Hi Tasha

It seems to me (and maybe i'm just lucky) that your supervisor has been completely unreasonable and incredibly immature! Not talking to you because you say you can't do more than 48 hours official office time a week??? That is just crazy - you'd burn out way too fast! Also the extra time; that is not only unreasonable but I'd suggest may damage your funding (you don't say who funds you). I was told that I was full time and therefore it would be best if I work around 35-40 hours a week, but in my own time, not tied to an office of any kind, and that it would vary, sometimes I'd do more, sometimes I'd do less, and that due to funding the ABSOLUTE maximum I can do outside of that in any kind of official capacity, whether that be working at Asda or in the dept is 10 hours a week. You have been awarded funding therefore you are 'worthy' of this, you have been given a PhD place, again, you can do this, and you have good grades to date - don't let this utter idiot blow this for you. You say you made all the deadlines - you have done your side. It sounds to me as though this supervisor is a complete control freak and slave driver - its not the norm!

As the others have said this really is no bad thing, and its also kind of what you expect from a good supervisor! You've moved on now from the glory days of the BA and into the world of true academia and its a hard jump to make - going straight to PhD without the passing Go of the MA is a hard ask, but if you have been given funding and a place then they think you are worth it and well worthy of your place! Phoebe, you are a few weeks in, of course you aren't producing work of the required standard, this whole thing is about learning from your supervisor and this, I'm afraid, is part of the learning process. They shred your work, you stomp home, curse and swear a bit, look at what they've said, apply it, rethink it, go again, and it improves, your techniques improve, your thinking improves, its all part of the game. I always think you need a pretty thick skin to do this as your best is never 'quite' good enough lol, but that's ok, if it was where could you develop? You also have to remember that this is the academic way - look at journals, a world reknowned prof will publish a paper, that will be slated by his peers in many instances and new research developed from that - its constantly evolving and so will your PhD :-)

Pick yourself up, brush yourself down, see it for what it is, think it all through, and go back fighting :-)

Congratulations - that's brilliant news :-) Really, really pleased for you!

Good heavens, nothing like a cheery post first thing on a Monday morning when I'm just sitting down to study! Seriously though Wj_gibson, I'm really sorry to hear about your experience, it sounds like an utter nightmare and I can fully understand why you have had such problems physically and emotionally. I read posts like yours and think why the hell am I bothering to do this though, and that in itself upsets me. Being very nearly 40 (later this week) and a woman I don't really see any way forward following this other than academia which is why Sleepyhead's post cheered me up rather. Academia has been my dream since I was about a year into my BA, I don't wish to let go of that dream. I've seen both sides, several of the lecturers in the dept are ex students at the uni so I hope to goodness that something will come up which will allow me to emulate their success. I don't kid myself that its going to be easy or that I can walk into a job, but I am a fatalist (is that right????) at heart, I fully believe that what will be will be and things happen for a reason. I do feel relatively positive about my position at the moment in that my field is currently very active and is receiving a lot of funding - the project I am p/t RA on is the single biggest personal award that the ESRC has ever given, and it is only the first stage of what will hopefully be a long running development. I think though that this is due not so much to the academic side (although the end result will open up multiple new avenues of research which to date have simply not been possible) but more to the application to the public sector and to the 'man on the street'. I do feel that this is going to be the way that a lot of academic disciplines are going to have to go in future years, reaching out and applying knowledge in a way that the population in general can benefit.

Hi, I so hear you! I'm into the second year now, but seem to have spent the last 5 years sitting here (or in my old house) but either way sitting at this desk with the computer in front of me just working, working, working. I so envy friends who have the 9-5 (or shifts - I don't care) who go out, do their work, come home and then do whatever they want, go shopping, do their hair, get a bath, whatever, without the guilt! I dream of a weekend, a couple of days without being linked in some way to work. It is separate from their home lives and I think that that is where we have problems - no matter where we go in the house it is 'there', lurking, piling on the guilt that we're watching tv or chilling lol.

I am married with 3 kids and I know at times they resent it, my little one was telling my mum apparently that mummy works all the time and won't play very much. To be fair I started uni when she was 11 months old so its all she's ever known - god, what kind of mum does that make me?

I still have at least 2 years of this ahead of me (arggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh) and the sole thing that keeps me going is that I'm doing this so that my family can hopefully have a better life. When the older two were little I was in and out of deadend jobs - selling double glazing, asda checkouts, a tanning salon etc - and I wanted something better with the chance to earn decent money beyond the minimum wage that was all I was fit for. But then I think in 2 years (as I finish) my son goes to uni, my daughter will follow the year after, so is it worth it? Yes, it means that maybe I'll have a job where i can help them out, but I think that I need to view this as more for me - I don't know. But I do know how you feel. This is so isolating, so lonely - me and the dogs sit here for hour after hour, day after day, with no end in sight. My friends too never ring - I hope they will eventually, but most can't understand why I don't do 'lunch' 5 days a week and go up to town - nobody apart from you guys here and the people at uni understand that this isn't something that you can do when you feel like it, and that it really is a f/t job with incredible pressures. I've been called a perpetual student and asked when I'm getting a job as though this is dossing - it hurts, but they don't understand and I can't expect them to I guess.....

Sorry, this has turned less from support and more to a rant about me too - but I know how you feel, this will be over soon and behind us, and we have th rest of our lives to benefit from the sacrifices we make now xxx

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Hi there, I'm also in the second year of a humanities based PhD and I can't agree more with Megara. I too remember feeling totally at sea this time last year - I had suddenly lost the social support network and the structure of the BA and MA. I'd submitted my complete MA dissertation on the 15th Sept and started the PhD at the beginning of October and felt completely lost. Prior to that I'd had definate deadlines, a fully formed piece of work, I basically knew exactly what I had to do and when and now I was sitting there with this impossibly vast area to 'look at'.

I actually started on my supervisor's recommendation with a single article, it was recent and was basically an overview of the arguments to date in my subject area (incredibly useful if you can find something like this). I worked out from there, I read it and read it (I know sections of it by heart now), checked all the references he'd given, read them, checked their references out, read them and on and on - its like a ripple spreading. Obviously a large proportion weren't applicable and were discarded, but some were total gems and led on to new areas to such an extent that although the main thrust of the inital proposal still stands, the current one is a totally different animal and far more complex (and exciting).

What you're looking to do now is to familiarise yourself with the literature surrounding your topic, you need to get to a point where you know what's been written, the debates surrounding it, who has written it (very important) and most importantly the gaps that your research will aim to fill - basically what questions have been asked by not answered, or better still, what has nobody thought to ask yet! You need to develop a critical eye - is this person talking sense....??? How does what he/she has said compare with what professor x suggested - where are the problems? I found some incredible assumptions, some basic mistakes, some were incredible, but its only when you read critically and in depth that you spot them and question everything that is written. I was terrified of saying 'you're wrong' but my supervisor told me that that is what I had to do - but make damned sure I backed it up! I found the easiest starting point was, as I said, to check out the references given, it is like a huge knot you have to untangle and it is that that forms the core of your lit review.

I'm not sure how your uni does things but at ours we have 6 monthly review panels for which we have to write a paper which will go on to form the bones of a chapter - so far I've done the lit review and a review of the available sources and once you get on to writing something solid with a deadline you'll feel much better (or worse lol). These first few weeks are about finding your feet and beginning the process - I most certainly didn't work 9-5, some days I didn't work at all, and felt totally out of it, but once I got going and got into the literature it all began to fall into place and it will for you too. Don't look at the big picture, the finished thesis, for now just find a starting point, work methodically through it, and get yourself going :-)

I quite agree, I would like the thought of staying in academia, but it is not the be all and end all for me. My PhD is as much about me as about continuing in the academic world and I certainly don't feel that unless you want a career in academia a PhD isn't worth doing. There is so much more to it than that. For some yes, a PhD is not the right way to go and anyone who felt that I would respect 100%, however, we all have up times and down times, I could quite easily have quit a few weeks back and had prepared an email to send to my sup to inform him and ask if I could meet with him to discuss it and never got around to sending it thank goodness.
Of my friends who have PhDs only two of them are working in academia, the others have walked into high powered, high paid jobs that they could never have been considered for with their other qualifications. One completed his degree and the next week was offered a £100K job on the grounds that due to his research interests and his publications he was considered by the company an expert in his field and they wanted him! of course that won't happen for all of us, but the insinuation that a PhD is worthless outside of academia is, in my personal opinion, misleading.

I can't really offer you any advice that hasn't been given already, bt just wanted to reassure you that you aren't alone! Sometimes my writing would make a GCSE student blush! Like you I am constantly pulled up for structure and 'jargon' - although I tend to get a little overexcited and get a little flowery in my writing (I should be a novelist really!) Structure is something you can work on, I'm working on mine and I think its getting better, similarly if you read through all your work several times, or better still give it to someone not in your field to read, and can see that its way too complex or too much jargon in there for a lay man then its probably gone too far. I do feel these days that trying to keep it 'simple' I'm dumbing down so much, but my sup says that that is what is necessary - well written, perfect grammar, coherent structure, no unnecessary jargon. There will always be some, but it must be easily explained. I'm very lucky in that my sup is 100% supportive - he really is the best sup ever - and gives me a lot of time and advice, but he says it has taken him 30 years in the field to get to the standard he is at now - I'm not expected to be anywhere near after 3 years of BA a year of MA and one year of PhD which is reassuring.

Does your sup ever write with you or give detailed feedback? It may be worth asking if he/she could. Several times I have submitted just around 1K words on a subject, he has immediately edited it to cut it down to maybe 600 - you can't see the darned joins! one word of his amounts to 30 of mine in some cases, it really is an education in itself so if your sup would do this for you it may be worth pursuing?

I never did get to see the individual marks, just the final one, but we had 2 internals, then the external as well. That is a huge discrepancy (although I have heard of significantly worse including one that was a distinction according to our internals but a complete fail according to the external!) and as the others have said, certainly worth taking further. Your tutors obviously feel that you performed to distinction level, it is the external who is the problem here. It may be possible to ask for a re-mark - I'm obviously not sure what the protocol is for your uni, but ask, there is nothing to lose by asking. Whatever happens you have an extremely good mark there which will stand you in very good stead for whatever you want to do from here on in - but it would be worth your while, as you've worked so hard, to ask about an appeal

Come on Florence, you can do this! Just write something, anything - just a few words will get you going and then it will be ok. You have time to write a little report, just something to discuss with your supervisor. The 15 minutes thing is always a great idea, just commit to sit and try and write just for those few minutes - you can do that can't you? Dry your eyes and start to type - it's always easier when you don't have a blank sheet in front of you

So far I have heard nothing from our uni, but it will come.... we're registering this week so I imagine it will all come online at the end of the week when all new freshers have their accounts.

I also agree that behaviour surrounding swine flu (or any flu) is just ridiculous and totally irresponsible. I have suppressed immunity and it worries me a lot (but you've cheered me up Bilbobaggins by surviving it!) but I do find the way people cough and sneeze all over you, and worse still come back in before they are no longer infectious to be incredibly irresponsible. A friend of mine has a lung disorder, it is such that she will either need a lung transplant or be dead by 40 - she caught it a couple of weeks back after her co-worker came in coughing and sneezing and still running a temperature but proclaiming how she wasn't one to be kept off with a bit of flu! Needless to say my friend is terribly ill, she has two young children (she had them prior to her condition becoming apparent - she is not irresponsible) and I'm so frightened for her. Had her stupid co-worker stayed indoors then maybe this wouldn't have happened - she was in line for the first batch of vaccine when it came to her area and may have been ok..... I do think the work ethic that suggests that staying home when sick is skyving is partially to blame - people are scared of losing their jobs and don't want to appear to be throwing sickies, but in this case it should be stressed that if you go out you make others ill and they may not be so strong. I certainly wouldn't want anyone who had it near me, or whose family had it. When we went to graduation this year I was sat next to a friend who happily announced her husband had gone down with it - argghhhh!!!!

Sorry to go OT but it does worry me, you can't wrap yourself in cotton wool, but people should have the sense to stay home when sick and not spread the virus about. I do find the quote interesting though - it does seem as though people do expect that a virus can be stopped easily now that we have vaccines for everything and therefore totally ignore any sense of responsibility for their actions.

Hi, I'm also doing a humanties based PhD and I find that the time I spend working varies massively - some days I'll only do one or two hours (particularly as I have a pt research job), other days I'll work maybe 12-15 hours depending on deadlines. The general advice is to try and treat it as a f/t job, so working around 35-40 hours a week. What I would say to you is to try and avoid the temptation to either work 7 days a week (you'll burn out) or, as you don't have that control that is there in taught courses, to let things slide. I've just registered for my 2nd year and I can't quite work out where its gone - it really does seem two mins since I was just starting.

This is one of the hardest aspects of research training, that self control aspect and its something that we all seem to struggle with at some time or other. You are 'self-employed' so if you want to work evenings do that, if you prefer to work first thing, do that, but try and get some kind of routine in place to keep yourself sane and try to ensure that you hit the deadlines you'll be given and keep working steadily. The first year is strange and can seem rather aimless when doing a humanities degree as in my experience it is lots of reading, getting foundations in place and prep work unlike our science based peers who do things rather differently.

Hi there Snoopgirl, nice to meet you :-)

So glad that you're sounding a bit happier today - as the others have said, you are so capable, you've been picked to do this, you can do it, you will do it, and these won't be the last tears either - its a hard road, but as my old Nanna used to say, anything that is worth having is hard to get!

I'm not in the sciences but we're all in the same boat, and yes, a bit longer now just checking out your vocab and terminology is going to save you a lot of heartache in the long run so take the time you need to make sure you know completely what is being said - I actually ended up making a kind of mini terminology dictionary for my own purposes as I'm sure some of it is just long words/complex for the sake of it and I didn't want to use a phrase in the wrong context.

I think we all find the transition from taught to research difficult. Some find it easier than others, but for everyone there's a time when you feel a little lost and so totally out of your depth. The first year I found quite difficult at times, no real research as such, lots of reading, lots of seemingly aimless activity and I had to work hard to convince myself that it was putting in place a good foundation. I ended up sitting down with my supervisor and asking him to basically nudge me in the right direction so that the transition was that bit easier - you have to remember that they are there to help you and to effectively train you for a life in academia and research. The lack of teaching and concrete direction is hard to handle, but you do get used it. Its one of the big things about doing a PhD, for the first time you have someone saying prepare this for me by this date and that is that - no classes to attend every week, no set essay deadlines in the same way that there is for UG and masters, so you have to learn to set your own deadlines. A lot of the more experienced people on here have suggested the use of big calenders which you use to mark your deadlines, and keep track of your progress. Its all about learning how to motivate yourself, keep motivated and keep going even when all you want to do is sit and cry and you've made that first step so you're well on your way :-)

That is one reason why I personally find this forum so useful - its so good to be able to talk to other people at differing stages in their journey through the PhD (and out the other end) and to learn techniques from them.

Bonzo, sounds like a marvellous plan, but where on earth are you based?? Its freezing here lol, well, maybe a slight over-exaggeration, but its certainly not nice chilling in the garden weather - I so wish it was, I'm going green with envy at your afternoon plans!