What's the possibility of having a serious one-on-one with your current supervisor and laying out your concerns in detail? Do you think he'll be able to actually listen?

oh boy..

13 years is a lot of experience to speak of roger. I can't say I know what would normally go into a media arts personal statement but if it's like other general personal statements, speak of your 13 years of professional experience (ie. spotlight specific achievements), talk about your knowledge of the industry so that you're letting the admissions officers (or whoever's doing the selections) know that you know what you're getting yourself into without any misconceptions of the industry or your future. Let them know what you want to get out of the course and what you want to achieve post-graduation with the MA.

And some important qualities they will probably want to see is maturity, focus, and genuine commitment.

What area did you complete your PhD in?

That said, if you have young kids, you'd have to be very very good with time management to make it work with a full time PhD. It's possible but you have to know what you're doing and on the ball for the length of the four years until you submit your thesis. And you'd have to have a good supervisor who will understand if you had to take a day off occassionally for your kid's birthdays and emergencies, whatever it may be, or at least a supervisor who is ok with you having a flexible schedule.

o.stoll makes a point worth mentioning - stretching your PhD through extra years may wear you down the longer you take to complete it. It's a matter of how focused you are and how much you want it. What o.stoll is saying that statistically PT students tend to wear themselves down over the years and quit. I'd be interested to see the stats though, I've heard about this but never really seen it happen.

Supervisors would rather have you doing the PhD fulltime because they want to know that you're working at 110% producing groundbreaking findings and publishable results asap. They don't want to have to wait 8 years for overall results, the research topic may have moved on by then. It helps with their funding opportunities as well.

I've known a couple of people doing a part-time PhD but they were also working as research assistants at the same time as they're doing their PhD. That in itself is questionable particularly if you were to factor in scholarships but their RA work was in a slightly different area. A supervisor may be more supportive of an RA/PhD situation because your role is still 100% with your department and you're still actively doing work that potentially produces publishable results (more or less).

No I think you're thinking of Dr Jacques Strap.

Great that you're actually enjoying this, you won't mind future posts about your name and your cheap advice about 'love' then.

A blonde Swedish exchange student once taught me to say "jag alska dig".

By the way my comment re "I had to work ten times harder..." was actually a jab at the ones who perpetrators of prejudice, not the victims.

Do you have any idea what you'll do?

You're just pissed cos your name is actually 'Rosy'.

And no, if you actually read my posts you'd realise that they're far from 'negative about everything in general'.

I know Amanda Huggenkiss from the University of South Carolina that you might be interested in.

I get up on the wrong side of the bed first, THEN I have sour milk for breakfast.

One a more personal note Corrine, don't take it personally.

I agree, it does eat up a lot of time while you're preparing it. But once you've got the lecture down, it should be relatively smooth sailing.

Having university teaching experience can be a boost to your resume when you're looking for academic postings after your PhD or postdoc.

The best time to catch 'em is first semester of their first year. They're all still wide-eyed and attentive and university still has a slight gloss about it.

The sex, drugs and rock-n-roll starts to really kick in in 2nd semester.