Don't get me started, wowzers - in a previous job I contacted HMRC twice to say I didn't think my employers had got my paperwork right or were taxing me properly - I was twice advised it was all fine, and then got landed with a £1000 bill for underpayment of tax!

The last time I spoke to HMRC it was in connection with my part-time teaching work that I'm doing alongside my PhD. They were clearly only interested in my taxable income, so no bursary income was mentioned during the call - they just consider taxable income alongside your personal allowance. I wouldn't personally confuse the issue by giving them a bursary amount.

It's not always important for both supervisors to have done research that aligns with your own. For example, one of my fellow PhD students has a primary supervisor who shares her research interests, but a second supervisor from a different department (computing, because she also needs that kind of expertise in developing programs for her research). When I had my recent PhD review, a member of staff was invited in to the review because of her knowledge of qualitative research methods, which I want to include in my study, rather than because she was familiar with my topic.

It's difficult to know how many suggestions you're supposed to come up with in your case - maybe the head is just looking for the small shortlist you've got, but if you feel that you're being asked to do a bit more research than that, it might be worth considering other people (especially for second supervisor) who could contribute specific skills or knowledge to supplement the experience of your primary supervisor.

Reading is always a good idea at the start of the process. The other thing I would do is consider whether you need to refresh or improve any of your skills - for example, it's been a few years since I needed to use stats, so I'm trying to bring myself back up to speed way before I will need to use them. But enjoy this time too, so you start it feeling refreshed!

Congratulations on your success, and thanks for the tips - sounds like you took a very sensible 'long haul' approach.

The student stipend isn't taken into account for tax purposes. Because your teaching income falls below the personal allowance for tax, you shouldn't pay any tax on it.

One of the big tasks involved in doing a PhD is the literature review, which is where you gain a lot of the specialised knowledge you're talking about. At the stage of applying, you would normally be expected to show that you have some knowledge of the topic and a lot of interest in it, and the skills to carry out the PhD, but you wouldn't be expected to know everything about the PhD topic itself at that stage.

I'm honestly surprised this situation doesn't happen more often. I was reading 'How to Get a PhD' recently (Phillips and Pugh) and at the bits where it talked about building up the relationship with your supervisor, I was starting to squirm a bit because it sounded borderline romantic in places! I think the contact and attention with supervisors at this level is completely different to what we've had before, and I do think boundaries can become blurred. I have a friend who supervises PhDs and adds them all on to her Facebook page, for example - thank goodness my supervisor doesn't want to do that!

I agree with the comments above - don't do anything to fan the flames, and your feelings will sort themselves out in time. One of these days he'll say something annoying and you'll realise he's just become a good but sometimes irritating boss :-)

I'd go for that too if I was offered the chance. Like TreeofLife says, there's a lot to be said for grabbing different types of experience while you have the chance, and HEA accreditation is a valuable thing to have.

Yes, I'd feel the same about the ones you see advertised on FB. It's always worth checking out whether courses are affiliated to an actual university, whether they're accredited and so on.

My online Masters from the Open University worked like a charm in getting me my PhD place, and quite a few of my fellow students are in the same good position.

I don't know anything about the Salford University Masters I'm afraid, but they should be able to answer questions about any accreditation it might have, so I'd contact them and ask about that and previous students' progression.

Have you had any useful feedback from your applications, lude?

Hi Lizzie
My personal approach to this kind of thing would be to 'set the scene' at the start - give some context to your research topic and why it matters, before going on to explain what you're proposing to do. I would try and avoid jargon that's specific to your field, but would also be reluctant to leave out all 'research' terms, as it still needs to come across as a professional research proposal. It might be worth asking someone from outside your subject to read over it and let you know how it comes across. Just a few thoughts!

Many congratulations on your achievement (and I am not at all convinced about that 'mediocre intellectual ability' - you need a new username!). It is great to read such an encouraging post - I am just in the early stages of my PhD and it is always lovely to hear about those who have stuck with it and succeeded :-)

Frequentflyer, if you can't get a download of Office from anyone, you can get a decent deal on Office 365 as a student. It's a four-year subscription rather than a permanent installation, but mine was £52 for the four years and I think the US price is about equivalent. My partner swears by Macs and they are actually highly intuitive to use but I think Ian's right about the Office compatibility being better with Windows. Incidentally I had issues with Adobe and Windows 8 and had to go for a free pdf reader from another provider instead, but that wasn't a major problem.

Yes, the only thing I found I could do with Windows 8 on my laptop was to take it into the screen that looks more like Windows 7, and leave it there. I also installed some third party stuff (start button, PDF reader etc) as it really is not set up for any kind of desktop work or work involving documents.