would everybody please stop writing, you are making me feel bad! apart from my lit review (~8000 words) i haven't really written anything! but i am in the sciences, so i'm hoping that makes it ok...! other than that, things are going ok so far. i started on july so am nearly 9 months in now (scary thought!). i have just had to present my work to my dept as a pre-requisite to starting my transfer report for the end of year 1, and it seemed to go ok, so have a meeting next week with my sup and my advisor to have a mini vivas before going on to start my report, to be handed in by mid-june. so i'll definitely get some writing practice in soon! just found some really interesting new work that has been done in my area as well, so lots of things to be looking at - i sometimes feel i lack direction a bit simply because there are so many directions i could go in, so i seem to get a bit lost! so my aim is to focus myself a bit more clearly and work on one task at a time rather than letting myself go off at a tangent quite so often (although occasionally this leads to more interesting things so i won't rein myself in completely!)

i would tend to agree, it's definitely better to be too formal rather than not formal enough! dressing in a suit generally makes a good first impression, whereas jeans would be too casual. good luck! :-)

google?!

i may be a rare case, but i had been away from uni for 2 years when i decided i wanted to do a phd, and i applied to a uni i had never been to, for a project supervised by people i had never met, and i got a funded place, so it can be done!

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i now have the calvin and hobbes cartoon pinned next to my desk for inspiration :)

i cannot imagine a situation whereby it would be ok to discuss sex with my supervisor! we are colleagues, but this relationship is not an equal one. he is the teacher, i am the student. although i feel that i get along well with my supervisor, and we occasionally have short conversations about family/life outside uni, i would never assume that we are friends. i think it is extremely important to maintain an entirely professional relationship. that is not to say this cannot be a good, friendly relationship, but there are definite lines that should not be crossed. i think you are getting into something too complicated that could potentially be damaging to your career (if people have already described the relationship as 'borderline inappropriate' then this will not be doing you any favours). as previous posts have said, think about this man's wife and how she would feel about you flirting with him. pushing him around and calling him names is, in my opinion, entirely inappropriate for a professional relationship and i can't see how this man can maintain a supervisory role with you if this continues.

if i were you, i would take one big step back. there is no harm in getting along with your supervisor, even going on pub trips occasionally together (in a group situation), but anything more than that is, in my opinion, completely wrong and can only lead to problems further down the road. what would happen if you were to cross the line with this man? you would probably lose respect from all the people in your dept, he could no longer supervise you, and you would be destroying his marriage. the fact you have posted on here suggests to me that you already know there is a problem - i would tone down your behaviour with this man and try to get back on a more professional footing. by all means stay friendly, but the sexual element of this should be removed entirely.

if i could draw a graph of my motivation throughout the week/month, it would be pretty much a straight line across at zero for the majority of the time! then i have a supervision meeting and it soars, and the next few days are a flurry of activity where i feel really inspired and get loads done. then that task is over with and i slump again, and i have had entire weeks go by where i have sat at my desk every day for 7 or 8 hours and achieved absolutely nothing (apart from maybe a lot of facebooking/checking my emails, which i don't think counts ;) )

like you i seem to be motivated rather sporadically and worry that i will never feel enthusiastic enough to get through this phd. i really like my project but sometimes feel that i am just inherently lazy :$ i find that setting myself short-term goals (i.e by the end of the day i will have done this task, by the end of the week i will have read x amount of papers) helps a little, as does having more regular meetings with my supervisor, as i am shamed into making myself do some work or risk being found out! at the moment we are meeting almost weekly, and although this doesn't suit everyone it is perfect for me as it keeps me focused. i have also been preparing some slides as i know that my dept are likely to randomly ask me to present my work at short notice, and i find that keeping these updated as i go along also helps me as it is a way of keeping track of my progress. sometimes i look at the slides and realise i haven't added anything new in weeks, and again that forces me to take a look at my work and see where i need to get a move on!

but don't get too disheartened - remember the phd is a marathon not a sprint! some people will work consistently at the same level throughout, whereas others will go in phases of high and low activity. so don't beat yourself up about it, it may be that you just need to get away from your phd for a few days and come back feeling refreshed. you may well find that in a few days you suddenly feel motivated again, so stick with it and it'll work out alright in the end :-)

we were told (although of course this may not be entirely true and may differ from case to case) that lenders were avoiding guarantor mortgages at the moment, as they are classed as too high risk. therefore if you combine the fact that you are a student with using a guarantor, that may make you too high risk to be considered at all right now. again, it is definitely worth asking a broker to look around for you, and it will depend greatly on how much money you want to borrow. so i'm not saying it is impossible, just be prepared to get a lot of no's before you get a yes!

hi squiggles,

we looked into getting a guarantor to back up my side of the mortgage - our mortgage broker advised us that this would be very difficult in the current economic climate, as my parents are in their late fifties and so are too close to retirement age to be reliable guarantors. i think from my experiences you would be unlikely to get a mortgage this way at the moment, but i would definitely call a broker and they can tell you what your options are.

hi, i'm 7 months in and am currently working approx 9-4, but i don't tend to take much of a lunch break, if any. i think it is important to have your own space to work in - i could work from home but choose to come into the office each day as i would find being at home too distracting! i find i work better when i set myself a definite time at which i can go home, bt everyone works differently. i allow myself 30mins or so checking emails, doing admin type stuff in the morning (usually longer on mondays as it takes me a while to get into a work frame of mind!) and then a few mins at lunchtime for facebooking etc. i have to be quite strict with myself and if i'm in a really procrastinating mood i have to shut down the internet on my pc and just have open word/excel or whatever.
on the occasions i do work from home i get up as if i was going into work and get myself dressed as if i was going out somewhere (if i stay in my pj's i feel less like working somehow!). then it's just a case of being strict with yourself and not getting distracted by other things that need to be done at home - leave these until after you have finished 'work'.

do i get first dibs seeing as it was my thread that started this debate?! ;-)

first of all, i would say take a deep breath and CALM DOWN! secondly, i would prepare for a phone interview in the same way you would prepare for any other. of course a phone interview is normal if you are the other side of the world to your interviewers. it will be as important as a face to face interview so take it seriously. prepare for questions such as 'why do you want to do a phd?', 'why do want to do this phd in particular?' and 'why do you want to do your phd here?'. obviously the will also ask you about the project itself so make sure you understand what the project will involve.

shani - thanks very much for your reply re the mortgage - unfortunately, without my income being taken into account we do not have enough money to buy the property we want. we were very poorly advised by our mortgage broker that we would not have a problem finding a mortgage and indeed he had a couple of offers lined up... so we went ahead and made an offer on a property, only for him to do a complete 180 and decide that actually nowhere would take my income into account (which is what i suspected originally but he convinced us otherwise and i believed him :-s). so now we are scrabbling around trying to find someone to give us a mortgage and it's all very stressful! not having much luck so far, despite our 15% deposit which we were advised (again, probably wrongly) would be sufficient.

my god, i have created a monster! ;-)

not sure how the thread took a turn in this direction, but i love it when this happens - you start a thread on one topic and it completely turns into something else!

definitely a good way of looking at it - my phd is very loyal, ALWAYS calls when it says it will (whether i want it to or not!) and will never leave me (again, i have no choice in this...). although it occasionally fantasises about being with another student, i know it will never do anything about it! ;-)