Overview of bob86

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State of the forum
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Quote From rewt:
Thanks for replying Bob86! I really appreciate it.

Congratulations on submitting! That must be such a relief, what does freedom feel like?

I am doing well, just plenty of lab work and I am putting of writing a paper. My supervisor is doing her usual lack of feedback routine, sent her a draft of a paper and they restructured it instead of commenting on the text. Granted it is a far better structure it is just frustrating that my supervisor seems incapable of giving feedback. Apart from that my PhD is ticking a long through 4th year.


Thank you. It was a long and arduous journey but thankfully its almost over! I now have to shift my focus towards job hunting while keeping an eye out for my viva arrangements which will happen slowly in the background.

Ah, the joys of acquiring supervisor feedback, I too encountered this difficulty at times. As you acknowledged, however, they (supervisor) often provide feedback in ways that we didn’t initially anticipate yet improves the overall flow of the content. If I recall correctly, your PhD is in Engineering right?

State of the forum
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Quote From rewt:
Thanks for replying Bob86! I really appreciate it.

Congratulations on submitting! That must be such a relief, what does freedom feel like?

I am doing well, just plenty of lab work and I am putting of writing a paper. My supervisor is doing her usual lack of feedback routine, sent her a draft of a paper and they restructured it instead of commenting on the text. Granted it is a far better structure it is just frustrating that my supervisor seems incapable of giving feedback. Apart from that my PhD is ticking a long through 4th year.



Thank you. It was a long and arduous journey but thankfully its almost over! I now have to shift my focus towards job hunting while keeping an eye out for my viva arrangements which will happen slowly in the background.


Ah, the joys of acquiring supervisor feedback, I too encountered this difficulty at times. As you acknowledged, however, they (supervisor) often provide feedback in ways that we didn’t initially anticipate yet improves the overall flow of the content. If I recall correctly, your PhD is in Engineering right?

My PhD destroyed my life
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Quote From Polly33:
*TRIGGER WARNING*




My PhD destroyed my life.
In the end I did not complete it. But I end up having depression, severe anxiety, lost my husband, the opportunity to have kids and to enjoy the life.
I had a beautiful home, a loving husband, stable house hold, no financial worries. Now I just wanted to kill myself over the horrible situation I am in. I lost everything that really matters. Please don't do the same mistake.


@Polly33,

I too experienced a very difficult PhD journey that took its toll on relationships and my mental health so I understand how you're feeling right now. I'd reach out to your university counselling service if you haven’t already done so – I know it can be difficult at times to discuss these issues with friends/family. Your suicidal thoughts are quite worrying and you need to seek help as your mental health and well-being takes precedence over anything else right now. Please feel free to PM me if you like. Best of luck.

Possible to submit corrections many years later?
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Quote From positivemindset:
I had a successful viva - minor corrections (2014). A number of personal issues came up that meant i was unable to submit my corrections on time.

This is now complete. Would my UK university still accept corrections and award my PhD?


Your university will have literature on this in the form of a Student Handbook under the heading exceptional or extenuating circumstances. Usually you have to inform them at the time you are facing the personal difficulty as retrospective extensions/suspensions cannot be granted. So I’d imagine that’s going to be the major push-back from them. You’ll probably have to appeal to them in such a way that they overlook this aspect. Given that you actually submitted and had a successful viva after it, I’d like to think that they’d be decent about it and accept your corrections and award you the degree. Good luck.

State of the forum
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Quote From rewt:
Hi everyone,

I noticed there have been a lot of new posters recently and I would like to say welcome to everyone!

I don't want to be a pain but can I nudge people that are posting new threads to occasionally reply to other people, please :) This forum is a great place to talk, get advice and support from other PhD students but requires other people to post. We all go through issues during our PhD and everyone's advice is welcome. So please don't feel afraid to post.

Other than that how is everyone doing?


Agreed. It's the only way for it to work effectively.

All good, recently submitted and awaiting examination. How are you getting on?

Paper request
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Quote From Jamie_Wizard:
Thanks so much for posting this. I was also looking for "Open Societies and it's enemies by Karl Popper (single volume edition)", which I found. I just have to find time to read it at over 800 pages.


No worries.

Paper request
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Try Z-Library:

https://b-ok.org/

Very rarely lets me down. Good for articles too.

Corporate vs. Academic hiring time frames?
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I'd contact them if I was you and politely as them for an update as you've handed in your notice to comply with the start date they've given you. That wouldn’t be unreasonable at all in my opinion. It’s possible that they work on slightly different time scales than what you’re used to (academia), but the fact is they can’t leave you hanging until you’re potentially out of work over what is essentially an informal offer (an ex colleague of mine experienced this when dealing with a start-up company). I know what you mean re potentially being viewed as problematic before beginning the job itself however the company has to be a good fit for you too, not just the other way around.

PhD Advice
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I began mines part-time but switched to full-time 2 years later. Like you, I had also just started my first job at the time working in the Aerospace sector. Although both in Engineering, the subject matter of my PhD was somewhat different to the day-job that I was carrying out my work. I was frequently asked to do overtime at work which, since I was new in the company, I felt obliged to do. However, this meant that I never really had a consistent routine in the evenings to work on my PhD. Naturally this got quite demanding after a while hence the switch to full-time. Thus, if you are considering going part-time I would recommend you really give some thought to what impact your day-job obligations may have on the working arrangements for your PhD. I learned this lesson the hard way! Good luck.

My supervisor said this is correct - is it?
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I'd eco what abababa says here. Even if statistics is not your strong point/emphasis of your PhD, you really need to take the initiative to understand and solve the problem (validate the data) by yourself. By all means consult a specialist. But fundamentally you must go through the process as by doing so you will gain insight into the problem/issue which will only help you when you come to discuss the data/results later in your thesis. Getting out of your comfort zone is part of the PhD process and attempting to justify decisions/steps that you've taken throughout with ``My supervisor said so...'' will only get you into bother at the viva stage. Good luck.

Have I breached the viva rules?
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Hi,

To me it’s clearly inadvertent, especially if your initial correspondence went to a completely different person. Moreover, when it came to light that the Chair was your external examiner, you took the appropriate action(s). As long as you have a record of this, i.e., the email chain, I believe you should be fine. I would probably run it past your supervisor/advisor of studies though just so he/she is not caught off gaurd if this gets brought up at a later date.

Good luck.

Stress of finishing PhD
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Quote From Hop:
Hi. Im near the end of a 3 year funded PhD. Im due to submit at the end of jan 2021, just under 2 months. My supervisors want to see a full draft by next week but I just can't get it done by then. Feel mega stressed. They said "just send it when you have a complete draft and we'll try to mark it in time". Really stressed could do with hearing of some experiences of people who have submitted and been through this. Anyone got advice for a chaotic stressed finish?


I feel your pain, my thesis is due middle of Jan 2021. Main body is complete, just have 50% of the Introduction and 100% of the Conclusion still to write. I'm totally spent, completely uninterested in the work and frankly just want it over with now. I think many candidates feel this way at this point. My main issue is I constantly overthink the writing part (quite happy running experiments and analysing data) when what needs to be explained/discussed can be done so in very simple terms. In other words, I'm constantly worrying about what the examiner might want which is slowing me down immensely. Sorry I can't offer any constructive advice at the moment other than you are not alone.

I can't believe I passed!
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Congratulations and extremely well-done on passing without corrections, I'm sure that's very rare. Enjoy the celebrations :)

Crushed
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@random_6772 Congrats and well done on pulling through such a sh*tty situation. I'm going through a very similiar situation and totally relate to your experience.

A lawyer with experience in university policy
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Try Alpha Academic Appeals. I recall them being advertised on this forum. You seem to have a case from what you've mentioned previously.