PhD scholarships are advertised on the uni websites (search through Braintrack), on the job ad sites (eg. seek.com.au) and scientific ones are also on the CSIRO website. There may be a central PhD project site that I am unaware of - I was very fortunate and did not have to search and apply for my project and scholarship. By the way, we don't have vivas!

I find Australia is further from Europe than Europe is from Australia - you won't come because it is "too far", but we accept we are isolated and just get on a plane. If we were anywhere else, we wouldn't have such beautiful beaches!

I'm Australian in Australia. Not sure I like us being "the next US" - there are few similarities. Perhaps academics come because we are an English-speaking country with decent universities and more research funding than many other countries. In my lab we have people from Australia, NZ, China, Malaysia, Europe (including UK), US and South America - maybe the multiculturalism appeals to foreigners.

People say we are relaxed. I have never lived overseas, so can't judge. Whenever I travel in Europe, I find myself wishing the locals were a bit more patient, so maybe we are more relaxed here!

As soon as I wrote my last message, I realised how dumb my last question sounded! Der-brain.

I had no idea patooba was in fact a real word. I asked my boyfriend last night how we got the word and he said he made it up (I am sure I made it up) but perhaps neither of us did after all. For us it doesn't mean big butt though.

I'm the opposite to you - I stop functioning after 9pm and a freight train could go through my bedroom and I would still fall asleep.

I know there are projects available in that area in Australia (they are advertised online) and seeing you are willing to go anywhere in the world, Australia shouldn't be a problem. In my department, there are as many international PhD students as Australians, so you can be assured of feeling welcome.

Also, universities here do not have set start dates for PhD projects - you can start when it is suitable for you, your supervisors and the funding.

Besides, we have better weather!

Hi insomniac. You can use patooba as much as you want - I use it to describe a lazy fatty who sits on the couch doing nothing, but kind of in an endearing way. My boyfriend calls me patooba all the time!

I am not pulling an all-nighter when I post on here in the middle of the night - I am in Australia, so I post when most of you are asleep. Do you struggle sleeping?

But that still means sugar_student is jumping a couple of steps for a PhD student who has 1-2 years to go. Jeez, maybe I should have done some 14 hour days and worked on Christmas during my PhD. Professor Piglet.

What the...? I don't understand, pea. Do you mean DanB wrote this poem (poorly!), put it on myspace and you only found out about it when someone else told you?

I always thought DanB sounded like a decent bloke - but that is just immature and hurtful...not to mention factully inaccurate.


pea, I think you are great and I enjoy reading what you write on this forum.

Now I am REALLY concerned about the quality of Professors in Canada.

If sugar_student is a 4th year PhD student (bearing in mind it takes 5-7 years to finish a PhD in Canada) - how the heck can she be applying for Professor positions????????

If that is the case, bugger this thesis caper, I am catching the next plane to Vancouver and becoming a Professor!!!

Ssshhh...don't let sugar_student hear you say that.

Would love one, thanks insomniac, but I am on a diet because Christmas turned me into a fat patooba.

Lol sugar_student! That 2 hour comment was a joke, right?

If it wasn't, I sure hope you told your supervisor where he/she can stick his/her Christmas tree.


You don't have to be a martyr to successfully complete your PhD.

Mark/sparklechops, I'm happy and don't hate doing my PhD. Sure, there are days when I want to quit, wish I had never started and contemplate moving to Abu Dhabi to escape - but from what I can gather you get that with most jobs.

Perhaps there are a lot of negative posts here because this is a great place for venting and getting electronic TLC. This forum makes me feel 'normal' when I lack motivation, question my own ability and have a failed experiment.

Don't judge your new team too quickly. Most of my labmates would seem a bit odd on first glance too - the highly-strung postdoc, the PhD student who doesn't shower or wash his clothes (even in summer!), the supervisor who wears far too much lycra. But they are great people and I call most of them friends.

I think you will be fine and perhaps it is just those paint fumes and cold feet making you worry at the last minute. Good luck tomorrow and let us know how it goes.

I believe it's pointless arguing about which is the "better" university or which country has a "higher" standard of education. It's human nature to think the system we are familiar with or are a product of is superior. If we didn't think our own education system/university/faculty/department/laboratory was good, we wouldn't have signed up there in the first place.

Nobody here is in a position to compare European education with North American education objectively - you are all looking at the comparison with great bias. We certainly cannot draw conclusions based on what Bobby's friend thinks or what Matthews82 read somewhere.

According to Braintrack, there are 3334 universities in Nth America and 2360 in Europe. It would have to be a bloody thorough study that draws a statistically-valid claim about which is the superior of those two populations!

There is so much I want to say, but most of it would get me banned from the forum.

Hot cross buns appeared in the supermarkets on January 2nd. I know I should make a silent protest and not buy them until 2 weeks before Easter, but their cinnamon deliciousness is calling "buy me, eat me" already.