just because switzerland was mentioned a couple of times:
i am swiss and i can assure you that there are that kind of incidents in switzerland, too. perhaps not on that scale but bad enough. most shootings are done with military weapons. we have compulsory military service and every member of the military stores his (rarely her) gun at home. the most common use these guns find are to kill a spouse.
only after a national ski hero was killed by her husband with his military gun recently, are laws beginning to change. just last week a guy shot four people in a hotel in switzerland, for no apparent reason. now they are deciding that at least people are not to store ammunition together with the military guns.

clap clap clap!
I love my PhD because...
- it feels like I'm finally doing what I like doing best
- I met and still keep meeting the most incredibly interesting and nice people
- I feel like what I'm doing is meaningful

chris, stick in there!

a) take a short break. leave the building, run around it once, and come back.
b) if you can't do that, try tricking yourself by doing something unusual. for example: start writing from the end. or draw your abstract instead of writing it. or lie down on the floor and write it from there.

Oh, and btw I'm glad there is this thread. I think nobody believes the "system" is perfect. So it's good to think about it and discuss. Who else if not we? I also see that it is obviously very emotional because it impacts on what many of us strongly identify as, on what we "are", our identities and life decisions. Not easy!

Again, I agree to an extent.
sometimes though I find myself humbled. I mean, if today you own stuff worth in total 1000$, you are part of the richer half of the world. Looking from that perspective, sometimes I feel instead of fighting petty battles about earning a little more or less, it would be much more important to address the large issues of global inequality.
But then again, I do not accept the argument that other people are even worse off than I am, to stop me critizising that some people are better off than I am for no real reason. I can and will critizise things when I feel what I am doing is not being valued. That other people are worse off does not make this less wrong.

just so you know just how common it is... roughly one in three women get depression at least once during their lifetime.

i am sceptical about meds as well. but then, i have some close friends who were really doing extremely badly, suffering endlessly, and all counselling and therapy didn't help. then finally they agreed to take meds and soon were much better. one is still on meds and worried to stop taking them, but the other quit the meds and is still going strong. sometimes you really only need the meds temporarily, in order to get out of that hole that depression is, and be able to make those changes in life(-style) that are necessary in order not to fall back into it. because changing things like lifestyle while your sick is VERY hard.

i agree with ann - but then, you CAN get into research without a PhD (at least in the social sciences you can, don't know about the rest).
however, your first research job will be the hardest to get. you'll need lots of perseverance and will have to deal with lots of turn-downs. that's not always easy.
in my experience, those of my friends who went into market research - for lack of other alternatives, mostly - never came back. perhaps while it won't hurt having market research experience on your CV, it won't help much either.
the people i know who are in research without having a PhD all started with tiny projects, badly paid, usually from non-profit organisations, charities, non-commercial organisations who want something researched but can't afford to employ a 'real' researcher. that way they built up experience and got a list of publications and references - every next project was easier.

as far as I understand, in business a PhD is of little use except for some very few, specialized career options. I wouldn't do a PhD for out-of-academia career goals. i believe a MBA will serve you better. you can also consider going back to do a PhD later on, perhaps parallel to your professional career, with support from your employer - that road won't be closed to you. but considering money seems to be an issue and your aims are not for being an academic but for good career options, right now, i'd go for MBA.
but at the end of the day, it's a tough decision, and it's all yours. hope you find a path that suits you!

hey snappy, if you're nervous about speaking in public, there is a simple thing you can do that might help: sing!

singing before you're due to speak has several positive effects. it calms you down and warms up your voice. so you won't start off with a croak, but right from when you open your mouth you will have a strong, confident-sounding voice, and in a feedback-loop this will actually make you feel more confident too. it doesn't matter if you sing well or not - i sing terribly myself if you manage to actually sing loudly it will also help you to believe on a corporal level that what you have to say is worth saying and being heard.

works well for oral exams like vivas etc. too, btw.

alice,
I'm similar in that it often takes me a lot of guilt of not having worked in order to finally start working, usually when it's late.
something that helps for me is making deals with people. not with myself, cause I'm not hard enough in enforcing it towards myself . I arrange to meet people to work, like, each on their own project but at the same place. makes it harder to let yourself be distracted if the other is keeping up the deal! cutting out the internet helps, too. I find it easiest to keep internet time down when I plan specific times for it, rather than just "not now, not now, not now, ahh, well, perhaps just for five minutes, can't hurt can it?..."

again, as on the other thread, i am speaking from the experience of the germanophone area. while a (Masters-)student, my wage-earning job (i always had to pay my own way) was actually as the general secretary of the PhD-students' union of my university. So, some points:
- i guess it's easier to unionise if you are considered and consider yourself as people who work rather than people who study. in germany for example this is the case.
- even so, unions for PhD students are rarely very effective. the problem is, individual PhD students are usually very dependant on their supervisors. in the sense of there often being no real alternative, due to specialisation. that is, if your sup gets fed up with you and won't supervise you anymore, you have to quit your PhD, since there is no alternative. so you can never fight for your "rights" as any such fight would destroy your future prospects. your only hope is that your sup will stick to the rules without anybody forcing him/her to.

hey silver, well, even if your sup advises against it, you can still submit it (not in secret though,i wouldn't). can't you just tell him that you would really like to try and have hopes it could work and want to learn from the experience? whereas your sup's opinion is important, so is yours, and if he doesn't give you a reason that convinces you, you should insist on him at least considering your reasons. sometimes sups are glad to see their students actually thought about stuff and aren't just coming with questions, expecting definite answers...

i'm working too (or at least should be - at the moment i'm posting on pgf instead...). got a deadline on monday and two other ones a week later so i won't be enjoying the weather. but then, i have bad hayfever so it's good to stay inside.

ok sorry, this turned into kind of a rant. on the other hand i must say i'm currently unfunded and would be sooo happy to secure a normal PhD stipend. and to be fair, although i would prefer the money coming in being called "wage" as it is a reward for my work, instead of "stipend", the wages german PhD students earn are generally significantly lower than British PhD stipends. so i'd be happy to take a stipend if it means more money than a wage

coming from the germanophone area i think it has a lot to do with general attitudes towards PhD students. in the german system PhD students are viewed as researchers, extremely valuable for any university, as perhaps 50% of the research that gets done actually gets done by PhD students. they are viewed as people applying their knowledge and training and are accordingly paid for it. in contrast, over here, PhD students are viewed as students. as people who are learning, worse even, who are being taught. of course this is true too, but it leads to the effect that the things we do are not seen as valuable work but rather as something we do exclusively for ourselves and thus nobody thanks us/pays us decent wages but rather we are expected to pay for the priviledge to be allowed to work and our work is devalued as being "merely" practice (of course it IS practice, but it is ALSO real research with substantive results).