so, that would remove any effect of having the survey directly after the second condition. But if you didn't counterbalance, again, it is just a limitation that probably should be commented on in the Discussion.

Personally, I would be ready with a clear answer that shows you have thought about it (eg. I didn't counterbalance the conditions but should have, as blah... ). But I wouldn't raise it unless they ask you directly about it.

I hope this helps. Have a good viva :-)

Hi Simm

It's really hard to answer on the basis of the science without knowing what it's really about etc. But I don't think most supervisors would lead someone along to thinking the gap they were addressing was significant enough when it wasn't. They want you to pass the PhD and it is their role to guide you through it. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you - just focus on doing the research. It sounds like you are collecting a good amount of data. It all sounds appropriate.

I remember having similar thoughts about my thesis too actually. What I found really helpful was to look at other theses in my area and see what they were like. Once I found some that seemed comparable to mine in terms of contribution, it put me at greater ease.

Finally, I can recommend a paper called: it's a PhD not a nobel prize. It should come up if you Google. It's awesome and again eased my worries a lot when I was writing my thesis (incidentally mine was based on 3 papers too - although they were not all published by the time of my viva).

Happy to try and answer, but not really clear on what you mean. Could you elaborate more?

I haven't done this before as my PhD was at the same uni as my undergrad. But I would think that a few lines would be enough - about yourself (eg where you did your undergrad or masters and what the research topic was) and how you are interested in the work their group does - and that you would like to do a PhD there. They can then ask for more information such as CV if they are interested. This is just what I would do - I don't think there is a set etiquette. I'd be keen to hear how you get along.

Hi bluerose

I've started this, but what if I am not working for a company per se? And also I feel that my answers about how obedient I expect people to be to government rules etc in the current climate might not reflect what my answers would normally be (eg. 3 or 4 weeks ago). Should we be answering about how we feel right NOW?

I guess the OP means underrated as in a good uni that isn't necessarily ranked highly. I wouldn't know the answer to the question though. I guess it might be worth thinking about what is stopping you from getting accepted where you want to be accepted. Have you tried?

Yes, it's normal for some types of funding for sure. You have to state your funding if its from one of the research councils, for example. It just needs to be a brief line, saying something like "this research (or Joe Bloggs) was supported by a small grant from Name of Organisation (reference no. of grant if there is one)."

The only scenario where I can see this being an issue would be if you had received lots of small pieces of funding from various places, as it might seem a bit bitty listing them all. I've seen two or three listed before but not dozens.

Hope this helps.

Yes, this is possible. A friend of mine did something similar. She made sure she guaranteed funding / had secured the new PhD opportunity before actually quitting the old one. If she hadn't made certain she had the new opportunity, I don't think she'd have left the old one. I believe she did this by managing to be quite open and having a conversation with the new potential supervisor about the situation, and discussing her interest in doing a project with them. She may have even identified funding options in advance, or she may have asked them about funding. Basically, she got them on board and the rest went smoothly. Let me know if you want me to ask her anything.

I think only you can know whether it is something you want to keep at. Getting your first postdoc at an Ivy League doesn't sound like a bad start - you obviously had what it takes to get that grant, which says a lot. Have you considered that you might be experiencing imposter syndrome?

If this is largely a self-doubt issue, then maybe you need to persist and in the meantime find ways to build confidence - it'll come through small (and big) successes - such as passing your viva, getting a paper published here or there... (at least that is how it works for me). You can also look up strategies and ways to help build your self confidence.

If however you are deeply concerned about the precariousness of a potential academic career / trying to become established as an academic, you might need to weigh things up. If job security for family reasons etc is high on your list of priorities, then you might decide that you don't want to continue on an uncertain path (let's face it, it is for most of us) any longer and you'd rather try and get a permanent job... or perhaps you could set a certain time-frame - say 5 years - and then reassess / call it quits if you haven't met certain goals. You never know - a permanent teaching role could come up during that time, presenting another option.