Yes, I love it and it fascinates me, but I'm expected by the world to don a fetching, musty smelling, stripy jumper and to focus on the grand narratives writing about the wives of Henry VIII or the norman invasion or something! The fact that my work focuses on the latter half of the 19thC tends to confuse people, and the fact that I'm not studying 'famous' people, but real lives or ordinary people is also confusing for some reason - v annoying. It is amusing to watch them glaze over and nod with that look in their eyes that you know they're pondering if they left the gas on or not ;-) And if ONE more person asks what I want to do when I'm finished I swear I'll end up on the 6pm news for some interesting form of battery or impalement(up)

hi stressed,

i know exactly how you feel, i'm at the same stage as you and constantly feel like a complete idiot who has forgotten everything they were ever taught! i can also relate to the feeling of loneliness, as i am based with an industrial partner (i'm in pharmacology) and all the other people here clearly think phd students don't count as colleagues and pretty much just ignore me :-( it doesn't help that i'm based in a dept that doesn't really have anything to do with my topic so can't really talk to anyone about it.

fortunately i have a great supervisor here who is very helpful otherwise i think i'd just stay in bed all day with the covers over my head! have been reassured by various other phds that this is a perfectly normal reaction to doing a phd though... ;-)

What a relief to read this! I too started in October and I do feel like I'm regressing with every day... I seem to know less and less. And feel like a fraud waiting to be found out! I only hope that it will get easier, or get more bearable. And I know, Stressed, it's that the hardest bit - not being able to say this to anyone who might understand... especially because I don't really want to be convert them to my way of thinking! And it is so lonely. And too much. And...

But we can get there! (I hope).