Hi politics_student,

Sorry to hear things aren't going very well! I can sympathise because my research hasn't been going well for the past few months and my supervisor has a very critical and blunt attitude. Even when things started to turn around recently, he still picks holes in everything and didn't even acknowledge that some progress had finally been made.

When I have a meeting that goes badly, I find that taking a bit of a break to get some perspective helps (even if it's just half an hour to go for a walk or an hour to have lunch) and that might help with your concentration problem. Then when I come back I make a list of everything that needs to be done to move forward. Have you spoken to your supervisor directly and asked if s/he thinks that you're behind? It might not be as bad as you think, and even if you are a bit behind there are always ways to catch up and get back on track. If your supervisor isn't very approachable, maybe there's someone else you can ask for advice? I always feel worse when I feel like I'm not making progress, so maybe the best thing to do is take a short break to help you concentrate, and then speak to your supervisor or someone else that can give advice on the best way to move forward.

Hope things start to improve soon, and feel free to PM if you want to talk! :) Tulip

Hi all,

Thank you so much for the comforting replies, it made me feel a bit better just knowing that I'm not making a mountain out of a molehill and that this behaviour is indeed wrong. I've tried a few different things over the past few weeks, such as being friendly towards this person and making more of an effort to join in with general chit-chat in the office, although this hasn't really improved things and her behaviour is still the same towards me. I notice she will only be pleasant when she wants help with something, but the rest of the time goes back to blanking or ignoring me. The knock-on effect of this means that the postdocs in the lab also have little time for me as they are all friends outside of work.

Anyway, based on your advice newtophd, I've started trying to make more of an effort with a couple of the other students (without mentioning any of this to anyone, partly to be professional and partly because I don't want the hassle!) but I'm not hopeful that things will improve much. I did consider walking away from the PhD but I think I'm too stubborn to be pushed out by other people. CR1980 your comment about hell being other people made me laugh, being in academia is definitely making me agree with you there!

Wowzers, bewildered and pjlu - thank you for the really good advice, I'll definitely keep my eyes on the important stuff and go to seminars etc. although if I'm honest the last thing I want now is an academic job at the end of this. I'll happily walk away with my PhD (if I can stick at it) and work elsewhere afterwards. Fortunately I have less than a year and a half left so hopefully I can grit my teeth and find the motivation to just keep going. Bullying or not, I don't want to be seen as a troublemaker so I'll just keep going...

Thanks!

Hi All,

My situation is this - I get on fine with the people in my department but I've never really 'clicked' with the other PhD students for some reason (I guess partly because they like to go clubbing and I'm a bit more settled, I live with my boyfriend and like to chill out at weekends, etc.) However, in the last few months I've noticed one of the other PhD students has taken a real dislike to me, to the point where she glares at me if I speak to her, gives one word answers or simply a grunt infront of other people and outright blanks me when no one else is around. As a result it's made me even more isolated from the rest of the department than I was before, as she tends to be the one organising coffee breaks (and endless cake breaks!), drinks after work etc, to which I never get invited along to anymore. On good days I just tend to ignore her where possible and email her about work related stuff when necessary, but on days where I feel a bit rubbish it bothers me more. I have days where I just think what's the point of going into work when I'm not really part of the department (even though I'm there everyday as I do a lab based PhD).

Anyway, I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm feeling sorry for myself, I'm really not but I thought other people might have had problems with colleagues and have found a way of dealing with it. I've seen a lot of posts on here about problematic supervisors, but perhaps someone has experience of problematic (and sometimes downright rude) PhD students/colleagues?

Thanks in advance! X

Sorry about the negative thread! Just needed a place to vent really...

I'm nearly halfway into my PhD with no real data and my supervisor is hounding me to get a batch of experiments for my first chapter done in a couple of months - this would be fine if it wasn't for him expecting amazing results. My pilot data looked relatively promising, however anything I've done since that point now doesn't look like positive data. I'm really stressing because there are a couple of people in the department that are hoping this data will be amazing as well and they're all hoping for a publication soon. For this reason, whenever I've tried to mention that the newest data looks very different, I've basically been told to 'go away and fix it' by my supervisor, without any suggestions for how to do so. What also isn't helping is the short timeframe for this all to be finished by - as it is I've mapped out what I need to do and it involves working evenings and weekends up to the deadline, which I don't mind doing by any means, but my concern is that when I present the new data that my supervisor will want it all redoing, which will mean I definitely won't make the deadline they've got.

In addition, I'm also very aware of reaching the halfway point of the PhD soon with very little reading and virtually no writing having been done because I was thrown into these experiments from day 1 of the project. I just feel very behind and massively let down by my department because this batch of experiments was never supposed to drag on this long, but due to experimental/technical issues, problems with the technicians in the department and my supervisor changing his mind all along the way, this has dragged on for much longer than it was supposed to.

I'm not really sure what I'm asking, just any friendly encouragement would be really nice!
Thanks.

Hi Radion,

Thanks for your reply, I'm so sorry to hear that you're having a low period too. I feel exactly the same way, I dread going into the lab and can't bring myself to read or do anything useful for my PhD. I thought posting this would get some things off my chest and make me feel better but if anything I just feel worse for posting and bringing it up.

I do think you're right, there's a lot of falseness in academia, I've come across it on a daily basis and it just makes me feel very disillusioned by the whole thing. I just want to finish this PhD (if I can!) and get out of academia now. I'm sure there are solutions to our depressed moods and I really hope you start to feel better soon!

Has anyone got any suggestions? I'd be really grateful to hear from anyone who's managed to feel better after a bout of depression/anxiety. It just feels a bit like what's the point of it all at the moment. :(

Hi All,

Apologies for this being a long one...I’m just starting my second year and having a very low period at the moment. So here’s my story - the first few months of my PhD were tricky. I moved 400 miles from my home, family and friends to do this PhD and found that no one in my lab ‘had time’ for friends. I don’t know anyone else here so I’m lacking in a support network. I live with my partner and although he is amazingly supportive, he isn’t working in academia so can sometimes struggle to understand how much work is involved. Anyway, since starting I found it hard to meet people and things haven’t really improved in that respect, but I got into the work and didn’t really worry about it.

Anyway I’m now over a year into the PhD and for the last couple of months I’ve been feeling down every day to the point where I struggle to maintain a working routine, I avoid going into the lab and when possible I leave early because I’m not being productive. I struggle to sleep and whenever I talk about work I get tearful and upset and most days I feel I’m struggling not to burst into tears. On top of this I feel anxious all the time about everything, not just things related to the PhD. I don’t feel I have anyone to talk to about this because I’m always going on about it to my partner, and I feel like he’s getting tired of hearing it now. He doesn’t understand why I feel so down and neither do I to be honest. I’ve never been a depressed/anxious person before starting this PhD.

I tend to feel that I’m not as intelligent as the other PhD students I’ve come across and recently I constantly worry that I’m not good enough to finish this PhD. However, I know that if I were to quit I would regret it further down the line. I try to keep reminding myself that I was lucky to be offered a place and that I should do my best not to waste the opportunity, but it’s hard because I just don’t feel myself at the moment.

I haven’t spoken to my supervisor about this as he’s not what you’d call a sympathetic person, and if I were to talk about this I would just get upset. Has anyone else been in this situation or something similar? I don’t really know what I expect from this, I was hoping getting it off my chest would help, but if anyone has been through this and managed to keep going I’d love to hear from you and how you got through it. Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Tulip

Hi Dantastic,

I did a masters at another London university a couple of years ago, and in the first few weeks I found some issues arose in terms of supervision and support. About 3/4 weeks in I looked into switching courses by contacting other universities with similar courses and just phoning to ask about how likely it was to get a place a few weeks in. Some were helpful and said that the earlier you contact them, the more likely they were to have places available, and asked for a CV instead of a full application. I ended up staying at my university because some of the issues were dealt with enough that I could stick it out. However, I was pretty unhappy for the year.

My advice would be to contact other universities and see what they say. I'm not sure how switching courses would work in terms of funding and whether you would still have to pay a portion of your fees to Goldsmiths, so it might be worth checking that too before deciding to jump university. But it can't hurt to enquire, and you may find somewhere else with the right staff members available to teach the things you were hoping to learn. Hope this helps, and best of luck in whatever you decide!

Tulip

Thank you very much for the replies guys! Hazyjane I really liked that website, it seems to have a lot of useful information that I hadn't come across before so thank you for that! And Screamingaddabs thank you for the advice about what to include on the poster, definitely wouldn't be good to forget the sponsors' logos!!

Cheers :)

Hi All,

I'm writing this in the hope that someone can give me some useful advice. Here's my story - I'm just starting the second year of my PhD and have got to a point where I'm really struggling to keep going. I had a tricky first few months where I wasn't happy in the department, struggled to get experiments off the ground, had very few people to talk to for advice etc. I finally started to get things going, put a lot of hours in and started getting preliminary data and passed the 1st year viva, only to find that half of my methods now need changing and the work I've done to date needs redoing. I think this has knocked my confidence because now I just worry that what I'll be redoing might still not be good enough and may need redoing again further down the line.

I'm not entirely sure how to describe it, it's like I've lost all motivation to keep going with the work and don't really care anymore. In addition to this, I feel like I'm losing motivation to do other non-work related things, even simple things like keep in touch with and go out with my friends. I find that I put off doing things, which is normally not like me at all, and isn't very helpful for the huge pile of work that needs doing. At the same time, doing this PhD is incredibly important to me and deep down I know that I want to succeed and keep on top of things as much as possible. I'm not considering quitting (although I did earlier in my first year), I just need to find a way to get back into working, because I feel like I've lost so much time doing experiments that now need redoing and I feel very behind all of a sudden. I thought maybe I just needed a break a few weeks ago and took a week and a half off, but it didn't seem to help and now several weeks on I feel like I'm still struggling to make any progress. Has anyone else been in a similar situation and maybe has some advice? Any words of wisdom would be very much appreciated, as I really do feel very lost at the moment!

Thanks in advance!

Tulip

Hi All,

Apologies if this has been mentioned before... I'm in my second year of a science PhD and have to present my data so far in a poster presentation soon, and was hoping for any advice that might be specific to a poster presentation as opposed to a powerpoint. Although I've presented work as a powerpoint before, I'm completely unfamiliar with presenting work on a poster (I'd prefer if I could get away with just letting people look at it, if only that was possible!) It has to be presented in a relatively non-technical way for a general science audience. Would you just make it similar to any other presentation? I feel like I may be over thinking this to be honest!! I'm a nervous presenter at the best of times, so any tips would be very much appreciated!

Thanks! :-)

Tulip