If noone declines their offer, you get nothing. If you really qualify to study, but you are a reserve, you get nothing. Sorry about that. You might get lucky and someone will drop out, but I would advise you to keep looking for other positions.

IT's a difficult questions to respond to. You are not really giving us much to go on. Why are you switching fields? Can you find a job in your own field? Why don't you want to do CS?

I think Journey is correct in some ways. If the job requires a certain skill, sometimes the only person that can do it is the person already in the lab, and obviously it is intentionally added to the job requirements. In other cases, the lab wants to bring new skills into the department, so they will specifically seek out new people. Of course, if you have these new skills and know someone in the department, you are more like to get the job that someone with the same skills but no connections.

No, not a full lectureship, it's a one year temporary teaching post, doing lectures, labs and admin.

It's not a myth. I know the people involved personally.

This happens very frequently. I know someone that is fresh out of his PhD, not even viva'd yet, and has just got a lectureship for a year. There are way more qualified candidates, but he is on good terms with the person offering the position. They went through the sham of interviewing other candidates as well, even though this person has already been told he had the position.

Just ask the questions anyway, even if you already know the answers. They don't know that you already know! Or, say "I saw this online, is that still the case?" This way, it also shows you've done your homework.

You can do both, but it will be very difficult and will depend on you finding a job with flexible hours. You will need to start looking now.

You are going to have to work full time to get that salary in a basic job such as finance or retail. What sort of job will you be looking for? What are you qualified to do/have experience for?

I don't like it, it's really annoying. You will probably find in reality most people try to keep to the same PCs though, a bit like in school when everyone sticks to the same desks.

You need to check with the admin dept about whether you can be accepted into the programme.

A PhD is recognised worldwide, although some institutions are better than others.

I don't know about AUS unis.

You will probably need the UK qualification for a UK accounting job, since the legislation and tax etc is totally different, but I am not sure.

Why can't you just pop into some offices/email or call relevant people and hand out the questionnaire? I think you will need to be persistent in order to get contacts.

How much is your masters? Is there no way that you can do it part time and get a full time job? I guess you need the loan to cover the initial fees though.

I remember your earlier posts where I said that sometimes they just use the research experience/no MSc thing as an easy way to decline you. My thoughts are though, why are they interviewing you at all if they already know the extent of your experience and qualifications? I still think there is more to the story, and most of the time the positions are being given to people they know, or people that just come across better in the interview.

The time scale you are describing isn't too long. Also remember that many people spend 5 - 10 years in post docs/temp research positions before being able to move on/drop out.

It's a tough situation. I share your pain in being pushed to do experiments when I still want to think about them more.

Don't forget though, experiments fail all the time, it doesn't mean he is wrong in what he is telling you to do, but I agree, you are not going to learn very much if you can't use your own initiative.

I also suspect he is correct when he says drug concentrations can be varied - I mess about with my protocols all the time, mainly because I am being lazy, but they still work. However if something isn't working, you should follow the protocol exactly to rule out any issues.

It's also very common to be told to keep repeating experiments until they work - and in many cases this is a successful approach.

I know it's hard when he is being insensitive to your needs, but it does sound like he knows what he is doing.

Making you work such long hours though is unacceptable, and you should discuss this with him by saying that you are actually more productive and successful by having time to reflect on your work, rather than continually repeating experiments. If he is still not happy with this, then I suggest you do it anyway as he is being unreasonable.

I hope you can work things out

Congratulations! Great to hear a success story!