Have had just about enough! I'm a teaching support for this lecturer and every week I have to hear about how busy and how tired he is (he lists off what he's working on), and then I get the line "you've got it so easy". EVERY WEEK.

Today I was talking with another lecturer when he was nearby and I was telling this lecturer how tiring it is working on a chapter and this guy said "try marking all these s^&t essays".

The other thing is that he has twice pushed me to try and do things that aren't part of my role as a teaching assistant-take parts of the lecture, and mark the assignments. I'm not allowed to do either of those, as the students are 3rd year undergrads and it's the dept. policy. I've had to get seniors to intervene and tell him, because when I did numerous times he ignored it.

I know there isn't much I can do (but if you've got any suggestions of how to respond please tell me, I may end up losing my temper!), but I have just had it with him! I honestly can't listen to how busy he is anymore, and hear about how easy I have it!!!!

I take it you aren't a PhD student? If you want some teaching experience you could try colleges for positions like teaching assistant or support.

To lecture at university it usually requires a PhD depending on the subject. Hence why PhD students are usually given seminars/tutorials to teach, as it builds up their experience.

I have a bit of an unusual situation and I'm unsure of how to handle it.

I had a fellow PhD student from another university as a Facebook friend, we met at a summer school programme a couple years ago but haven't spoken on Facebook at all since the programme ended. Anyway I was having a friends 'clear out' on Facebook and deleted her a while ago. She got in touch and was quite angry with me, and while I was honest and explained my reason, she was quite offensive so in the end I blocked her.

Now she's created another Facebook account and a couple of nights ago I got over 70 messages in one night, slagging me off and telling me what a b**ch I am etc. etc. I'm unsure of how to handle this situation and would appreciate any advice. I see my options as:

-Reporting it to Facebook-but that doesn't stop her from creating new profiles
-Reporting it to the Police-but I only know her name and university, not her address
-Reporting it to her university or department? I am suspecting that as well as harrassing me and causing me distress, she has some kind of problem that she needs to get help for.

Definitely introduce yourself, but don't ask her to be your external. There is usually a formal procedure involved where the university writes to your external to ask them so it would be unprofessional for you to ask her.

If you get a feel for whether or not she's interested in your research, you can mention that to your supervisor.

I thought the same thesisfun. Surely there's a breach of confidentiality/copyright rules there somewhere?

You need to read your University's Code of Conduct to find out what the consequences would be.

Yes you're right, I was under the impression this was for the Masters project. But people do publish their undergraduate dissertations, if the OP has disseminated any findings there is a slight chance the bank could find out.

Seven months is not too long,sometimes I have waited as long as a year. You are not allowed to submit your paper anywhere else while it is under review. It's difficult but you just have to put it to the back of your mind for now and work on other things :)

The referencing error I would say is fair enough as you learn these things along the way, but those skills you should have picked up at undergraduate level.

The fudging of your data is quite serious and I personally couldn't condone you keeping that quiet. A part of research experience and development is dealing with difficult and uncooperative participants, and why you couldn't ask your supervisors for help at the time is beyond me. It does make a bit of a mockery of us researchers who work hard to collect data and try to find valid results.

Thanks both, that's really helpful.

Regarding the page sizes, this is something I hadn't thought about. If the poster was to be printed without the page correctly sized, would it come out with bad resolution?

I was in a similar situation to you with my supervisor favouring his other student and I changed, it was the best thing I ever did. You'd be surprised how sympathetic other staff members can be towards you when you have such a big decision to make. I can't see other academics worrying about offending your supervisor. Academia is quite a selfish environment, and taking on a new student would benefit them and boost their own profile.

If you don't want to change, do you have a second supervisor you could use a bit more for help? That way you get the support but still get to keep your supervisor's name on your PhD.

There's no right or wrong point at which things click into place. As chickpea said, your research question changes over time and even after data collection/analysis. My advice is to just keep writing your ideas. Write everything that comes to mind no matter how big or small it might seem.

I started my PhD with a very specific idea about what I wanted to research and how I was going to go about it (for the funding application), and it has changed completely since then. Nature of research! :)

I think the usual way is to have one examiner that's familiar with your topic, and one that's familiar with your method. So it might be that your internal is more familiar with your approach.

Discuss it with your supervisor and see if they can prep you for any challenging questions that the examiner might have.