I don't know whether you are in the Uk or elsewhere but if you are in the UK have you thought about contacting the students' union advice centre. Staff do close rank BUT universities need completions and don't want complaints. At the university where I am doign my PhD we ahve an annual review with an independent person so there is the opportunity to make commetns (but that said you have to have a relationship with supervisors so if you complain I'm not sure how that works out)

It is really difficult when supervisors don't give you the feedback you need - I 'm at the begining of the process and the feedback on my proposal was an e-mail with "get rid" "change this" "yuk" etc which was not very helpful. Maybe you could be quite specific so that when he says this is fine ask specifically if he is saying it is of a suitable standard to pass (and even put this in an e-mail or notes of meeting so that you have some evidence). IS there anyone else who coudl read your work - another student or soemone else - I work in a different university to the one where I am doing my PhD so I sometimes ask colleagues for feedback.

Hang in there - you have done well so far and securing funding for your PhD is somea great achievement - focus on that (and think that in a few months you will be out of there)

Have found an amazing book publishe din 1955 so am reading that but am going to break for lunch in the garden with the children - so bit of both - kinda feel I should go with the roll.

I've made some progress in the last few days on rearranging my dining room to be a beter workspace, completed my skills audit for PhD annual review, finished a first draft of a paper for a journal, now have a very detailed outline of PhD lit review, read a couple of articles and have started writing it) and have spent some quality time with each of my children. So what do I do over the Bank Holiday? Should I stick with PhD as I am on a bit of a roll, should I finish the dining room (and then more onto kid's bedrooms and rest of the house) or should I say stuff it I'm having a day off and go out somewhere?

what do you think? Bit fed up of womaen wailing power (and not so power) ballads.

But our bloke was NOT our worst entry ever - that has to go to those airline people.

This is just a copy of what you can find in any course handbook - clearly designed to advertise their plagiarism services

My employer is kind of sponsoring me (I work in a univeristy) - they pay £1500 of the £1750 paart-time fees and give me me allowance on workload allocation for research plus time to present at conferences etc. I don't think you would be able to work full time and be a full time PhD student (unless your job was effectively to do your research) so you are looking at around 5 years for completion. Make sure that your potential supervisors are happy with your proposal - there is a tendency to accept people more readily if they are self funding (which you are). If your employers want you to do some specific research for them then you might have a supervisor from the university and from the employer - this relationship needs to be carefully balanced as the employer might want somethign more practical (more akin to a consultancy project) but the university will need to be asured of the academic (ie theoretical content). You might also want to think about questions such as handcuffing by employer (I have a PhD + 2 years handcuffing ie if I leave within 2 years of completing my PhD I have to pay back all the fees)

Notes definitely written on paper, plans ditto (especially diagrams of how things fit together) but writing text is always straight to computer and to avoid the dreaded corrupted files I save them regularly with the date and time as part of the file name and then back them up so I end up with hundreds of files but at least if anything gets lost or corrupted I can retrieve something.  I love nice paper and pens (any time I need paper or a folder I end up buying lots of nice coloured pens!)though so I do do a lot of doodling when trying to relate things together.

Just tried but the link doesn't seem to work - can you check?

Thanks

Depends on budget but if money is tight then some of the suggestiosn aren't realistic - what about giveing her a manicure or a facial.

I echo the chocolate and wine idea (but I'd go for a nice romcom)

Hi Sneaks

In what way will you be "worse off"? Financialy maybe but there is so much more to life than that. I graduated in 1988 (before some people on here were even born or at least when they were still in nappies) and although I had a place at Cambridge to do an MA I decided that I couldn't ask my parents to fund it (even though at the time they could afford to) so I got a job as graduate trainee accountant. I passed all my exams like a good girl and worked hard, got promoted etc but I felt unfulfilled so in 1996 I went to Birkbeck and did an MA at night school. Did it fulfill me - yes but only while I was doing it. I carried on working as an accountnat in a very specialised area - fairly good salary, car etc etc but in 2004 (with two children under 5) I gave up my job and went back to uni and did an MSc with the intention of going on to do a PhD. I managed to get a lecturing job and so the phD got a bit sidelined (in part because I couldn't find a topic that I thought would be sustainable for 5 years p-t). I started my PhD in December (although was working on it from about June) and with a fair wind will finish before I am 50. I now earn considerably less full time than I did working part-time as an accountant and many of the trappings have gone (new car, expensive holidays, expensive clothes, eating out all the time) but I am so much happier. Would I have been happy had I gone straight to do MA after BA - hard to tell (but I wouldn't have met my husband and wouldn't have my two lovely children so the answer has to be no).


I guess my point is is that it is easy to look at what might have been - I'm guessing you are still fairly young - but it isn't too late to completely change direction. I wouldn't hide the PhD on applications - but stress all the transferrable skills (time management, research, negotiation, presentations, tenacity, commitment etc etc) that you have developed. Be proud of what you have done.

I'll check tomorrow how much is left in the pot - the book are supposed to be for staff research but I have stretched it a bit to cover texts which are of tangential connection to my PhD but which will be useful to students. I'll take a look at the suggestions and order as many as I can. Thanks for the suggestions.

Possibly the dentist who hit me when I was 5 thereby starting me on a long life of dental phobia (but Paul McKenna cured me on a Ruby Wax dayteim TV show a few years ago).

But then I remembered the midwife who delivered my daughter (stop reading now if you are squemish or offfended by bodily fluids). It was my second child and I left it a bit late to go to the hospital. There was no delivery room available so I was put in a theatre and was almost (9 1/2 cm) fuly dilated. The midwife was busy with paperwork when I realised I needed to go to the toilet. My husband told her but she said that I was wrong and it was the baby and I wasn't ready to push. Well I know the difference between needing to poo and deliver a baby. Needless to say that I was right and I made a complete mess of the bed. Worst thing was she was happy to leave me lying in it while in labour while she did whatever paperwork (or whatever) she was doing. Aside from the indignity I suffered, once your waters have broken you are at high risk of infections. Fortunately my husband can be very assertive and got her to clean me up and our daughter was born 20 mns later.

What happens about affiliation? I am doign my PhD at university A (which has an international reputation for my subject) but work at university B (a new teachign university) (which is paying my fees). At a conference I put Lecturer in x at University B with PhD student at university A underneath but for articles you can't do that. I know uni B will think they should be on but I would rather put uni A.

So I guess first supervisor will get to go on and the other two will be an either / or (failry straight forward as one is qual and one quant). What happens when you collaborate with someone you met at a conference?

I went to PhD forum today (gathering of PhD student with a couple of staff) and there was a discussion about REF which said we shoudl always put our supervisors as co-authors on any publications. A colleague at work said you should only put people on as co-author if they did a meaningful amount of work (she was goignt o chair some focus groups for me and i offered her second author but she said she wouldn't dream of taking it). When I rasied this I was told that a supervisor might have spent 10 hours looking at drafts and so should go on as they are neglecting their own research to do that (I thought that that was part of their workload). I would have thought that reading drafts was more akin to an acknowledgement. Certainly the "guidance" I have had so far is more akin to that (I have had no suggestiosn on what to do just "fix this" "change that" "Take this out" "I don't' like this" and even "yuk" - they haven't helped me develop methodology or select locations. I understand that people want PhD students so they can up their research output but I would have thought that to claim authorship involved more than just reading through drafts.