Have sent you a PM, my institution does subscribe to this, I can email it to you.

Well, that's a mixed bag! It'll be in theoretical physics and will be number crunching from experimental work that a fellow PhD will be doing. I'm hoping that there will be journal papers coming from the work since it is fairly groundbreaking (if it is successful!) so I'll expect more hours when I get to writing them up.

I think if its in situations like that where the workload is heavier for a spell it's manageable. I just don't want to completely miss the next ~4 years of my children's lives :-) Equally I don't want to do it part time - I'm 30 this year and pretty keen to get started on my "real" career. It's good to know that with decent time management normal-ish hours aren't completely out of the question.

I'm hopefully going to be leaving the world of steady employment to start on a PhD in a couple of months. I'm used to the 9-5 and I did partly choose my current job because it freed up my weekends to spend with my family (I have two kids). I'm just wondering how many hours per week you normally spend working on your PhD - I really want to get it done and dusted within 3.5 years and get on with my career, but equally not to the detriment of time with my children (and my hubby's sanity!). I don't mind the occasional late night or weekend but just not allllllll the time. I could be, and probably will be, doing stuff at home of an evening or weekend but obviously that's not "visible".

I don't want my supervisor and co-researchers to think I'm a slacker if I stick to my 9-5 routine with occasional weekend/late night work, but then I've not really got much of an idea about what I'm letting myself in for and whether that's even possible. Am I looking at a return to 60+ hour weeks? Is it feasible to stick to, say, 40 or so per week and get finished in 3.5 years?

Regarding your supervisor, I think that you are going to have to be honest and tell him that it is a genuine phobia - but also say that you didn't realise it was as you've never been in a situation where you've had to deal with it before.

Attend a course, and take it one step at a time. The point of it obviously would be to remove the irrational, paralysing fear so that you can travel by plane in the future and make your life a bit easier. You are not only missing out on conferences, but also just on experiencing the world. Having said that, if there are European conferences you'd like to attend, there's always the train - it might take longer but it's possibly an option to consider while you're dealing with this so you don't miss out?

I have access to this, I've sent you a PM :-)