By the way, I'm uncultured. I confused High Tea with Afternoon Tea. High tea, in old English speak, is of course the early evening meal we know as tea/dinner. Please accept my sincere apologies for my lack of appreciation of these institutions!

..yes. And also because I can come on here for 15 minutes in the morning (and afternoon) and not feel guilty for doing no work!

Following on from another discussion, I mentioned how some PhD students around here get together at 11am and at 4pm for Elevenses and High Tea. Just thinking that when the PGF team get the chatroom up and running, we can do an online Elevenses and High Tea in the chatroom. What do people reckon?

The problem I have with this is view is that it suggests that the path of the PhD student is not well trodden. Hundreds/thousands have passed through the system before us, some make it, some don't. The PhD waters are well-charted.

Whilst I accept that some supervisors forget what it was like for them when they did their PhDs, if you start a PhD without knowing what you were letting yourself in for, you are setting yourself up for a fall. There are plenty around who you can ask. I consulted with a number of people before embarking on this path so I know and expect a rocky road ahead. Likewise, I'm aware that depression is a risk, but I know the signs and how to manage my way out of it. Time will tell how prepared I am for the road ahead!

Some students (together with staff) have elevenses around here - they go off on mass to the SCR and drink tea and coffee together, religiously at 11am everyday. There's a smaller High tea club in the afternoon. Try it to organise it, your peers might like it!

..oh yeah, before I forget, we have an Off topic page on this website where we chill out and post whatever is amusing/annoying us today. The more of us that use it, that more fun it is, so you are welcome to join in there!

Well, firstly we are here and we're a nice bunch!

We all need our daily dose of social interaction to stop driving ourselves potty. In terms of the other people, you are doing the right things, e.g. asking who wants to go to lunch, trying to socialise, poppling in to seem them. You could do something like wander in with a packet of biscuits and use it as an excuse to have a chat.

How about organising a night out to break the ice, so that you build a closer bond with them?

You need to get away from the PhD, certainly for awhile. Take a long break (at least one month), go abroad (somewhere hot) on the basis that you will not make a decision on whether to continue the PhD until your return. That way you can chill out and have time to have fun. It will clear your head and allow you to make a reasoned decision.

It's certainly worth a chat with your doctor, just to get a diagnosis. However, in terms of drugs, I'm a sceptic. They should be the last resort if all else fails. I'd rather quit than go on anti-depressants. Counselling and/or a change of lifestyle are much more natural solutions. My ex started on anti-depressants over 3 years ago and now cannot get off them. They tend to be the thin end of a wedge and people often become career anti-depressant takers - moving up the the different types available. All drugs have side-effects. In her case I won't mention here what they were but they were terrible.

Juno (in response to your earlier post), all I can say is that they must have found you pleasing on the eye!

the UK equivalent of bogan is probably that 4 letter word that begins in c and ends in v and was used frequently by Zara when she was on here!

I've said this on here many times, but a PhD is essentially an academic qualification geared for a career in academia. If by doing it you develop specialist knowledge that has direct commercial application outside academia - great. There's a chance you'd earn good money. Otherwise, a PhD is not (as some would believe) a passport to riches. In the case of business, what would an employer value more - someone with a heck of alot of knowledge in one very narrow, very specific field (e.g. understanding where all the missing paperclips go to), or someone who has a broad range of knowledge in different aspects of business? If you want to make mega-bucks in business, do an MBA not a PhD.

Is this a personal experience Juno?

No, I'm asleep.

Ditto internet connection. I take my laptop to the library where I have my own office. The network connection in there is broken and I can't get the wifi. With nothing else to procrastinate with, I end up doing work.

This may sound a bit lame, but if you still need your internet fix everyday (or need to do a bit of online research), make a list of things you need to do online, then at a set time after a good working session, plug in the network cable and give yourself a short blast. A sort of reward.

Don't get me started on Facebook - I'm trying to avoid it.