Funny you say that about engineering: I'm in pharmacy and ours are great, but whenever we've had to deal with engineering, disaster has indeed struck. They don't know their proverbials from a hole in the ground, and are frequently "unavailable". Orders that take our office 24 hours can take 3 months for them Maybe they're conducting some form of time dilation experiment over there.

As for me...Juno is tired of businessmen ringing her mobile asking if their samples - delivered 1 hour ago - have been analysed yet. Analysis takes time, non-scientist people:-s

So true: I'd sometimes rather have crap data than ambigious data: at least you know where you are with crap.

I've about a year and a half to go, but I'm already getting grant proposals together and trying to gather data for my "so far imaginary) postdoc career. If you're in the scientific area, I have found time and again when writing grants that we ger good feedback, but told that we really needed to add data and preliminary research/publications: ideas alone aren't enough. So if I can fit those in whilst finishing my PhD, I will.

A member of staff here told me this week that he thinks universities are not doing enough to provide postdocs: they offer very little support beyond PhD. All the money for postdocs comes from business links or research councils. And I tell you I am trying to run away from business links! Done nothing but commercial work since July; going a bit stir-crazy!

It's a good idea, but this forum is aimed at postgraduate students, so I don't think we will be of much help!

"You Should Be a Mechanic

You are logical, calm, and detail oriented.
You're rational when things are chaotic, and for you, reason always prevails.
And while you are guided by logic, you aren't a slave to it.
You're flexible when it counts. You are always open to being wrong."

Well, that last bit's true: i've had plenty of practise at being wrong.

Juno is heartily sick of PCs crashing halfway through something that's taken ages to prepare.

Tsipat, what you describe sounds exactly what I had for a couple of weeks. Seems to have passed with me; if it doesn't settle just go and have a quick check up.

Only 50% British! Which is genetically true as well.

Although at our uni there's some "affectionate" teasing between science and humanities students, I'd probably agree that it's harder to write an original thesis in humanities. But I still argue that even in the sciences, you're not going to do decent work in the timescales suggested on this forum. Especially not with all the instruments breaking down, competition for time on machines, devising of new methods, throwing newly devised methods in the bin...and so on.

Ha! I LOVE these: we've been checking these for ages in our group; even my supervisor loves them. This is my favourite at the moment:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1051

The story continues for 4 or 5 pages. Every science student will recognise this scenario.

I've been a bit like this lately; just for a week or so. I also had the trots and a bit of a temperature; so I wonder if something is going round. But it was really hard to get anything useful done. I think also it had to do with something that was worrying/annoying me; this takes energy out of you. As soon as I got the nerve to talk to my supervisor I felt better. So if anything is bothering you, talk about it. It didn't come easily to me but I fell much better for doing it.

I'm sorry that you're in such a crappy situation. I don't think I have any really helpful advice except remember that you are not the problem here! Don't let their pathetic behaviour lead you to start questioning yourself: it doesn't sound to me like you've been in the least "rude or temperamental": I think you've been extremely patient with these jerks.

Why does the "Quote" option never work?! That first part of my response was a quote, anyone who's interested.

the net amount of experimental work for a PHD student wont take more than 6 months. the former student of my supervisor finished his PHD degree within 2 years and published 20 journal papers. Nothing is impossible as long as one works hard[/quote]

This may be true if the previous student has laid down the groundwork for your PhD: I've seen some students here having a much easier time than others for this reason. But if you are really doing original research, you're not going to do a decent job of it in such a short time.