i've never seen cuddly fees before!

sorry for taking this off-topic, but i couldn't resist.

o.stoll, thanks for your reply. it seems not extremely clear to me as you refer to two different things that seem to make a job "proper", which could both be debated (not studying, but working; and getting a significant wage).

you do however state that this is of course subject to personal opinion.

it seems to me, that if the definition of a "proper job" is subject to personal opinion, then obviously the question if a PhD is a proper job or not, is equally subject to personal opinion, as it is subject to the definition of a proper job.

therefore, your first statement that a "PhD is not a proper job, whatever you call it" seems a bit too sweeping to fit your agreement that the definition of a proper job is subject to personal opinion.

i'm not in my late, but in my early 30ies. i was just wondering after reading all these replies: did some of you go to "mature students" meetings/counsellings? do you feel you encounter specific situations due to being older?
i am asking because sometimes i struggle with how much i am being treated as a 'student', mostly within, but also outside of university. sometimes it feels like just because i am in the position of a student, people think i must be 'like a student' in other areas of life, too (so they discount the possibility for example, that i might have significant experience in jobs, or that my PhD research might be more than 'just' a practice piece, etc.).

oh sourapple, i am very sorry to hear this! it is so bad to get these negative funding results. i usually want to crawl away and hide in my bed for at least a week. do you have someone to talk to? that usually helps for me, since it is kind of a complicated feeling - anger, dissappointment, sadness, insecurity and self-doubt, maybe a little relief too (no funding - no need to undertake the daunting project of doing a PhD...). also sometimes i need to cry on someone's shoulder.

is this the definite end? do you think you might try again next year? have you checked out all different funding options?

hope things are looking up today for you, piglet!

for me, i am only just starting to realize that if i manage to complete my PhD i will be a Dr.
this had no influence whatsoever on starting the course, and feels rather strange. it's been driven home now by some people i know who have just finished and by discussions here

imagining myself being Dr. shani... it feels weird. but good, too. i guess if i ever get to that point, i will use the title consciously - in some cases explicitly deciding to use it, in other situations, not to use it.

o.stoll: i take it your posting is cynical?
if not, would you mind explaining to me what makes a job "proper"?
is it that...
- you get paid for it? (some PhD students do get paid)
- you are bound to regular working hours? (lots of other jobs aren't quite proper, then)
- you've got a boss who bosses you around? (what if you are the boss? you don't have a proper job then?)
- you are applying previous education, in contrast to gaining more education? (show me a PhD student who isn't applying previous education, and show me someone in a proper job who isn't learning)
- you are doing something worthwile - adding value, so to say (i would argue that the kind of research PhD students do is in many cases certainly worthwile)

i did all my studies prior to the PhD part-time, working on the side to make a living and lots of other activities, so obviously it took me a long time to get my Lizenziat (about equal to Bachelor+Master). whereas the average time to complete on my course was 6 years, it took me nine. so you can imagine i was confronted with the question "when will you be finished" on a regular basis.
i developed the strategy of always giving the same answer ("two more years or so") no matter what i really thought. saved me the trouble of thinking about it and when anyone said "but that's what you said last year" i replied, "well, it's a stupid, repetitive question so it gets stupid, repetitive answers".

perhaps you would say, but it is different for stuff like medicine and genetics and rocket science. well, i've not done any of that, but i have played competitive chess and i think it might be similar: when you mention it, everyone goes "ooh" and is very impressed. you yourself however, you know that you would get this same reaction, no matter if you were a brilliant geneticist or just a bloody beginner, because most people (except other geneticists) couldn't judge the difference. so - you do get appreciation, but it only rarely feels real. because it is the appreciation of those who understand what you are doing that matters, and they are few, no matter if you are in business, sociology, genetics or chess.

so, hang on to the thought that people who evidently understand what you are doing have offered you the place - so you can't be too bad!

oh, sourapple, you say you feel you can't mention your business degree to people cause everyone seems able to do business without a degree... well perhaps it helps to know that the same, perhaps even worse, can be said about a sociology degree. everyone (thinks so, at least) can say stuff about society and it is so hard to make people understand what it is you do as a sociologist that is different than "common sense".

i think it will only ever be the people who have a similar background to your own who can really appreciate the value of it.

i know sourapple, i found out the hard way

i wish i'd known this forum before i started, i would have made a much better informed decision.

i had thought i had at least an inkling of what it means to do a PhD, my partner being a PhD student, and myself being for 3 years executive secretary of the local PhD students association. i of course assumed there would be differences between countries and universities etc. but never did i imagine the differences would be so huge!

umm... after i said all that it's probably easy to track me down anyway... so i'll just forget about internet anonymity for now. it's LSE.

what i am saying is, it is definitely not impossible to get funding from several places. probably you could have difficulties if you try to have two "full fundings" at the same time. but you can easely combine several chunks of funding from several places.
so if you have one main source of income which isn't quite enough, you can apply to many places for a little add-on.
the only problem about this is that these things are usually one-off awards, so you need to invest a lot of time and energy into applying all the time and you never know in advance if it is going to work out, i.e. how much money you are going to have next term.

Funding your PhD, if you are not fully funded for example by a RC, is in most cases a patch-work process. many students get a bit of funding here, an award for fieldwork there, a contribution to conference costs somewhere else, a little income from work, some contribution to fees, etc.

hi,
i am in sociology and in my department there are actually only few people who have a solid, "pure" sociological background. many have degrees/masters from related disciplines like social policy, gender studies, political sciences, media & culture, etc. i am also in a research centre within the sociology department, and here nearly nobody is a "real" sociologist, but we are all getting sociology PhDs. some have backgrounds in medicine, biology, agricultural engineering, arts, journalism, you name it... there is another research centre within the sociology department, where most PhD students have backgrounds in architechture.
so what i am saying - i wouldn't worry about having the wrong background for a sociology PhD