Hey Jouri: nothing is worse than toothache/dental pain. When I had to have my root canal done I was in so much pain that I couldn't sit still, let alone hold a polite conversation. Hope it gets fixed soon.

"The worst thing that has happened at my uni recently is that the expense form and original train tickets of a very eminent keynote speaker were lost and she still has not been paid nearly a year after the conference she attended!"

I can beat that record: I went to a conference April 2007 and still haven't been paid expenses! They lost all my receipts, and didn't tell me till last month. Luckily I had the email confirmation of flights etc; so they should be paying me in November. Not holding my breath;-)

Jouri, that was very rude of you. Not being paid on time is serious in itself, and Twinkle is very entitled to a moan; I would! I bet you would too. And I've had emergency extractions twice. You'll be fine, if anxiety is the cause of your unusual response. Don't worry; it doesn't hurt these days.

Twinkle, it can be really frustrating; I've had a good moan too lately (about being treated as a badly-paid technician, in my case). One day...it will all be worth it.

Yes, we have a progress meeting next week so I will raise the matter there, I think. They don't bloody pay me enough to have me working that much!
;-)

Silence (and no samples) since Monday...maybe things are slowing down(up)

"coastman, I think you should add a "Moral of this thread" comment at the end of every thread"

What a brilliant idea! Do it!

"I am actually looking forward to it and have some quite personal and disguised messages for this person".

Hehe! Good for you:-)

That is annoying. Have you said to her directly that you have made her changes, and you do not understand why she is still not happy (easier said than done, I know)?

My supervisor told me once that he submitted his thesis 11 times before it was accepted: by the 11th time, his supervisor was making changes that took it right back to the original, unmodified, draft: so clearly his supervisor wasn't paying too much attention but making changes for the sake of it!

Thanks Sneaks: that is a good suggestion. I think having a bit of legal paper would be very useful when it comes to arguing my case; though I hope it won't come to that.

I did get an apology from Mr 50-grand this morning, so things perhaps are not too bad now. Everyone is stressed and they're passing it on to everyone else:p

Hi Az,

I think it depends a lot on your supervisor and funding body. Some supervisors will want to to get on with it alone; others will tell you what to do every step of the way. Equally, some funding bodies will let you get on with research, whereas others will throw commercial work at you (sore point with me at the moment!). If you can, talk to other students within the group that interests you before commiting to anything.

Are you being paid for hanging on like this? Remind him that you have bills to pay!

I agree with what someone else here said...if she goes out of her way to try to make you feel inferior, she clearly sees you as a threat. It's the academic equivalent of bitching about a beautiful girl: it's down to insecurity on some level. In fact (and tell me to shut up if I'm out of line here) but could it be a bit of that too? You're both female and you are quite possibly younger and smarter than her. It may well be simple jealousy.

Thanks for your responses everyone; I really needed to blow off steam last week. I think it's true that sometimes PhD students can be used as cheap consultancy. After that "50 grand" phone call, I thought of a great response: I used to work in industy, and turnaround time for analysis there is 5 working days. Rapid response (expensive) is 24 hours. They're getting results within 6 hours, so they can stick their "delay" where the sun don't shine...

Rick, yes I think I have trouble saying no! I am never sure, when I get mad at these people, if it's just me being unreasonable, so I don't feel able to tell them to back off. A member of the academic staff here was in the room when I got that phone call - he told me that I don't have to accept other people's unreasonable deadlines, but set my own reasonable ones. Which sounds fair...but I worry that we'll lose funding if I say that to them.

Yup. The mobile's ringing now but it's getting IGNORED ;-).

Yes, that's just it. They keep summoning me to do spot tests in their lab 150 miles away, and they don't give me any notice. I can't get their sample data today cos someone else has booked the machine - if they'd given me notice I could have booked it, but they didn't. So I've just had a bollocking over the phone about my delays "costing them 50 grand". I feel like telling them where to get off at the moment.

Just wanting to moan a bit really...in exchange for my funding I'm expected to do some commercial work, but it really seems to be getting out of hand. I haven't done any PhD research, or even had a day off (including weekends) since July, and just as it was expected to be slowing down they're now staring up a new project and things are busier than ever. My mobile is ringing from 8am to 9pm some days and they're dropping samples off with no warning, and expecting results within hours. I think I might lose the plot if this goes on much longer...


has anyone else had to deal with demands from their partners? I mean I know I have a responsibility to do these analyses, but I think there should be some kind of limit in place:-s