I'm well aware of the employment issues, however I think that there's still a difference in careers between university educated people and people without a degree.

I don't see much distinction between people with undergraduate degrees and people with PhDs. I never said I did. I'm talking about people that never went to university - which is the majority of people that I know. If I listed what you have, 'Higgs Boson particle to refugees, Gaza conflict and GMOs' - half of my friends wouldn't even know what those words meant. Even though I work with GMOs, I bet they don't know the abbreviation. Some of them don't even watch the news or read a paper and obviously don't have the ability to engage with conversations about these topics because of that. It's not even about education sometimes, it's just about being interested in what's going on in the world, or more interested in sports/soap operas/reality tv shows/getting pissed at the weekend. If I said to them, 'let's discuss the refugee crisis in Europe', I'm honestly not sure of what some of them would say. Maybe I will try it next time I'm home.

Women in the sciences and in many high flying careers are childless because work is inflexible. What I should do, therefore, is forget that I have a PhD, and be grateful for any old Tom, Dick or Harry that looks in my direction. Yes, let's get rid of highly educated women and get them back in the kitchen where they belong. Which, incidentally, is where I am going now because I'm hungry and I've finally finished writing my manuscript.

No it's not, people can be intelligent but not educated and vice versa...

Do you really think that, in general, people that are working for minimum wage are as intelligent as those working in more 'professional' occupations Dunham? Do you think that people enjoy cleaning toilets, working in restaurants and manning shop floors? I think they would be rather doing something else.

This has nothing to do with the fact that I have a PhD. I have always been able to recognise people that have more intelligence than others - just like anyone else. I don't think you could necessarily tell from a crowd of people who works in science either, but I do think you could tell who had a higher IQ. I don't think a PhD equals intelligence, but I do think it makes it more likely. I also agree many people could do my work with a bit of training, like you said, it's just biology. It's not difficult to pick up - hence why I do it rather than maths or physics. But not everyone could do it - maybe you grew up in an area where everyone was intelligent; I grew up in a village where I knew one person older than me that went to university and most people worked in factories. I certainly wouldn't say most people that I know are highly intelligent. Far from it. Also, most of them didn't go to university, hence why I think you and I live in different worlds Dunham, and that's the reason for the difference in perspective.

Also, don't you think I know better than you who I would be bored with? It's not all about academic intelligence, but some intelligence is a prerequisite for me. And, yes someone needs to have the same social status as me. I don't care how the professors make their choices, that's got nothing to do with me.

As someone who has worked in both non-academic environments and academic environments for years, I can tell you that intelligence/knowledge/IQ/education or whatever you want to call it is correlated with place of work. I have also seen this again moving from a well-established redbrick university to a research institute.

Chances are, if someone has a PhD, they are going to be more intelligent than the average Joe in the street. You are not average when it comes to intelligence Dunham, and nor are the PhD students you meet. You and they have the average intelligence of a PhD student, which is not the same thing at all.

Having said that, of course I have met highly intelligent people outside of academia - some of them are in high management positions, some are in are menial positions because they lack the drive/opportunity to achieve anything else.

Personally, I tend to have less in common with people that are not academic/scientific/logical. It's hard to reason with or relate to people that think irrationally, think education is unimportant, don't have a wide knowledge of multiple subjects, or put their life in God's hands because they don't believe that they largely control their own decisions. I want someone that can challenge me intellectually or tell me something I don't know, not agree with everything I say because I must be right because I have a PhD.

Regarding your other point about conversation topics, I find two people that work in the same place/type of job tend to talk about work a lot. There's nothing wrong with that and it's mostly inevitable because work is a big part of someone's life and if they enjoy it, or have a commonality, they are going to talk about it.

For me, I need someone on my intellectual level and I'm pretty certain that person is not going to be working in retail. It's not impossible, but I find there are more like-minded people in academia.

I wouldn't worry too much about it for now. You will probably be glad you are single when you come to finalising your thesis, I know I was. It took up all my head space so there would have been no room for a relationship anyway.

For me here's the difficulty: finding someone who's intelligent, single, who I'm attracted to, who's attracted to me, someone that's a nice, decent, reasonable person with a similar sense of humour and a similar outlook on life.

It's not that easy, and it has nothing to do with whether I'm an 'interesting/experienced/adventurous person with a life story'.

But then again, I do have some 'dating experience' so maybe I will try 'bragging' about that and seeing if that catches someone's attention. Or maybe not.

It is going to be a hell of a time commitment; there's no way around that. As a part-time student, you are going to need to spend around 15 hours per week on your PhD, for the next 6-8 years... I don't know how this compares with a EdD.

But, like Ed said, you are already ahead of some of the less experienced students. Not everyone needs to spend months cramming for the defense. People doing a PhD are called 'student' for a reason - people might be working long hours but they are not always being productive (think hangovers, chatting, facebooking etc). You probably won't be wasting time doing those things, so the path may be easier and less time consuming for you.

Yeah it's definitely quite focused on sciences. I found most of it to be good advice though.

https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/ten-steps-to-phd-failure?nopaging=1

If I am sure what they contain but I can't get access to them then I just cite them. I do this when I know I know they are the key papers because they are cited by everyone else. Sometimes I cite them even if all I can get is the paper title!

That's different to me then, with my issue it didn't have a record of saving that day at all. Are you sure the changes aren't just masked somehow?

I'm not sure whether they are regarded as the same, probably depends on field. I think you often get invited to write book chapters based on your previous contributions to things.

Sorry Caro, I can only sympathise. That happened to me on more than one occasion. It sucks. I didn't find a way to fix it. Check to see if there are other versions of it? Sometimes there is autobackup copies that you can revert back to, but there wasn't in my case.