It sounds to me as though you're having panic attacks - do you ever feel short of breath or even nauseous when you're like this? Panic attacks don't mean that you're panicking about anything in particular, the smallest things can trigger them, especially if you're already under stress which by the very nature of our work we are! I suffered terribly with them for a long while but learnt some coping techniques which helped me no end - I'd be sitting minding my own business and then get that horrible arggghhhhh feeling - it could happen just because the tv was too loud or something equally ridiculous - I've run from many a shop convinced I'm going to be sick and still can't manage to sit in the middle of a row where I can't easily get out (like in a lecture theatre). Have a think about what it feels like and if there's any kind of pattern to it - my money is on panic attacks, not a problem when you know what it is, its relatively easy to sort out :-)

Hi, I do think that PhD in particular and masters to a certain extent are incredibly competitive. My son has very severe dyspraxia, however he has straight As and A*s in his GCSEs so far (sitting the last as we speak) and I know that he finds exams hard, but is managing ok - what you say worries me - he is planning to go on to do the IB now, and then is hoping to study natural sciences at Cambridge - I know it affects different people in different ways so I hope he'll make it through ok.

Back to you, I'm not sure tbh what the problem might be apart from the nature of postgrad education and the fact that you aren't going with as high grades as other applicants. A friend at uni now though is also badly dyspraxic but she has got through and her disability certainly hasn't blown her career. It could be that the issue with the bullying lecturer may have got out - I don't think academia likes wave makers, although when bullying is rife then sometimes somebody has to say something - people don't tend to because they don't want to mess up their potential careers, but then it goes unchecked.

I'm not sure what to say or how to advise you I just hope that everything works out for you and the right course comes along and you get accepted

======= Date Modified 10 Jun 2009 19:25:16 =======
Hi, that seems like quite a good target to aim for, make sure you give yourself at least a week to two weeks at the end for editing and acting on your supervisor's comments - mine has always told me that his rule is that everything takes twice as long as you think it will. I have just written a 10K chapter in a little over a week (not including research) and when I did my MA diss I did all the research first and then went flat out and wrote and completed the first draft in around 2 weeks - not out of choice, he mailed me and said he was going away for two weeks mid Aug and wouldn't be back til early sept so I had no choice if I wanted time to act on suggestions before submission (but that was working from sun up til long after the midnight oil had run out) and then took the next 4 weeks to make all the ammendments suggested, tidying up, writing the appendices, bibliography, acknowledgements, contents etc etc - those little bits do take an age so make sure you factor in time to do them too. You should be absolutely fine - just keep working away, once the research is done properly then the writing should flow much easier and you will see links.

My structure was something like Intro, chp 1 - Lit review, methodology and sources, chp 2 research findings, chp 3 reasons for that, chp 4 further discussion, and conc - can't quite remember what went into 3 and 4 lol but it all flowed, ok and I got a distinction for it and I'm sure you will too :-)

Hi, I too juggle PhD and family, I have 3 children, two teens and a five year old and it can be very hard going. I found the only way that I could cope with it all was to try and allocate time when I could work - easier now the little one is at school than before. I drop her off, come back, get a coffee, sit down and try to work until school run time, then work again after she's gone to bed. School holidays are a total nightmare though, and my housework etc tends to suffer somewhat, but I figure that there's plenty of time for all that after the PhD is done. I'm sorry that I can't offer anything really constructive, I tend to go by the seat of my pants and hope that I do enough to get through all this!

I so understand how you feel - I have to go through this every 6 months - the last one, although apparently very successful and wonderful etc was a nightmare and I felt so discouraged afterwards. I have another in about 10 days time and I'm dreading it - at least this time I'm more prepared as I know what's coming, but I think that so long as they were happy with you and congratulated you then it was a big success. It is hard to be criticised when you've worked so very hard but I guess that that is what academia is all about and maybe its good that we get the chance to experience it in a 'safe' environment where the people concerned are actually wanting us to do well and trying to help us rather than pulling us down. I'm sure that the PhD lark is for you - we just need to harden up a bit and take things 'positively' - if you find out how to do that please let me know as I tend to end up in tears too!

Hang in there - I think what you're feeling is pretty normal, I was were you are this time last year and it is so daunting. I'd found out about now that the figures I had started to get back from my initial research not only didn't support the argument but actually went against it totally so I had to change the entire direction of the dissertation! It is different from an essay, but personally I found the easiest way to deal with it mentally was to basically break it down. I'm not sure what your word count is, mine was 20K - my MA essays were 5K so I viewed it as 4 essays that were all on different aspects of a common theme and that all linked together with an introduction and then a conclusion. That way it wasn't too huge - if you split it into chapters (essays), think about what you want to discuss in each chapter and get a flow running between them and then just write them one at a time, THEN you go back and make sure that they all flow nicely into each other so each chapter has a good structure, but there is an over-riding structure throughout the whole thing and its done :-) I couldn't have viewed it as one big piece of work, I'd have cracked up - but breaking it down will make sure each chapter has its own internal structure and focus which will make it better as a diss and also easier to read and follow - its very easy to write linking paras between each so that the flow develops.

I hope that that helps, you'll be ok, this is it, then end, just 4 more essays to write that you can have a lot of fun with and you're done :-)

My masters diss was vaguely related to my Phd thesis - but only very very vaguely! The phd is a totally different animal lol - I agree that for the MA I'd choose something you're really interested in and that fires you up and take it from there :-) It certainly wouldn't be a bad idea to get the training you need, and you could use elements of it in your MA diss, but don't worry about it being the same topic - lets face it, you'll have several years of your PhD, most people are so sick of their MA diss by the time that they submit it that if you then know you're going on to do more of the same you may just lose the will to live - or alternatively be ultra excited about carrying on lol ;-)

Hi again, funding at all levels is difficult to get, but certainly there is funding out there for masters students - I was funded by a research council for mine. Not knowing your area I can't give you any specific advice, but your dept should be able to tell you about funding opportunites. Some are funded for the masters and the phd in a 3+1, others have to apply separately. Either way, it is worth looking at. Ask your dept admin, or look at your website, its normally all there. It is very competitive, but your chances of getting Phd funding rise significantly if you have done a masters, and more so if you were funded for that and successful in its completion. I can quite understand your concerns, I couldn't have done either of my postgrad courses without funding, but have a look around and see what you can find.

Hi, if you look back through others asking the same question - u/g straight to PhD or masters in between, you'll see that generally the advice is always to try to do a taught masters prior to doing the PhD as the jump from u/g to research is so large and so difficult to manage. Some do and are successful, but I think a large percentage of us would say (myself included) that attempting to do a PhD without the transition year of the MA is just too much. PhD is so completely different from studying for a first degree, and it is far harder to get accepted onto a PhD and especially to get funding if you haven't done the masters first. As I say though, its certainly not unheard of, there are a lot of people here who didn't do the masters first, but I wouldn't recommend it - I am finding the culture and study method of the PhD hard enough as it is, I could never have stuck it or even known really how to approach it without the training I received during my masters.

You've had some excellent advice here, it does sound as though you are quite literally scared stiff! I must confess, I'd be much the same - I'm 8 months in now and the very thought of presenting at a conference at this stage is enough to send me to the local secure unit. I must say though - listen to your supervisor!!!! Do you really think for a second that he would drop you in it from a great height? I doubt that somehow, his reputation is at stake too, and he sounds like an amazing guy!

You say that you can't ever see yourself doing all these things that academics do, nor can I Fairycakes, the thought of sticking my head above the parapet is terrifying, but its something we'll learn to do. We're so early in on all of this, our research is still very much in the embryonic stage, we don't feel we have anything to say, and never will have - but that's simply not true!

Look at it this way - we have, what, 3 years maybe to go now til we graduate and are 'academics' and sending in papers regularly, presenting at conferences etc - look back 3 years in your academic career - if like me you did a masters between the u/g and now then you were a 2nd year student 3 years ago in career terms - could you then have seen yourself being the person you are now, writing and researching as you are now, having the faith of an expert as you have now? We take baby steps, but all those baby steps add up and you will be fine. Don't let the terror you're describing and its sounding close to hysteria (and I don't mean that in an insulting way) override you and destroy your future. Take baby steps, talk to your supervisor, let him know how you feel, how worried you are, he will reassure you. Hang in there - some of the greatest performers, academics, musicians and others in the public eye admit to be paralysed by nerves, but somehow find the strength to get out there and do it and you can too.

It certainly is a very interesting concept - however we know that if a subject knows that they are being 'used' for want of a better word, certainly in a forum setting, then they will adapt their conversation and the way in which they answer to mirror that. I do think that when discussing issues on a forum that people do tend to forget that they aren't simply sharing their thoughts, hopes, fears, their lives really, with like minded people, and that in reality the whole world can see exactly what they are saying. I don't think that this is helped by the majority of live-style forums placing in their user agreements that any researchers must seek the approval of the mods first - a legal necessity of course, but it does give a false sense of privacy. It then makes me quite cross that there are those who will use that sense of safety to their own purposes for academic research! The area in which I work is not one that has a need for the ethics board so I am not fully aware of the rules and regs, but I cannot believe that this kind of 'research' would be acceptable as anything other than purely observational and resulting in generalised comments. Returning to my own experience with forums of this nature, the kind of information that has been shared within the group has contained everything from the highest highs, to the lowest lows, including tragically the loss of babies. That some PhD student out there may have read those posts, then discussed how the group responded to something to incredibly personal and painful is an intrusion, in my mind at any rate, of the highest order. Worse still that possibly someone on the board was a covert researcher and possibly even made up such a story to study responses quite frankly makes my head spin! (I know that that is not the case, we've all met up in RL on numerous occasions and I'm the only one mad enough to be doing anything like this - but even still....) This is certainly an area that is going to need a lot more study and far stricter ethical guidelines than at present as the world shifts further and further towards these kind of cyber groups.

Just a thought.... I wonder if anyone is reading all these posts and is doing a study into the problems and anxieties research students face ;-)

I agree, enjoy this summer! I did my BA, MA and now my PhD at the same university so knew all of the tutors very well - their attitude is different to you when studying for your masters - more informal and not so much of a teacher/student relationship. You will also find that while they will give you more time (a meeting with my supervisor would frequently last 1/2 an hour to an hour as opposed to the 10 mins at BA), you won't get so much 'help' as such - they expect you to find solutions, they will guide you and encourage you, but they also expect you to learn how to work for yourself. The taught masters is also far more intense than BA - it was the hardest year (but most satisfying) of my academic life so far. So.... enjoy the summer - I worked and chilled and did next to nothing in preparation for the masters, if you go on to study for PhD this will be the last long holiday you get - the masters normally runs til mid sept with dissertation submission normally around the 15th or so, then the PhD starts in early Oct so you will have around 2 weeks off, then, well.... lol - you may get a day off again in a few years time, but then you'll be looking for a job ;-)

======= Date Modified 06 Jun 2009 16:22:46 =======
That's a really interesting post Joyce - I can see how these sites could be extremely useful in some ways to a researcher (my BA is joint honours with sociology) but the problems are vast aren't they! In your case it is so very different, but to use a forum as this girl has done as a means of collecting data seems incredible! I have been on one forum for the last 6 years (a birth board for Oct 2003 that I joined when pregnant and we are still all together) and we were well aware that we could be being watched, we had regular circulars onto the board from people wanting us to fill in questionnaires with the blessing of the mods, and quite a number would participate, myself included as I was a student and appreciated the need for data. Now we have a private board that only those of us who have been involved for the last few years belong to so we feel safer about discussing stuff, lurkers and trolls are the curse of the internet. To lurk for a long while, add info to the chat, potentially lead the questions and the direction of threads seems to be impossible to submit without major ethical and research bias claims. IF she has the blessing of her supervisor then questions need to be asked - I wonder if rather he/she suggested she view other boards to analyse the content, I can't believe she'd have been advised to participate undercover and not be up-front! They are understandably hurt and annoyed and you can view the dawning realisation that someone they considered 'one of them' had told lie after lie and was observing them.

That is so strange! She has certainly kicked up quite a stink - what on earth did she think she was doing? Surely she can't be genuine - would any supervisor agree to her doing that and interfering with the direction of the 'study' by her constant posting? There are some big ethical issues here - stupid girl!

I would agree that to make the jump from undergraduate to Phd without the 'training' time of the MA would be very very hard. People do do it, but I know that I couldn't have done so. What you learn, and the training you receive during the MA sets you up for the Phd - my supervisor described it as an apprenticeship for the PhD and would recommend that nobody attempts a PhD without first doing their masters. A Phd is so very different to anything you'll have done before, especially as an undergraduate - there is no handholding, unlike the u/g where you have classes, lectures, exams etc there is no structure beyond meetings with your supervisor and submission dates for panel reviews (if your university has this - some don't which makes it even more difficult to pace yourself), you have to do it all and you have to have tools in place to do that. Whilst even a taught Masters can't fully prepare you it is a transitionary course that teaches you how to research in far more depth than the u/g does.
My personal advice would be to look at the long term, do the MA, then do the PhD, you will be more prepared and more able to cope - and even then the PhD is so very very hard (but I'm assured through watching people here stagger out the other end and into the light again - so worth it!)