Can I give you a tip here? I'm sure you didn't intend to, but in your original post you sound very flippant about having been accused (and presumably if already penalised found guilty) of plagiarism. If you come across like that in your appeal, it is unlikely to be successful. The penalty is actually quite light as it stands for a postgraduate student in my experience. Research misconduct is more of a red flag for PhD admissions than your mark, so I think you might be well advised to have a talk with a tutor you trust, to find out what impact it might have. You certainly will have to discuss the situation with the people you intended to use as references to find out how this will effect the reference they would write. In particular, if there are any extenuating circumstances you need to make sure they are aware of them.

Academic or non-academic? You won't get an academic job this way and I think it would get you noticed in the wrong way i.e as someone who doesn't understand how things work. Instead try to make sure your contacts know you are job-seeking, attend any workshops / conferences you can and network. The only circumstances it's worth doing in academia is to ask depts to keep your cv on file in case any hourly paid teaching becomes available. For non-academic jobs, I imagine it would be field dependent - possibly more helpful for small firms, who don't have HR departments to remind them about the need to openly advertise jobs. My sense is also that it might be a tactic that works better in boom times rather than recession. I honestly think you would be better applying for actual jobs rather than spending time on this.

While this is dependent on field, monographs, peer reviewed articles and possibly book chapters tend to be all that's allowed. In addition, if you are picked as an impact case study (v unlikely if not impossible now as a new hire), more pactice-orientated reports etc might be used. Many institutions will also not count anything deemed to be less than 3 star (although this s always a guessing game). Sorry conference papers and other research-related activity don't count except as used as filler for the section on departmental research culture.

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I'd agree with hazyjane that I've never heard of a viva for a proposal. I'd actually be more concerned about the presence of other students, which sounds very strange and rather mean. People do know what's going on in fields other than their own, so I don't find it surprising that the person would comment. If he'd been put on the panel, it's presumably because it was thought he could contribute usefully. The point of the research proposal is to check whether there is a viable PhD project there, not just whether it ticks all the university procedure boxes, and while it's never fun to get it rejected or criticised, it's much much better to be told early on that there's a major flaw, rather than to realise it yourself after wasting months or years.

Your doctor will probably run blood tests to check it's not thyroid problems, but deficiency in B vitamins can cause this (especially if you're vegetarian). If you're stressed are you eating well? But do go and see your doctor - I kept putting lots of vague symptoms down to stress and it turned out I was quite ill.

I'm assuming you are in the US / Canada from your mention of comprehensive exams. I'm not really understanding what a human rights complaint might entail or why it's the exam chair you are complaining about rather than the person who failed you, so apologies if this is irrelevant. But I wondered if there was any chance of you exiting this programme with a masters based on the work you've done thus far? If you academic advisor is the person who would be your thesis supervisor, and s/he is not supporting your complaint, then it would seem like starting the research bit of the programme with this person in charge is not a good idea. I wondered if you exited with a masters, whether that might exempt you from some coursework in a new programme rather than starting over completely?
The other thing to think about would be the funding package you have versus what you might get elsewhere - I know it's unusual to self-fund a PhD in the US but wondered from your mention of investing money whether you were only partially funded? If so, it might also make sense to move if the funding might be better elsewhere.
Final thought: try to take a step back from your anger and frustration at your situation, and ask yourself whether you definitely want to do a PhD still. Is your department really so outstandingly awful (it might well be) or is it more that you are disallusioned with academia? If it's the latter walk away now and do something else. Don't feel that because you've started it, you've got to finish it (perhaps out of pride). There is nothing wrong in figuring out that another route would be better at the moment.

I think the crucial part of your post is that in a week X is out of your life and your lab. It's not been a good experience for you or your supervisor but I think your supervisor is right to say, try to move on and stop dwelling on what might have been. If you don't, then you are letting x continue to mess things up for you. Maybe the change of focus might also help you move on and I imagine once X is out of the way your supervisor will be trying to salvage anything possible from the mess. Yes X has been very unfair to both you and your supervisor (and the consequences are probably worse in the longterm for your supervisor if she's messed up a funded postdoc) but people can be selfish, and you will never have to deal with her again.

Certainly where I work, you can indeed pass with major corrections - it's quite a normal outcome. We have a strange system too where if the necessary corrections will take more than a month (even though you get 3 months for minor corrections), then they pretty much always give you the 12 months to make sure you have time to do them (if people have started new jobs etc it can be hard to find any time). It might be that there's really not that much to do and you don't have to take anything like 12 months to do them. Put the report away for a week if you can, do nothing but nice things and then have another look. I suspect it won't look as much work then. And yes you do need to make yourself do them however disinclined you feel, because you'd kick yourself if you didn't complete the PhD now.

On 1) no idea sorry. On 2) basic salary is what the normal salary for an Israeli postdoc would be then you get mobility and travel allowances on top. It usually works out as a nice salary unless postdocs in that country are really badly paid.

Dear x,

Thank-you for giving me the opportunity to revise and resubmit this article. My responses to the reviewers' comments are detailled fully in document x. I look forward to receiving your decision.

Yours sincerely

Skig

Hi,

I'm a social scientist and it is increasingly unusual to go straight from BA to PhD in the social sciences, because the main funder (ESRC) prefers / insists all funded students complete a research methods Masters first - they call this type of funding a 1+3 award. If your course, like most, had only a relatively basic research methods course it might be worth seeing whether your scholarship would cover this. I mention this not because I think you're not capable of doing a PhD, but because increasingly if you haven't got a good range of research methods training, it's hard to get jobs particularly in social policy, as a lot of the research studies there are quite methods-driven these days. For consultancy, you'll probably also need quantitative methods training to a reasonably high level. Your funding situation is a bit complex as you have the tuition scholarship which I'm guessing ties you to one university? You'd need to ask them whether they offer anything. Also however tempting, make sure they actually have an academic who can supervise whatever topic you want to study. If not, I'd suggest thinking about using the scholarship to do an ESRC recognised research methods MA (which if you're not dead set on academia might be enough to get you into the other roles you mention) and then applying for +3 funding (tuition and maintenance) from an ESRC doctoral training centre (DTC). You can find information on the ESRC recognised courses and DTCs on their website (look under postgraduate training) - www.esrc.ac.uk . There are also some PhD posts tied to specific research projects but compared with the sciences, these are relatively rare. They are usually advertised on jobs.ac.uk .

Sounds like a very good idea. The academic job market (which I think from your post you want to enter) is really difficult anyway and almost impossible without conference presentations & publications, so what you plan to do makes absolute sense.

I think the key question is whether you are in fact behind schedule. If you are, and you haven't given him any other reason for it, then I can understand why he might assume the issue was caring responsibilities as that's something he knows about. And given he's held accountable for you finishing on time, he does actually have grounds to raise concerns about your progress with you. Have you actually discussed it with him and told him you found it offensive? It seems a bit OTT to me to go straight to a formal complaint procedure.

Chopsticks - I've read your post a few times and wondered why you were considering a postdoc? Is it because you want to 'redeem' the PhD somehow because of the lack of a first author publication? Or do you feel it's a failure to leave academia? Or a guilt trip from your supervisor? If it's any of those reasons, don't go for the postdoc. Unless there's some reason why a postdoc is expected to get the jobs you want, I can't see how it would be beneficial on the basis of what you write. Apply for the industry jobs you want - you'll be happier doing that than continuing on a career path you don't want. We only get one life - you need to be happy.

Our departmental admin staff are pretty nice too - I don't know how they keep their cool the way some students treat them! I find the central admins less helpful.