Are you being discriminated against because you're a woman or your academic performance?

Can't really give you any advice about your predicament though. Some people thrive on overcoming serious pressure, tackling the bull by the horns so to speak. On the other hand, I can understand if you've been placed under undue prejudice and duress. If that's the case it's quite understandable to walk out and find a better environment to do your postgrad studies.

But I suspect that you will probably come across the same kind of prejudice and pressure in the real business environment out there, it's still a male-dominated scene in the business world irrespective of what people say about women making more of an impact these days. But if you're doing PhD studies I assume you've already had experience in the business world and probably already know that?

"If your partner gets arsey with you while doing a PhD then I guess its a good chance to see their true colours."

I like this statement.

Well if your boyfriend has an academic background, particularly an MSc, he should understand the kind of work that goes into a PhD.

Does your boyfriend have an academic background as well?

seriously though - it helps a great deal if you are inspired and dedicated to your area of research, it'll help you through the 4-ish years of hard work. And another tip - do not get caught up in the politics of your lab. If you must be involved, then learn to play your cards well. And always maintain your integrity.

katq & SixKitten - hmmm.. I wonder why the unqualified and vague responses. Even katq's 'number 9' could be from one of two major world rankings (ie. THES or Shanghai), not to mention a number of other valid world rankings out there. What's wrong with simply handing over the name? This makes as much sense as both corinne and rosy who conveniently exited from the thread earlier (although corinne is still hanging around in spite of her confidently stated "I am out of this discussion" post a couple of pages ago)...

Don't get into a romantic/sexual relationship with your supervisor!

kronkodile - i brought that up a couple of times but it doesn't seem to have registered with the romantic-types here. The language used seems to encourage or validify superficial feelings towards her supervisor and completely disregard the fact that they both have partners and possibly families.

katq - no idea what you're referring to..?

katq & sixkitten - so... which academic institutions do you know of, that will allow relationships between supervisors and their respective PhD students? Care to list them here?

"a romantic or sexual advance by an instructor to a student in her/his class or academic program may seriously compromise that relationship and may therefore be presumed to be professional misconduct. The Academic Senate resolved in 1987 that even a single, mutually welcomed advance of an explicit romantic or sexual nature from an instructor to a student currently enrolled in her or his course must be regarded by the academic community as a serious breach of professional ethics and proper standards of professional behavior."

Quoted from: http://www2.ucsc.edu/judicial/handbook03-04/f.htm

Would you like me to post a list of links from a number of universities around the world with similar affirmations of "serious breach of professional ethics"?

The position you turned down - did that supervisor understand that you needed some time?

Every semester students come crying, using every excuse under the sun about why they shouldn't be booted out of the university for some kind of misconduct, or for consistently performing extraordinarily badly in their work. After years of this you learn to distinguish between the genuine cases, and 'Oscar-winning' performances that attempt to rort the system for all it's worth. Of course there are also many uncertain cases for whom benefit of the doubt must be given, but this case with Lamp smells bad right from the get-go. It only smells worse when people encourage their actions or intentions by using language that validates their feelings of victimisation, amongst other things, however much self-induced it was to begin with.

You damn right! Academic misconduct is a personal pet peeve!

My apologies, my comment about your username 'Rosy' refers to my belief that you view the world through rose-coloured glasses.

I'm sorry it's your real name.

"a little bit of kindness when expressing opinions would cost very little and bring a lot in return"

And sometimes people need harsh words to help them snap out of their lapse in mature and reasoned judgement. There are plenty of good parents out there who will say that sometimes a child needs a good whack on the bum to keep them from misbehaving, in lamp's case it will be more appropriately tagged as professional/academic misconduct depending on the circumstances.

Your talk about respecting other people's feelings is all fine and dandy but in lamp's case, I hardly think her partner/family is going to respect being stabbed in the back, neither will the supervisor's partner/family. And as I've said a number of times, I don't think the uni ethics committee will respect any kind of romantic tomfoolery either if anything should eventuate.