Nope, but then I haven't cried for almost 10 years so if I had then we could safely assume that something truly awful had happened (last time I cried was because my dog died!)

I lived in Newcastle for 7 years, in Heaton, High Heaton, Walker(!) (briefly), Jesmond and had friends in Sandyford, Gosforth, Fenham and the city centre. I found Newcastle to be one of the safest and nicest places I've ever been. I definitely felt safer than I do in Glasgow.

The main student areas are Heaton, Jesmond and Fenham. Heaton is next to Byker but I lived literally just the other side of the rail track that divides them and I had no problems whatsoever. Jesmond is the posh end, mainly the richer students live there on "daddy's dollar" (though there are some regular students there too). Fenham is the other side of the city and I would say it is the roughest of the 3, however it is still not dangerous and the houses over there are cheap and HUGE.

All in all Newcastle is a fantastic place to be a student, at either undergrad or postgrad level.

(I don't get paid by the Newcastle tourist board honest!!)

Hi Human,

I would say that so long as you have other stuff still to write up you just need to keep politely reminding him at regular intervals and sending him the work as you complete it. Once you've given him every chapter then you can go to him and say "look, you have every chapter, I can do nothing until you give me feedback." It probably won't get that far though. Just make sure he can't claim that you either haven't been getting on with stuff or that you haven't reminded him or anything else like that. He might well end up giving you back 4 or 5 chapters of stuff in one go when he finally gets round to it.

OK, well first of all your lit review probably IS fine. It sounds like you are stuck in a massive load of academic politics and are being bounced around like a rubber ball.

It would appear you have more than one captain trying to steer the ship so to speak. I would suggest two things:

1) Your sentence that says that you are "having to take charge of a project that has very little direction and been a bit of a non-starter." is actually in some ways a good thing. Take control of it as much as possible, it's your PhD after all. Try to be confident and certain when speaking to your supervisor(s) whilst obviously trying to not be too confrontational (easier said than done) and make the decisions yourself. For instance if two people are giving you conflicting advice then choose one of them to follow. Sometimes ANY decision is all that's needed.

2) You need to keep your supervisor on side, however they also need to understand what you are going through. Most problems boil down to a lack of communication. Try and set up regular meetings with your sup. If that's not possible then just turn up at their office early (before they can start other things) on a regular basis and ask to speak with them. Your sup is clearly not making a great effort to communicate with you so you need to make a huge effort to communicate with him/her. You shouldn't have to but c'est la vie. Specifically ask your sup face to face about the review that didn't go so well. Take the emails with you but again try not to be too aggressive about it, you need your sup on your side.

Finally and most importantly - You are 7 months in. Most people have issues similar to this around this time into their PhD to a greater or lesser degree. Most supervisors are a bit clueless now and then, especially when it comes to things like student reviews. They don't check exactly what's required and see it all as a tick box exercise because they never had to do it in their day. It is rare (not unheard of though unfortunately) that a supervisor doesn't want to help their student. They are often just very busy and a bit dopey! This is where you need to really push things forward with them.

Sorry that this is a bit general and I appreciate it's easy to say things and a lot harder to do them.

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In Europe (well in the UK at any rate) you only require 3 years (most take 3.5) to complete your PhD after a masters. I think perhaps you are considering just the American model, which I find rather bizarre myself.

To do a PhD in 3 years requires a focussed bachelors and Masters. It is my understanding that American degrees (bachelor level) are far more general than those in the UK. The PhD therefore takes longer because they need to specialise before they even start doing their research. Over here we just get stuck straight into the research from the off.

Edit: Just to also add - It was far easier to know many different fields in the past because there was not anywhere near as much to know. On top of this, I'm sure there are a few polymaths around now but they have never been the norm for PhDs, they just stick out in history because they tend to have been ridiculously smart!

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As no one seems to have answered I'll give it a shot.

As far as I am aware you will be fine so long as you completely re-word it. This is assuming that the conference piece is a chunk of the larger journal piece. If they are literally the same work (not the conference being just a piece of the journal one) then you should not do the conference thing. This would be what's called "self-plagiarising". If you do not change the wording of the conference piece from the section of the journal piece you will get the same problem.

I am happy to stand corrected on any of this, but this is how I understand the situation.

Hope that helps.

Ninja edit: So basically, in your situation, re write it with different words and you should be fine.

"Basically if you are a nerd and want to cut it, in a world of normals really the only way to do it is be a complete *******. The fact is for the most part its dog eat dog out there, unless you just happen to be one in a thousand who can be a john nash, carl sagan etc etc. where all of a sudden everybody overlooks your eccentricities and you are a beautiful and unique flower."


The thing is, if you behave aggressively then you're not going to end up with many friends. Life is not a competition, no one is scoring you on being the highest paid or most highly ranked person. Human beings require social interaction, starving yourself of that (which you will do if you are constantly aggressive to get what you want) will make you deeply unhappy. I just think that this is poor advice unless your goal is very narrow and doesn't involve people liking you.

I'll use one of my own examples. I worked with a guy that fits your description of a nerd who then is a complete ****** to get what he wanted. He became director of the company. Huge wage and bonus. Everyone in the company dislikes him, he is not a happy man. Lots of money but not a lot else. In the same company there is another guy just as geeky and smart. He just gets on with his job and is nice to people. He's on a good wage (not 1 000 000 ish like the director but pretty good) he has a wife and new child and friends. He is a happy guy.

Perhaps they don't listen because you march in telling them what to do in their place of work? Perhaps not being so gung ho and having a conversation with them would work better? Perhaps not expecting everyone to bow down to your incredible superior knowledge just because you tell them to would be better? Of course people are going to be defensive if you go into a place and tell them how to do their job.

Being an @rse is not the best way to deal with it. How about trusting a guy to do his job well? If he doesn't then you can tell them exactly what was wrong with the car and pay them accordingly then take your business elsewhere in the future. If you find a competent mechanic they will sort it out without your help.

The classic approach is this:

1. Tell them what it is that you are going to tell them
2. Tell them
3. Tell them what you told them

This translates as:

1. Intro to the topic, typically a title slide and 2 or three additional slides giving a background to the topic and where your work fits in. A brief overview of what your work has been.
2. Step by step detail of what your work has been
3. Conclusions, relating the work back to the overview.

I've posted a few times with tips for actual presenting skills, here is a brief overview (if you search you should be able to find the first one I did which is more in depth - it was a while ago though as a response to someone else's question.

1. Speak slowly and clearly
2. Allow yourself time to think - a silence of a few seconds is actually ok, it will feel like an age to you but the audience will barely notice.
3. People want you to do well. Ever watched someone truly screw it up? Horrific isn't it? You didn't want them to go wrong though, you were willing them to do well. So is everyone watching you. If you make a slight mistake then no-one minds, they want you to succeed and will overlook your errors because they all know exactly what giving a presentation is like.
4. Practice - even if it's just to yourself under your breath in front of your PC. Try and organise a practice infront of friends who are very supportive if you can. As I said though, no one is going to want you to do badly so practice in front of anyone and ask for constructive feedback.
5. RELAX. If you were chatting to a friend you could talk about your research for 20 minutes easily. Therefore you can easily talk about your research for 20 minutes to a room full of friends. Don't take it too seriously!
6. Cue cards are good, a written speech isn't. A written speech comes across cold. Only do this if you really feel you have to. Instead make cue cards with large bullet points of each topic to cover on each slide. Perhaps write out your very first sentence in full though, this will give you confidence early on.

Hope some of that helps and I'm not telling you stuff you already know! Try to enjoy it, turn your nervous energy into excitement rather than fear (easy to say!)

It would seem a bit over the top to me and I wouldn't do it. It's his job to allocate funding, he gave you funding because you had the best proposal, it wasn't a favour or anything. So well done on getting the PhD! (up)

Extra-curricular activities so to speak. Join a few clubs and things to meet new people. The clubs and things could be anything that you're interested in, sport, hobbies etc. You can always take up a new sport or hobby or interest too. The other thing you need to do is to make sure you don't say no to any invites, no matter how much you can't actually be bothered to go. The final thing I think is time. People take time to accept someone new into their social group, so it can often take longer than you would like. I moved over a year ago to a new city and it is only now that I would say that I have all that many friends.

There are also "friend finding" websites, but I'm a bit too old fashioned to try them, they may be great though, who knows?

Hope some of that helps,

SA

You're both right, don't lie, but you can withold the truth somewhat when you like and also obviously play up all the good stuff you've done and play down anything bad. Directly lying though is obviously a bad idea. You will be found out.

I'm not an expert on these things, but some of my general advice would be:

- Make good use of images, no one wants a wall of text
- Try to keep your writing style brief, again no wall of text
- The final "wall of text" advice - make sure your font is easily readable, a good size and nothing wacky
- Avoid gimmicky things like funny fonts, word art (as if anyone uses this anyway!), puns or anything silly to attention grab.
- Do attract attention with a good title and a high quality diagram/picture.
- If your poster is a bit of a story then let it lead the reader along, make each part flow from the first to the second etc.
- Don't use too many or too few colours. Have a theme palette that will allow you a few complementary colours.
- Make sure any images you use are high resolution so that they print out correctly
- If you are early on then include a "what I'm going to do next" (under a better title!) section. This allows you to talk about the more interesting things you expect to find later before you've actually done them.

Hope that helps