Monikaa,

I can see that your last login was one hour ago.
Can you confirm that you are OK and have received some help?

I would think about whether you want a hierarchical relationship or one which is peer-to-peer level.

Then start addressing people the way you want to continue to address them.

I wouldn't over-analyse how they might respond to you because anyone who gets upset at being addressed by their first name in an email such as "Hi John", probably isn't someone you want to be conducting a professional relationship with. For example, I would not address an academic as either Professor or Doctor beyond perhaps the very first email I sent them if I was the first of us to make contact. Beyond that first email it would be "Hi John".

If they had initiated contact with an email which started "Adam" or whatever with no greeting, I'd be responding "Hi John" from the first email response without exception.

I would always advise against anyone doing something because it "looks good on your CV". If you find yourself even thinking this, you should immediately stop and re-consider.

Soooner or later, unless you are doing things which you really want to do, this will be your undoing.

The key to negotiation is to sit down, take your time and make a list of everything you want to be given.
Then for each thing write down your red lines on each issue (if there is one) and your starting position.
You must be prepared to walk away if one of your red lines is breached. For example working 70 hours a week or 6 days a week.

What you are now doing is having a conversation with the other person to see if a position of mutual benefit can be reached. If not, you both walk away. I started using this in job interviews. It's very liberating to terminate an interview early and leave because the job isn't a good match (I've done this at least twice). It's also quite good fun.

The key is not to be in a position of weakness - i.e. desperation. If you are in this position and they smell that (which they most likely will), you'll end up with something you might regret for a long time.
Most people fail at negotiation because they are too desperate to be accepted.

Hope this helps.

It shouldn't be your age. There are plenty of us much older than 40 who have done PhDs.
It might be to do with which institutes you are applying to. There might be a lot of competition with others who may have summer research work experience. It could also be the discipline you are undertaking. Can you provide us with more detail?

Could the number of years you have been a postdoc be starting to affect your chances here? If you are beyond 5 years, without having secured a fellowship or some money yourself, you might be starting to set off alarm bells.

Yep this is normal.
It's not going to help you to compare a PhD to normal work because it's a solo pursuit (or it should be). You are doing something which by definition cannot have been done by anyone else. There is therefore no real "teamwork" to be involved in. Even if you were part of a team working on a piece of large science for example, you would be working on your own part so there would still be a lot of isolation.

The PhD is designed to prepare you for a career as an independent researcher.
The only really effective technique is to accept that and see it as something you value being. Anything else is going to be a coping technique and the process is going to be miserable for you. You definitely don't want to be "coping" for years. You want to be enjoying this. Focussing on synchronising what you want with what a PhD offers will buy you peace of mind.

What do you mean by a "good" PhD?

monikaa,

You are not going to help the process of re-discovering yourself by making completely inappropriate comparisons between yourself and someone like Elon Musk and then trying to change your entire philosophy based on what you think he would have done in your situation. That thought process is going to land you straight back at square one I'm afraid.

Let's be very clear here.
Elon Musk is very charismatic, has great vision and is exceptionally good at prizing money from the pockets of rich investors.
Beyond that, I am struggling to understand the global rush to "white knight" this individual.

The truly smart people he is riding on the crest of are his workforce. Musk isn't coding, designing hardware, testing rockets or building any of his cars.

Business-wise, he is a serial failure and most of his companies appear to be loss-making.
He is no different from Richard Branson. The reward for thousands of the Tesla employees who sacrificed their personal lives to help him hit his targets is likely to be mass unemployment.

It's easy to be successful when you are spending billions of pounds of other peoples money and thus able to recruit the best scientists and engineers to turn your dreams into actual products. Without either of these things, Musk would be a dreamer like the rest of us.

Be very careful who you idolise in life.

So let me get this right Nathalie.
You are asking us whether it is OK to avoid going to a medical professional for help and instead go to organised criminals to buy illegal drugs for a condition you may not even have?
Or are you, more likely, just trying to hawk your own drugs on this site?

Just to back up TQs comment.
That advice is absolute gold.
Don't just say you have a desired skill. Prove it.
If you can do that for 60% of the skills required and mitigate away the others you'll find you'll get more interview offers.
I was taught that 30 years ago and it transformed my job hunting success.