Hi Journey,

Don't apologise for whinging. You are discussing something that is really important to you. It sounds as if you are dealing with some doubt (and a little bit of despair) about where your hard work, success and study have led you.

I think that universities (and the people who staff them) say quite a lot of things about what will get you work and what won't but in the end, as you yourself pointed out earlier, it is complex and there are quite a number of factors that influence whether you will find work and the type of employment you obtain.

It does matter about which university you completed your PhD when applying for many positions-not all but definitely some. It matters because of the reputation, through the networking contacts, and because sometimes the 'standing' of a top university implies to others that your PhD and experiences are of a certain quality (whether this is true or not). Teaching also matters as noted above.

Given a range of 'equal' applicants-if you have to shortlist from a huge number of applications, then prestige of university, teaching experience, presentation of CV and interviewing skills, supervisor recommendations (and contacts) and publications and conferences-they are all going to contribute to who is interviewed and who is finally given the position.

Sometimes lecturers in universities (in the past especially-although they seem to be much more realistic recently-in personal experiences and that of friends), sold people their 'dreams'. 'Follow your star-you are one of the bright ones who have so much opportunity' sorts of discussions. And it was tempting to believe them and many did-including myself in younger years.

[For example, I understand that completing my PhD now will only lead me to certain destinations now given my age, stage and where I am studying (a very reputable uni indeed but not one of top standing). I am studying part-time as well. This doesn't mean it isn't worth doing the PhD or that it will lead nowhere but it realistically won't lead to the same destination as that of some of my fellow younger PhDers studying in more prestigious universities].

This doesn't mean you won't ever get a great job-but sometimes you need to be realistic, especially when looking for entry level employment. Have you had someone else check your CV-your old supervisor, or a friend yet? And can you broaden your search field while still looking for that dream post doctorate or research position? Can you get a practical diploma that enables you to teach in a college or senior secondary school or similar while you continue to look? Can you apply for a government level entry admin position where you can work your way into a research job later on? You may have thought of all of these already. I think you need to start making a plan and accept that you feel pretty upset (deep down) about the present state of affairs but you need to make a plan, follow it and don't look back (yet).

It sounds like you have a very good chance, but often a committee helps make the decision as well. In my own university, decisions were made by the faculty's graduate research committee after recommendations from the University's main research faculty. I had to apply, have interviews and then submit a formal proposal. The process took around 3 months or so. I didn't know the lecturers so hadn't approached a supervisor-however, even if I had, the formal committee meetings and discussion would have still needed to happen.

In the case of my daughter applying for a different university ...well she requested potential supervisors who were happy to supervise her and advised her to submit an application-like yourself.

She was going for full funding-fee scholarship and a full living scholarship, so her application had to be approved by the funding committees, then the faculty and university as well. It also took at least 3 months to sort out and it was highly competitive, so she was a little anxious, although I was fairly sure she would get it.

So, if, as Satchi, has said, your potential supervisor has agreed to take you, then you have a very good chance, but the supervisor isn't the only one who has to approve or process your application and the process can take time.

Hi shamakhan, do you practice law or do you teach English? And, as Hazy Jane says, which one do you want to pursue in terms of employment.

Can't help you with funding advice, although I suspect that the professional funding might be easier to get than the creative writing funding. However, that being said...I'm doing a PhD in my professional area-so I teach and administrate in high school, and my PhD research topic is in the same area.

The PhD will only advantage me in a personal professional way. It probably won't hinder my career but given my age and present economy (mid career professional- most academic positions will go to younger candidates) it is not likely to really add to it-with the one exception that I will be able to write and publish in my field more readily and will have the confidence and expertise to do so.

A Masters (with a professional focus) has been far more useful for my profession-but I already have one of those.

In hindsight, I think it would have been more rewarding doing further study in a topic of personal interest and passion rather than a professional one-once I had the Masters for work purposes. I enjoy a lot of my study but it is very dry at times and it can feel as if I am just working and then researching (work related) and have no time left for learning about things that I just love to learn about and explore.

In my case, I needed to make up my mind relatively quickly (within a year or so) after finishing my Masters thesis so as to get the fee free scholarship, etc-so this is why I took the pathway above.

If I were choosing now-I would probably go with the personal love not the professional interests.

If I were in your situation, I would probably want to get a professional masters for career reasons and then would want to explore my love of creative writing afterwards as a reward and personal passion. Good luck with the decision making.

I would think it is very possible. To be honest, you are not exactly part-time-if you complete at least 30 hours on PhD and only have one full time day's work a week. It would be more acurate to say you were doing three-quarter time-and I'll bet that many full timer's are on a similar time frame and work load.

My daughter is doing a full time PhD in History and she works one day a week and is allowed to on a full scholarship and stipend (it is written into the conditions). She would probably average around 36-38 hours on her PhD, give or take a few hours here and there.

Definitely doable in term's of time and workload. Good luck and Eska's advice about supervisor (including the dragging out of it) is invaluable. Can be so true. :)

I hope it was helpful.I was worried I might have 'read' as not really understanding. I can see how frustrating it would be-it would bother me as well.

With regard to the Masters-I'm doing a PhD (part-time) and while I really like doing it when I have time, it can be very stressful and a real burden when my work is really busy. Ive also had my children move interstate which is really quite hard-although I see them every few months and we talk all the time.

I have just put in for long service leave for around 4 months at the end of 2014-and I have made a promise to myself that I'll have my data collected, transcribed, and will be ready for final analyis and write up by the start of this leave. Will have drafts of first three chapters done as well. If by the end of this time, I don't have an end point in sight (like within the next 12 months or so-by the end of 2015-start of 2016) I'm just going to put in for a Masters (Research). I'm also going to take the time during my leave to look for a new job interstate, sell my house and move and buy a unit and start a new life.

I finally don't care what the end point will be with regard to the thesis. I'd like a PhD and I think that I will get one, but I have to have some end points or I will not cope. Even if I have to extend my deadlines a little-as long as they don't go on indefinitely and this is the same for my current job as well.

I'm not sure why I am writing all this on here-its just when I made this decision (took a few months of really thinking about all the ins and outs) but I finalised it Friday and put in officially for the leave. This was after a hellish working week -no energy for anything outside of work and some running training and looking after pets- and the realisation that I did not want to go on like this indefinitely...well I feel much better now. Hope you do as well.

Actually, you know, the world of work and practice can be really difficult as well. I work as a secondary school teacher and I'd have to say sociopaths, narcissists and managers from hell abound there as well.

Perhaps if you are a clinical psychologist then you might hope that you have reached a point of reasonably balanced adulthood as have your peers, but I think I have met and found that difficult people are everywhere I have worked (have worked in hospitality, retail and admin as a much younger person).

Just a question, do you have to have a clinical doctorate to practice as a clinical psychologist nowadays (or where you are)? I believe here (in Australia) it is still the clinical masters that is required. I do know that to break into this area it is pretty difficult and the qualifications seem to get ever more difficult.

However, having said that, you may do really well with your thesis-while 30 000 words seems huge, it is doable if you conceive of it as 5 large essays of around 6000 words each. But I know you need to get the injustice of it all off your chest, so I won't say anything more. I'll bet you are not the only person in this situation who feels this way though...

I wouldn't confide in him again but it might not be wise to make a formal complaint about this either. From my perspective, I would follow the outline you mentioned when you said
"put your head down, work hard for a year and a half and get the hell out of the department".

But that doesn't mean that you relate to your supervisor in the same way. Keep it professional, don't confide anything personal to him again (well confidential anyway) he's blown that privilege and look at the PhD as the opportunity to gain credibility as a new researcher and someone who has trained their thinking, writing and analytical capabilities to a very high level. Then move on...

All of the other stuff sounds unfair and it is really understandable how you feel and why you are upset about it, but it is nebulous sort of stuff that might not really go anywhere and might harm your own case more than anyone elses.

That being said, don't feel like you have to really like this person or accept what they have done as okay.

Do you think that this project might pigeon hole you 'research-wise'? I'm just thinking that once this is done, you may still be able to explore this other area you are interested in. With people doing PhD's as a pathway into academic research and teaching (not all of us are), I don't think that they would all just stay with the topic explored in the PhD-which tends to end up as a rather narrow topic anyway.

If you look at the research profiles of academics and researchers in their publication histories and biographical blurbs-their areas of interest tend to be much broader than their original PhD thesis ever was. Understand though completely why you need to rant...

Hi Capone, look I don't know that much about maths phds-or life sciences for that matter, but given that you have endured two and a half years of hell, is it possible to sort of compromise on your present position (just quit) and gather all your stuff into a Masters rather than the PhD.

Could you do something in around 3 months or so? A masters is a worthwhile endeavour but usually the amount, length and level of work is just that step below a PhD. But saying that, because it isn't quite so rigorous or onerous as a degree or thesis, it might be possible to do this in a short period of time and then walk way, free, happier, but with something to show for all of your troubles.

What do you think? Is this a viable option at all?

It's called Mytomatoes- mytomatoes.com/
It is an online timer so it is helpful for timing yourself through boring and onerous tasks for 25 minutes and then giving you a break for five.

But perhaps by 6 months, you should be looking at making yourself a conceptual map, framework or graphic organiser of your readings and different concepts, areas and questions that relate to your topic. Gliffy is a good online organising tool. You have to think about how your topic is organised by yourself, but you can use gliffy (or something similar) to write up your different areas and to organise them into one very 'pro' looking diagram that you can use as a guide. Another good method might be to createa presi on what you know already (for yourself).

Once you have got your readings somewhat organised into a visual map of the area, you can then isolate aspects of each subtopic and then decide each week, which bit you are going to work on and what needs to be done.

Do you have a research plan in place yet and either a hypothesis or questions that you are testing or researching?

Start unpacking what each question or aspect of your hypothesis consists of or see whether you really have enough research under each heading and where there are areas and gaps.

If you are a reflective creative style thinker, you could just sit down and write every day-a page or so of what you know, what you understand, what you are questioning and any other points of interest. You will find that your mind starts organising things after a while-and the writing will help you map out a narrative version of a pathway.

Invest in some 'how to do a phd' books as well-they really help and go to your supervisor and ask whether he/she thinks what you are doing is okay. Sorry got to go now but hope this is not too confusing...am sure others will add more. Good luck Laura-it is normal to be confused at this stage as well...

HI Tane,

Initially because I was being too conscientious or 'true to the method'. When my supervisor mentioned it, I researched it. Well she didn't mention constructivist-but after looking at the Glasser and Strauss versions, I quickly started reading articles from nursing disciplines and worked out that Charmaz seemed like a great method.

But I was troubled by a couple of things-one the emphasis on little or no lit review-although I think this is clarified by Charmaz somewhat-the second by a sibling who is a professor sharing some horror stories about students who only wrote interpretations or descriptions using this method, including a examinee who she had had to give a write and resubmit to.

My own supervisor is an absolute empiricist-who uses quantitative and qualitative data but coming from an educational background in maths teaching and maths as a discipline-does not have her primary focus on the sort of qualitative research I am doing, so was a little limited in her advice about GT.

Then at our PhD compulsory seminars and workshops last year (Research Degree 101 and 102 :) !)-we had to submit a lit review draft, intro chapter, full research plan and ethics application drafts as our assignments. I became a bit worried about whether I was going to
1 Be able to start without too much background information in a true grounded theory way (esp as I had to do a full-huge ethics app)
2 I wondered what my philosophy or theoretical background was going to be as professionally I tend to be a bit eclectic and pragmatic in my approach to teaching
3 I needed to fully outline my group of participants and my methodologies to Ethics Committee as a research student with limited experience and didn't think a vague outline of a topic plus a 'snowball' sample style that didn't specify exactly what I was going to do and with whom-would cut it with the committee-and I was right.

So in a huge trawl for information, I looked at the five main approaches for qualitative research (in Social sciences but esp. in education and healthcare) and realised that phenomenology was not only a better personal fit-but would allow me to complete all of the above without fudging things.

I am not worried in this particular study, whether I create new theory-what I want to do is clarify and elicit meaning through describing and interpreting what is actually happening for the participants/actors in my topic. I tend to be comforted by the philosophy that experience has meaning-at least it does for the actors-and that meaning can be many layered and without realising it, I was drawn to a topic that does have an autobiographical element to it (as many phenomenological studies do).

Your study sounds huge-well done...none of this, I hope, puts the negative spin on GT-it's a great method but phenomenology and its underpinning philosophical approaches seemed to suit me better. Apologies for epic length btw.

Hi Petalouda,
I found this article incredibly useful. It compares hermaneutical phenomenology (ala Van Manen) to empirical phenomenology (ala Giorgi, Van Kaam) and also provides an example of each using the same data and participant (or actor).

The differences in approaches are really clear.

The article is:

Empirical and Hermeneutic Approaches to Phenomenological Research in Psychology: A Comparison

Serge F. Hein and Wendy J. Austin University of Alberta

Psychological Methods 2001, Vol.6, No. 1,3-17

(The article is much better than the abstract-don't be put off).

Abstract:
Empirical phenomenology and hermeneutic phenomenology, the 2 most common approaches to phenomenological research in psychology, are described, and their similarities and differences examined. A specific method associated with each form of phenomenological inquiry was used to analyze an interview transcript of a woman's experience of work-family role conflict. A considerable degree of simi- larity was found in the resulting descriptions. It is argued that such convergence in analyses is due to the human capacities of reflection and intuition and the presence of intersubjective meanings. The similarity in the analyses is also encouraging about researchers' ability to reveal meaning despite the use of different methods and the difficulties associated with interpreting meaning.

I think you have to cite lectures, etc, and I also think you have to cite yourself (if it was your own paper, lecture, personal correspondence, presentation made on some public
forum). If the finding, concept or idea came from a lecture you attended that was presented by someone else-then you definitely need to cite this.

Most style guides have the appropriate citation style for all of the modes-lecture, internet site, news article, conference, personal correspondence, etc.

It's a painful process generally isn't it-especially the checking of individual citations? Probably why my second supervisor is so pedantic even with citations in very very rough drafts (!!)

You don't have to cite your own analysis that is coming forth in the paper though...as in something that you have thought, discovered, created-unless you have already published this creation previously. And you can limit having to do excessive citations somewhat, by only citing a major source-

eg As Smith (1991) noted in his work on ......or As Smith (1991) and Jackson (1980) both note-

but leaving out Green(1995), Cork (1993) and Grinspoon (1987)-who are not as major compared to Smith and/or Jackson- even though you know they said it as well.

If it is for a powerpoint or presi that you are giving with an spoken paper, I think you can get away with not citing all of the above in the pp and the speech-but (I think) they would need to be in the paper that is published as part of the conference proceedings. (Even if you didn't say all of this when delivering).

But hope I haven't misunderstood your question.

Hi Changer88, you can certainly submit papers to journals for publication, even with your supervisor as second author, without having any formal input from your supervisor.

I did this with a paper published late last year. The paper was based on my Masters thesis findings and my supervisor was entitled to be included as a second author-as she had supervised me during the research that the paper was based on.

Having said that-she was/is a very busy person and did not take any active part in this paper whatsoever, which was written after graduating from my previous university. I cc'd her into all correspondence, and so did the Editor of the journal and all of the peer reviewers.

I rewrote the paper myself after receiving peer review from three academics and it was published under both of our names in a very good-high impact journal. My former university has since listed this under its 2012 publications, as has, I imagine, my former supervisor.

After the initial email to tell her what I was doing, and then the cc'd emails from all of the correspondence-I did not actually have any input from her at all. But she was happy when we got the final acceptance and sent me a quick congratulatory email. So go ahead and do it-just make sure, even if your supervisor is 'difficult', you still include him as a second author and you keep him in the email circuit.

Forget about all of the emotional stuff-whether it is true or not-and some of it might be-you need to just act like a professional researcher and seek to get your work recognised. All of the other stuff will be unimportant and fade away once you have your paper published.

I'm not sure about the patent however, so I am hoping someone with experience in this area will also respond. Good luck-your work deserves recognition and you should just act-but act professionally and responsibly and don't wait for a reply from your supervisor.

And the key word here is 'bullying'. Grunts, 'death stares or glares', one word answers, exclusion, etc -if the person has the usual set of social skills-so this behaviour is not their usual personality and if it is kept over a period of time-it's bullying. Advice from others is great, so this is just to reassure you that the person is not behaving in an adult fashion nor as a professional. Whether you click with someone and they become your new 'best bud' or whatever, or whether you don't-in an adult and professional workplace we are all entitled to basic respect, whereas this sort of behaviour is fairly adolescent. Let's hope she grows out of it...people often do. Hope you have a better week...

Sorry Petaloud, I don't have many research articles on Van Manen-I read his book and and then found Moustakas, read most of that-compared the two and went with Moustakas after reading the Creswell one -or parts thereof-as well. Also read some Husserl but not as much.
Most of my journal articles read for methodology theory were involving constructivist grounded theory-when I thought I was going to do that and they were generally nursing and healthcare journal articles.

I did go onto the websites-see below

These links have many articles listed which might be helpful.