I am interested in the work of a particular researcher in my field and I would like to do a postdoc in his lab. Unfortunately I have never met him in person and at the moment he doesn´t advertise any open position in his lab. I thought of just contacting him, stating my interest in his research and asking him to consider me as a potential postdoc there. Thinking of the massive such emails PIs must be getting daily I am wondering if there is something I could do to stand out and somehow show my real enthusiasm for the research subject. I really think this lab could be a good fit so if you have any ideas how I can increase my chances would be great hear. Did any of you land with a job offer by contacting a researcher out of the blue? Thank you for any input!

Hi, i have good news. i passed my viva. everything went well in the end. the questions were pretty tough and i was feeling some of them i could have answered in a better way but for most of them i could show I have done a lot of work reading papers and preparing.I thought I have forgotten all these papers I read during my preparation but somehow during the defence I could recall parts of them and manage to give some nice answers. The examiners were also very nice to me. Although their questions were very critical and demanding their whole attitude was very friendy and they made me feel they are on my side. I cannot say I enjoyed the defence as such because I was too stressed during the whole time. But I definitely enjoyed the after defence time when everyone (including me of course) were happy and congratulated me.
Thank you all for the support and advices. It was good to feel I was not alone. And Dr. Jeckyll let us know how it goes for you too. I sincereky hope we hear one more viva success story from you.

if you can do the statistical analysis why not doing it? in your place i would try to address most of the reviewers comments in the best way possible as then your chances of having the paper published in the specific journal increase. another thing i would do is discuss my ideas on the comments with my supervisor. knowing your work he can give you better advice on how to go with addressing specific comments.

Hi. satchi thanks for ur sweet advice and into the spiral thanks for the link. there are a lot of nice info in there. . somehow hearing from people who have gone through this is really relieving. Dr. Jeckyll I am in the same situation with you at the moment. i have published, written the thesis, read a whole lot of things and somehow i feel i don´t remember any of them. i am also getting paranoid thinking they will ask me a really simple question and i will say something really stupid making everyone die laughing and embarrassing myself during my exam.hopefully nothing like this happens though.when such things come to my mind i take satchi´s advice and take a break to drink coffee with friends just to relax a bit. suffice it to say i drink twice as much coffee as i used to before...but hey afterwards after some friends encouragement i feel i can do it again. so Dr. Jeckyll i wish u all the best with ur preparation and the viva in the end.

Hi Wanderingbit,

you made me feel a bit better now. thank you for describing your own experience. i actually don´t feel like preparing. i am so tired of my thesis. and on the other hand i feel guilty not to try my best before the viva. but at some times I feel like i cannot see my thesis anymore. i had a mock viva 3 days ago and it didn´t go that well. i was again feeling i didn´t give it my best self. i don´t know what´s wrong with me and i don´t manage to finish strong this thing. although according to publications, writtesn thesis etc i seem to have done a pretty good job. and this is another reason i don´t want to mess up now. well at least for the moment i am busy with correcting my presentation.

Hi, thanks for the reply. yes i will do a mock viva i think it´s a good idea. preparing a list of questions also sounds good. even if they are not the same as the ones will be asked it will likely sharpen my arguing skills and hopefully give me some more confidence. i hope my viva is like yours an interesting discussion although in our department is mostly like an examination. but again it is how one feels about it that matters i guess.

Hi all, finally i am about to have my viva in a two weeks time. So I am in the process of preparing for my defence. I do some reading and try to organize my presentation. and I basically would like to have some piece of advice from people who have gone through this. How did you prepare for your defence? Also how did you cope with stress during this awaiting time? For me it´s pretty daunting the fact that in a couple of hours I have to defend a four years work. sometimes i cannot even concentrate on preparing because strange thoughts of me messing up on the viva day come up. i think i should enjoy this time and do my best to prepare to finish strong this PhD journey but it seems i cannot stop myself from spending time worrying instead. What are your thoughts?

Hey hi,

I am on the exact same boat as you. it feels so much better to see I am not alone. I used to be thinking `I wish I were in the writing up phase´ the years before. And now that I am here motivation is really down. Having been writing a couple of papers before and now my thesis it just seems I have no inspiration left. Writing about the same things over and over again feels just boring.
Having said this, making plans and breaking the work to small bits as kelpie suggested really helps me. I really like ticking off the parts done from my to do list. Then I can say i am a step closer to finish. So my advice is keep tracking of what you have done to make you feel you are accomplishing something. another tip would be to reward yourself once u finish something. something like i will concentrate in writing for two hours and then go to the cinema, or sports or whateve you like doing. maybe if you have something nice to look forward to at the end of your writing session will help ;-)!

hm I understand how you feel. But people out of academia can´t really imagine what you are going through. What happens when your fellow PhD students say ´oh you could work more?´ and they know you are working like hell? I literally felt like someone slapped me on the face when I heard this. I was like I don´t believe my ears. I never thought I would hear this from people who know I almost got sick from working too much. Anyway, I think only we know how much we put in it and we shouldn´t let anyone take us down!

Hi all,
Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post, sharing ur own experiences and giving advice. just by reading your posts I felt better...I am not alone :-). I also try to follow your advice and already have some positive results. I try to be more extrovert when I'm with others but also to enjoy my lonely moments. It doesn't work always so I sometimes still feel down but I try to minimise such feelings by telling to myself there so many PhD students like me out there!

Hello all,

I feel kind of depressed lately because I feel like having no life apart from my PhD. I only socialise with people from the department and I have no other friends. This lack of social life becomes more obvious during weekends and holidays. It is exactly when I feel so closed to myself having noone to talk to. I live alone and have no boyfriend at the moment which makes my psychology even worse. Sometimes I go to work at weekends mainly because I know i will be depressed if I stay at home. I think I am getting deeper to a certainly unhealthy state but I don´t know how to cope with it. Any ideas? Have u ever been to a similar situation?

It´s true that this is a very individual question and depends on many things. But maybe some of u could share how much far u went within ur first year? Did u already have good data, went to conferences, published etc? I´m a bit worried I need to speed up :p

As we all have a massive ammount of pdf articles we have to read relevant to our research, i was wondering how you all deal with it? Computer screen really hearts my eyes. I print almost all articles that are really interesting but it they started occupying a lot of space in my room, not to mention it's not easy to file or carry around every time. I was thinking about e book readers or ipad or i could reconsider a netbook computer with a screen designed not to affect eyes that much. What is your opinion? Have you ever used ebook readers for your articles?

Congrats! Should feel great! Good luck with ur viva (up)

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ok thank u both. i think i will try to enjoy it as much as possible and maybe i have some helpful comments from people too this time.(up)