For 4 year PhD the worst case scenario could be: 4 years research (bulk of work done in 4th year as took ages to understand what supposed to be doing), spend 1 year writing thesis, fail viva requiring 2 years of major corrections and then resubmit and pass. Total of 7 years.
Best scenario: complete research in 3 years, write thesis in 1 year, pass with no corrections. Total 4 years.

I wish I was in your situation, so I could press the 'cancel' button at the bottom of the electronic application. Unfortunately I clicked 'send'. Probably the biggest mistake of my life!

I know how you you feel. I have just started the second year. I don't think I accomplished much in the first year but I was upgraded from MPhil to PhD anyway. I don't really think my supervisor knows what he is doing as he is not an expert in my area of research. I am torn between wanting to leave and return to teaching English in Greece, which is what I did before starting the PhD, or stick it out. However, I am then concerned that I might spend another two or three years doing it and fail anyway. I have no real direction to my research and I am not sure I will really understand my project to be an expert in what I am doing. Anyway, a few weeks ago I came across an interesting article, which you might find useful. Hope things get better.

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2004_03_18/noDOI.834678073344582078
;-)

I tend to feel a bit isolated in my department, as my project is on a different topic from most of the other students in the office that I work in. However I sometimes like being cut out of the group, as most of the time they boast to each other about what work they have done and 'brown nose' our supervisor, jockying for attention.

Have you thought about doing something at the local college? I'm not sure if it is too late to enrol, but it is a great thing to do to meet people outside of the university and forget about PhD work for a few hours. You could go to cooking classes, or learn a new language!

It's a shame you aren't in my department and then I could chat to you! Are you male or female? ;-)

Reading your message makes me feel a lot better as I had about two months in total of good research in the first year. I had my upgrade a few weeks ago and I couldn't answer all the questions properly. I said I don't know to some of them and I am rewriting some of the report, even though they agreed to upgrade me ayway

I was prepared to write up an MPhil and hopefull leave by Xmas, but I was told by my supervisors that it was my choice, so a week later I decided to stay!

I'm still not sure it was the right choice. How many people have had supervisors let them go all the way to witing up the PhD thesis and attend the viva only to fail, I wonder? It would be a waste of three years. :$

I know how you feel. I have just completed my first year report and I had the "discussion" of it with my supervisor and internal assessor.

I was asked questions that I didn't know the answer to and actually said "I don't know". It generally went quite badly and I'm having to rewrite some of it!

What worries me is that if I'm struggling with the end of first year report, god help me in a PhD viva!

I do sometimes wonder if each day I'm not just building my own gallows :-(

I did have a good day today and felt determined to get something done. However, I spoke to my supervisor in the corridor at the end of the day and felt pretty low again. He says that I should trust him more, but I doubt whether he really knows what I should be doing.

It just seems to be the case that you have to just get on with things, but the thought of wasting three years of my life to end up with an MPhil or less is not a good feeling!