Ooh, I don't blame you for wanting to get away in that case!

As you know what you want to study already, why don't you make a sort of 'wish list' of academics in your field who you admire, and/or universities that do your subject where you'd like to study, then narrow those down and investigate further? I did that. I knew what I wanted to develop from my MA dissertation, I knew which the best colleges were for my subject as I liked the work they did and I wanted to study under those staff, and I thought I knew who the most appropriate academics might be for my PhD proposal. Top of my wish list was ok, as that's where I did my MA and the academic I was keen to get as supervisor liked my dissertation and my proposal and wanted to take on research students. For my second supervisor, I ended up emailing someone from another uni, outlining what I was doing and why I thought he'd be great for my project; we had a meeting and he agreed to become my second supervisor. I don't think I could have chosen better academics or college for my PhD in retrospect, so it definitely doesn't seem to do any harm to have an ideal scenario in mind, it might work out!

Hi Zoe, presumably you've got an idea of what unis offer your subject at masters level as you've just finished one. You could check their websites to see whether they offer PhD supervision in that area as well. Are there particular academics who dovetail with your research idea who you think would be suitable to supervise your potential PhD, in terms of their expertise?

Maybe there are a few academics you used a lot for your masters dissertation who might be interested in supervising a research degree, you could google them to find out what institutions they are based at, whether they supervise PhDs and what subjects they're interested in taking on. This sort of info is often on the uni websites, along with general information about procedures for applying for PhDs. When you've narrowed it down, you could contact the individual uni research departments to see how best to pursue a potential application.

You could also speak to your masters dissertation tutor about the possibilities for pursing a PhD and see what advice they could give you. Do students stay on to do PhDs after their masters at your college? I did that myself as I already knew the staff and what I wanted to study, and my uni is actively trying to recruit good masters students for research degrees, so it worked out nicely!

Hi Adam, you say you want a career change but you don't say what you want to do instead. You can't really choose a masters to take you in a different direction until you decide where your interests lie. What would you like to be doing, what areas of work appeal to you?

======= Date Modified 26 Apr 2009 10:40:55 =======
There was a product called 'prickler strips' in one of those innovations-type catalogues that came with my tv guide yesterday. It's plastic strips with pointy bits on one side, that you're supposed to stick onto surfaces like walls and fences to stop cats jumping up and walking along them. I thought they looked a bit vicious for cat's paws, the equivalent of metal spikes used to stop pigeons lingering on window ledges and crapping on people's heads, but presumably the strips aren't sharp enough to injure anyone's cat.

Missspacey, I had loads of wasps coming in a window a few years ago and my mum got me a kit for keeping keep insects out. It consisted of fine mesh, a bit like that used for petticoats or ballet dresses so almost invisible, and strips of velcro. It was the wrong size for my window so I didn't use it, but a normal muslin curtain and strategically placed bits of discreet double sided sticky tape kept the buggers out. Maybe the sight of a curtain or fine mesh blind would stop a cat trying to come in? It's the sort of problem solver you get in those innovations catalogues, full of inventions you never knew you needed, and probably don't, on the whole, but sometimes they're sensible!

======= Date Modified 25 Apr 2009 10:50:30 =======
I agree with a couple of the others, you'd have to speak to whoever is responsible for PhD students in your dept. It sounds like you could justify changing supervisors or adding another person in terms of the negative impact this situation is having on your work. If you can support this with anything from records of meetings, feedback notes, emails or whatever, even better. If you can show that you're being held back by this person and it's making you have serious concerns about your progress and subsequent ability to complete your PhD successfully, then it's a perfectly valid issue to raise with your uni research admin people. It seems odd to get no written feedback, it seems such a basic part of doing a PhD.

It might be easier for you to add an extra supervisor rather than get a replacement. Can you think of anyone else at your uni who other students work well with, who you might be able to have as an additional supervisor? It seems to be a bit embarrassing for departments to be forced to admit that they appoint really unsuitable staff to supervise PhDs, as it shows they've got it wrong by changing them, as if they don't know what they're doing.

I changed my second supervisor early on in my PhD because she was a nightmare to work with and I was seriously considering chucking it in. I had to justify to our research administrators why she was academically wrong for me, and was advised to emphasise that my project was going in a different direction so her input was no longer relevant. It seems to have been the most acceptable way for the uni to change someone, whatever the real reasons were. I suggested someone else who I thought was a good possible alternative because of his own research interests. Getting rid of that woman took nearly a year and the process only really got moving after a panel meeting that several other of my occasional advisors attended, so they saw how she behaved and were suitably appalled. I'd got so disillusioned by then that I'd said I wanted to leave and go elsewhere, so maybe another dropout in the uni retention statistics would have been more problematic for them than just changing a supervisor. If you like your subject and the uni, I think it's worth persevering in trying to get a supervisor you can work with who actually does the job!

Good luck with it!

Hi Lara,

That email sounds fine, just send it! It's good that you're cc-ing in the rest of the people involved too, it's sensible if you're not sure exactly who does what in the various departments to get this viva situation moving.

Hello!

Sarah, thanks, that's reassuring to hear. I'm quite glad none of the examiners are fashion ones, so maybe that will help - at least I know the death part of it is original so they shouldn't have seen it before!

It's really annoying the way errors leap out at you while you're trying to read your work, I discovered to my horror I'd used a slightly older version of the intro, no idea how I'd managed that as I'd labelled all my files really clearly, but that's stress and tiredness for you. I heard about one of our profs who had to do major revisions for their PhD and had a bad time in the viva, but years later who knows about that or even cares, it was still a PhD in the end, and it doesn't seem to have had a detrimental effect careerwise.

Lara, it sounds nice to have had a decent break! So you'll be glued to your thesis for the near future then, heheh :p I'm not finding this revision very enticing myself at the moment, so I sympathise.:-s

Armendaf, don't freak out, at least it's definite now and 2 months is loads of time to get back into it. Good luck!

I think it's a strange thing to offer to do for a student and rather dodgy considering it's supposed to be your own work. As you say, writing is all part of the learning process, so how on earth will you learn to be a competent researcher if someone writes your work up for you! Has she done this for any of her other students? What would other students or postgrad staff think if they knew what she was doing? It all seems a bit unethical to me. The most my sup has ever done is fiddle with odd sentences or words, but we have different writing styles so it would be obvious if I hadn't written parts of my own thesis.

There was a similar post on this topic a while ago, maybe some of the replies would be useful to you too...
http://www.postgraduateforum.com/threadViewer.aspx?TID=10762

I wouldn't call this a pop psychology quiz at all, it's a question wrapped up in a rather convoluted post. What is this bet people are supposed to be helping you win, out of curiosity?

Perhaps it would be worth you thinking about how your own research topic fits into the focus taken by journals primarily used within your discipline/subject area? I assume from your post that you're part of the way through a masters, so presumably you have an idea about how your work or dissertation topic would be located within current journals and research in that field. Look at journals in your area, think about how whatever you're doing would mesh with that academic focus. Who are the people on the editorial boards of the journals you're interested in? Are they people you would like to be peer reviewed by or published alongside? Read the guidelines for submission for journals you're interested in. If there is a call for contributions that fits your topic, that's great if it's going to be part of a themed issue, but if your research is relevant to that publication's remit then you could submit any time.

I have no idea how the criteria for ranking journals relate to my own field although it seems far more common in the sciences than arts related subjects, which is my area. I know which ones to aim for largely because they are the major ones for my subject, contain work from eminent scholars in the field and publish new or innovative research in that area. I know this because I've spent years doing a PhD and immersing myself in the topic, and have also had guidance from my supervisors. I don't think there is a short cut to this, you really have to do the research first so you've got something worth publishing. Good luck!

======= Date Modified 10 Apr 2009 11:54:03 =======
Hi Sarah,

Nice to hear from you! Oooh, how lovely to be almost finished and be able to move on to something else! Have you started thinking about what you want to do next, or are you still too close to the whole thing to imagine life after the PhD experience? I was wondering what you did in the days leading up to your viva? It said in that Murray book to minimise stress and avoid annoying people which seems obvious really. My supervisor is doing a talk a few days before my viva and I think I'll go, maybe it will spur me on or something! I'll have a solid week away from work to revise, so hopefully that should be enough if I start seriously with it now.

I'm in a similar situation as you in a way, crossing disciplines, and I'm wondering how this might figure in my viva. I guess I'd better start thinking of some robust reasons for doing what I did and why it was successful for the project.

Lara, how are you getting on? Did your sup get back to you? I hope you're ok anyway.
Armendaf, any more progress with your situation?

I'm planning to write two symposium abstracts, finish reading a book about preparing for your viva and then actually start preparing for the viva instead of thinking about doing it. It's lovely and quiet everywhere round here, ideal for working, so I suppose I'd better get on with it!

It is odd the way some things all fall into place near the end of the thesis, even time I spent procrastinating by reading various blogs turned out to be useful for a contact and an idea!

Having said that, if anything dreadful happens in my viva then maybe anything I say should be ignored - I'll let you know! ;-)

======= Date Modified 08 Apr 2009 12:49:13 =======

I'd carry on if I was you! As long as you meet your relevant PhD deadlines, it's all relevant to your research in some way in a broader sense, isn't it? I did that for years, meandered along with teaching, conf papers and other minor projects that were all related in some way or other to the PhD topic.... lots of lovely engrossing tangents that diverted me from 100% thesis writing!

It's fine doing that until you have to get serious and pull focus on the thesis at some point when submission looms, and then try to cut down on the peripheral activities so you can get the thing written up. I don't regret it at all. Someone finished their whole PhD amazingly quickly compared to me, but that was her not me, I just really enjoyed what I was doing and got the necessary bits done. I might have finished writing up loads faster if I had ignored the other stuff, but I loved those diversions because they kept me excited about my subject and some of them fed into the thesis in ways I never expected, or have given me ideas for bits to develop after completion. My advice (for what it's worth) is continue doing what you're doing, it all sounds great! :-)(up)