Being as part of my research is into the historical aspect of this stuff and the paper I'm writing right now relates to it I'm also rather put off the whole idea.... It doesn't surprise me actually - I knew she was a graduate, I didn't realise she was doing a PhD though. It is a hard thing to contemplate, its certainly not something that I'd go for although I could do with the cash! Seriously though - its extremely sad, I was reading however that a large number of prostitutes and escorts are university students and post grad students making ends meet.

======= Date Modified 15 Nov 2009 18:32:18 =======
ooooh eska that sounds delicious!!!!!!! recipe please! :-)



Lol, I'm writing, well, as you can see I'm having a 2 min break, I deserve it. I've been working since 2pm lol - that's 4.5 hours on a Sunday pm while the rest of you are having an afternoon off and eating scrummy things ;-) I'm feeling quite pleased with myself, I have the intro pretty much in the bag now 1,247 words done - yay me :-) lol. I'm aiming to at least get a little way into the lit review section - its only brief as its covered in the main lit review for the thesis but sup likes me to include a bit that is pertinent to the chapter I'm writing - sigh - hate lit reviews, trying v hard to psyche myself to do it, but then decided to procrastinate here for a short while ;-)

I'm busy trying to entertain my 6 year old while hubby sleeps (he's on night shifts this week) and fretting big time as I HAVE to write today - I have 3 weeks til the submission of my upgrade paper and I'm an astonishing 1 page into it..... Ok, so most of the research is done (although still more to do) so I'm kind of getting there, but its a tough paper to write anyway, and not being able to work is just killing me. i'm waking hubby at 2pm so he can take over childcare duties, but until then I'm doing 50 piece disney princess jigsaw puzzles, chucking the washing in the machine and generally procrastinating til I can get on and work, then it will take me ages to get into it.... sigh..... as much as I love my life there are times I think it would be so good to still be young, free and single and able to work whenever you chose!

Hi Olivia, great to hear that you've submitted :-) It sounds as though for both your physical and mental health you avoid the thesis for now ;-) I'm not sure I could read it after submission, I'd find so much that I'd go arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh at ;-) but sadly it has to be done! Keep us posted in the run up to the viva and enjoy your time off :-)

I do think you'd need to speak to them, but you'd most certainly need a distinction at masters I'd imagine - the problem is that funding is so very competitive and you'll be up against people with 1st class BAs and distinctions at masters. Of course your proposal and references are extremely important and can sway things, but if it were a toss up say between someone with a low 2:2 and a distinction and someone with a first and borderline merit/distinction but the proposals were very similar in quality it is very likely that the applicant with the higher overall grades would be successful. Its very hard to guage it though - you may well be lucky but you'd have to clarify with them whether your performance at masters effectively cancels out the BSc.

Happy Birthday Teek :-) I too would advocate responsible drinking - under normal circumstances - these are not normal circumstances ;-) Go and have some fun, ignore the work for today and enjoy yourself!!! (and have one for me - I'll be writing later lmao so can't indulge but will feel happier knowing somebody is!)

That's just horrible!!!! All the excitement of submitting and now this! I hope you get something sorted soon - is there a possiblity as has been suggested that you could get transferred to p/t while you wait so at least you can maybe get a bit of an income?

I've been doing my RA work most of the day, then had parents evening for my youngest - now i'm just waiting for hubby to get home with dinner and I've been searching for more of my 'subjects' (long dead - no talking here lol) and waiting for my sup to get back to me re my paper outline - I think I must have refreshed the inbox a dozen times so far - quite why I don't know as I know now he won't get back to me til tomorrow at the earliest :-(

Hi, I totally agree with everyone else - and don't worry, what matters is what your supervisor thinks and that your studies are up to date! I too find I simply can't work in noise and a crowded office - I have to be in complete silence (can't even listen to the radio) or I completely lose what I was thinking. I'll end up part way through a sentence, I'll get distracted and can't get it back - so frustrating!

Ignore the silly moo - she can't badmouth you - well she can, but if you're studying well nobody will listen! This is YOUR Masters and PhD and YOU work it the way that suits YOU best and stuff everyone else. We have a postgrad office - I've been in there once lol - its a nightmare - but then most of the PhD students work from home anyway so we're all much the same. You'll probably find that those that hang around there all day get very little done, but like to 'look' busy ;-) The proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say and you'll prove that you work hard and well with no distractions and bitchy cows putting you off ;-)

That's really interesting, I too have problems with Word - I like it and having used it for years know it, but sometimes its enough to make you want to scream! Is the other programme a general word processing programme or is it more suited to certain disciplines? (I'm in humanities). Also, say I prepare the doc in that and then have to send the papers over to my supervisors, would it be problematic for them as the uni operates a standard MS Office programme on all its computers?

The ESRC have very strict guidelines on social history (I'm a social historian) and will be unlikely to fund her unless she is doing a predominantly quantatitive PhD - its a nightmare area for funding - I'm stuck right in the middle - too qualitative for ESRC, too quantatitive for AHRC lol. There are also very very few 3+1 ESRC awards for social history - I've not seen one, they must be there, but rare as its not 'numbery' enough (I know that's not a word lol).

I too would stress experience. Did she do a dissertation for BA? If so is her PhD proposal on a similar line? It will also depend on the uni - our dept really doesn't like taking on PhD students direct from BA and ask that we all do an MA for the training aspect. Historical research is detailed, complex and not easy - I know it isn't in any dept, but you really need to know your stuff and how to approach things, the methodologies, the language etc before you begin so she'd need to show an awful lot of reading and preparation. I really wouldn't recommend attempting it - I've a first class BA but there is no way I could have done this - I learnt so much during my MA about how to research my area and the sophistication of language, approach and thinking needed that wasn't covered during the BA.

Sorry not to be more help but if she's gonna do it then experience, experience, experience - stress the quality of research during her BA, any training she has done to enable her to do the research in this depth and to think about what she wants to achieve through her PhD in terms of questions, gaps in knowledge etc.

======= Date Modified 10 Nov 2009 10:33:32 =======
I can only speak from my own experience BHC - and I lost the second half of my post where I was trying to say that this gives an opportunity, a sense of achievement and a postitive way forward. I've done both - I'm no doubt significantly older than you and no matter what the pitfalls in this new life - ie postdoc - they can be nowhere near as bad as life prior to it! Doing this gives you the chance to have a dream and to quite possibly follow it - that in itself is more than enough reason to stick with it. If you don't get the dream then, as you rightly say, the chances of ending up back on the checkouts is significantly lower than it was prior to HE. If nothing else it gives you something nobody can take away from you - the thought that you've done something so incredible as to stick at it for 7+ long years (including BA and MA), produce something original and make, in your own small way a contribution. I'm not saying its either/or - far from it - I'm just saying, when trying to stay positive as I'm sitting here raking through hundreds of pages of handwritten victorian pages looking for a single name, that there is a darned good reason to do this and stick at it. It opens doors, not only academic but corporate that would be slammed in your face if you hadn't gone through the hoops.


Maybe you have to have had both lives to really appreciate what this all means. I find that (and I don't know how old you are, what your history is, so this isn't aimed at you BHC - or mullet - can I also call you mullet??;-)) younger people who have left school, done A levels, gone straight to uni, through the system without struggling to live in dead end jobs with no hope in sight (students do them but there's that light at the end of the tunnel) appreciate far more quite how special this is. I don't mean to sound patronising, but having spoken to students in my own uni and online, its just the way it seems to be.

This is a very interesting thread, and interestingly the gloom mongers have incited a rage of positive thinking ;-)

Yes, we're not stupid, if we were we most likely wouldn't be sitting here in front of our assorted computers on all sides of the planet tapping away on a postgraduate forum bemoaning our PhD candidate status. I think initially maybe we do live in a happy, shiny world where we do our PhD, are offered mega money lectureships (and yes it is mega money - compared to every single one of my previous jobs where the most I EVER earnt was £6 an hour a £30K+ salary is HUGE), and live a life of genteel academic pursuit writing, reasearching and spreading kind words to lowly students who come to our offices bent and broken and we send away fired up and ready to write successful essays. Alternatively we are published, we immerse ourselves in a research profession where our families send food under the door while we while away the time producing ground breaking, world reknowned papers and books and live in big houses with two horses and the weekends off - or was that just me :p

However, that shiny gleam is quickly knocked away and we begin to understand the reality of the situation. There are so many pitfalls, life in academia isn't all that - but let me tell you, its a darn site better than working on the checkout at Asda and being bossed about by a prepubesent supervisor and shouted at regularly by Joe Public, or working in a call centre and spending all day every day in front of a computer screen, headphones on, no escape, and again, being screamed at by your supervisor and the public in equal measure. Work is rarely fun, its hard, its called work for a reason - I'd prefer to think that just maybe I can spend the rest of my working life doing something that will at least kind of stretch me - where my shining moment in the day isnt' managing to achieve the 22 items per minute scanning rate.

I've never stuck at anything, ever! My CV looks like a patchwork quilt, its a flipping mess. Its a run of deadend, shortlived, meaningless jobs. That's not me anymore - I thought I was a loser, that all I'd achieve in this life was possibly a shop floor position if I was lucky and could prevent brain death and resignation long enough from sheer boredom, frustration and misery to get there. I look at myself now, and I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I astound myself. I began A levels several times at nightschool but got bored and dropped out a term in. This time I didn't - I saw it through, I got damned good grades that shocked me quite literally to the point of tears. Yes I was the one standing, paper in hand, sobbing hysterically at the A grades on the sheet in front of me out of sheer astonishment - I even checked the name twice over and the number incase I'd got the wrong ones. When my tutor advised me to go to uni I literally laughed - really I did, I laughed at her and said that there was NO way I could go to uni - she pushed me, I applied, i got interviewed. That was the worst experience to date, I came out shaking and thinking I was so not cut out for this life. What I now know is that he was testing me - you say this, but what about this, well if its that how would you explain this on and on for half an hour. The letter came, I had my place and the letter said that the Prof had very much enjoyed our discussion - how shocked and proud was I????? I defered as I was expecting my daughter, I started when she was 11 months old and in my first year I won a prize and got a first - again, cue tears and complete astonishment. When I finally got the first class with hons I was still shocked. But so incredibly proud, I'd proved I could stick at something. I was offered an MA with full funding, again, a distinction - more shock. The feeling that I couldn't do it, that I wasn't good enough has been a continual sticking point with my supervisor ;-)

Now I'm doing this - a

I know that this is going to sound incredibly cliched and saccharine like, but take heart that you are at the right end of it all :-) It must be so incredibly strange now having completed the writing but still waiting - more hoops, more time, more anxiety, but you're so nearly there! I'm not sure how you fill your time when you've worked so hard, suddenly stop, but still have to remain at full speed mentally in preparation for the final hurdle. Hopefully those here who are completely finished can help you through this, I'm still stuck in the mire of data collection so can only envy you from afar ;-)

You'll get there, another little while and it will all be over, you'll be Dr Someone, have a great job and it will all have been worth it and this will seem like a distant nightmare!

I do agree, and like you its unlikely the private sector would want me lol - although there are a few websites in my field (big ones) that need 'experts' sometimes - but then I'd still be doing what I love.

Statistically, the chances of me getting a position that will stretch my mind and give me enough cash in my pocket to survive is significantly higher now than it ever was.

Ok, we can't live in gaga land, but I do feel that to make it through this we need to focus far far more on the positive and not allow negativity to creep in. What is the point in constantly thinking there's no point, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, we'd be better off cutting our losses now.

Heck, we're so darned fortunate to be in this position, we are living what for many is the dream - yes that dream can be a nightmare sometimes, but we are so lucky to have the opportunity to do this, millions don't, we have a chance - that is the key thing!