Hey Olivia when are you due to submit? We're both in our final year right? Maybe we should have some champagne

I am due to submit at the end of this calendar year or early next year..I started my PhD in January two years ago, so I am on a weird schedule...

When are you aiming to submit?


Champagne sounds just like the thing!!!

Another good thread! I have lost friends through the PhD - they (wrongly) made the assumption that I wanted to just socialise with PhD types and academics, and just put the barriers up themselves. i never indicated anything of the sort. Even my own Mum, who I normally get on well with, often trots out the "Ooh, I feel I can;t talk to you normaly anymore since you becasme a Dr." line, especialy when she's trying to win an argument!

I also got sick of the "oh, off to another conference? Bloody easy life!" - er, no it wasn't actually. In addition to the stress of presenting I didn't like being away from home and partner.

It does annoy me when people don't seem to recognise it for the hard endeavour it is...

Olivia - My official deadline is Jan 09 but I REALLY want to submit by Xmas. I'll race you - loser buys the champers!

Its really common that PhD work is trivialised by people who don't understand what it entails. This does suck immensely.

However, I also think that I did become quite precious and oversensitive with my work. Not saying this is what is happening to anyone else. I remember telling my ex about how hard it was that I had to present my work before hundreds. However, as she was training in clinical psychology she had to treat with people that attempted suicide, lost family, experienced sexual abuse (on top of her own thesis and academic work). Other friends in medicine would be carrying out life saving operations and working 80 hour weeks.

Listening to this put my own work in perspective, and how I was becoming po faced about much of it.

That is a good point badhaircut. There are a lot of jobs that are at least as much work and stress (I've had one). The difference is though, that people do generally realise that those jobs involve certain amounts of work and stress - whereas many people think a PhD is a 3-year pre-job holiday.

Agreed BHC and Smilodon that there ARE many more difficult pursuits than a PhD! Many other jobs, even different types of PhDs are more stressful. I guess what I find dissapointing with my near and dear is when they trivialise it into this adult gap year--as if I took off with a back pack in a flurry of a mid life crisis to hang at party beaches in Portugal or something....This is certainly not the hardest thing I have ever done. Nor is it the easiest. Perhaps it is the most important. It would be nice if close relatives could at least recognise that this is not a holiday....that's all. But as said, perhaps the failure to realise that this is not a holiday is just sour grapes on their part.