I would say a weak conclusion would lose you 3-5% at most, so I wouldn't worry.

Yep pretty much. I reckon it takes me 6 hours prep for one lecture if I'm updating something that's already there e.g. checking the information, adding to it, seeing if I understand it myself etc the first time I teach it.. If writing a lecture from scratch then it takes longer (not sure how long yet... I will find out in a few months). Teaching again the following year probably takes a couple of hours prep per lecture.

It's not so bad for me, since my contract is teaching focused so research is optional.

To put your teaching load in perspective, I teach about 120 hours (crude calculation) of lectures/seminars/practicals a year, which works out about the same as you I think? Of course on top of that, there's marking, meetings, preparation and supervision of undergraduate research projects and many many other things, which basically gives me a month or two of research time per year i.e. in the summer when there's no students.

So yeah, 5 hours doesn't sound much, but when you're doing it for the first time, it's a lot.

Thanks Bewildered, I'll check it out. It's the Netherlands I'm specifically looking at and potentially surrounding countries.

Is there a good website for finding postdocs in Europe?

Something like the equivalent of jobs.ac.uk? I know they have some European jobs but not many.

Many many PhD students are only accepted because they come with funding. Some of these are good students and some are truly awful with no background in their PhD topic at all.

Once someone accepts you as a student, it's in their interest to help you pass your PhD because the department has pass rates it needs to meet in order to secure future funding. Normally, supervisors know how to improve your proposal without too much thought required and will help you to do this. There's always the odd cases of those that don't though, which always makes it very difficult for the student obviously, because they are left to work it out on their own, but I think this is the minority.

I would take it if you are offered it - work to the assumption that they want to develop it with you.

I don't think it would make much difference? They will either accept it or wait to receive it from TOEFL

I also didn't notice Iwan until you said it! Report it as abuse and this will flag to a moderator who will remove it

Here is another option as well: https://www.bigwhitewall.com/v2/landingUK.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2f

Honestly, as a non-EU international student, getting UK funding is going to be extremely difficult. At least in Science.

The only non-EU international students I know are funded by their employer, their government or their family.

There are people on here who have stopped one PhD and started another. I know personally someone who has done this successfully in the US as well, even staying in the same (small) field. So it is possible.

Maybe you could turn up on campus and go and speak to someone - you're well within your rights to do this. Tell them you want to be on campus for 2-3 days per week and ask for a desk. See what they say. If it doesn't work out then you can look for something else.

It does still seem odd to me, I would try to contact someone in the research group. Maybe you can find their details online? You should be able to find details of group members on the university web pages, although I think this is less common for non-Russell groups unis, based on when I've been searching for information before.

I'm sure you realise it's going to be really hard to succeed without supervisory support, but even more so without any other contacts. After all, that's not really the point of academia - we need to discuss our thoughts and issues with others. Plus it seems as the whole department is really disorganised. If you can't find any one else to contact and your supervisors continue their limited support, I would strongly consider whether it's worth continuing at all.

Any other distance learners or non-scientists on here want to offer advice?

Do your supervisors have a research group? Do they have any other distance students? What's your subject area? Mine's science, so we don't really have distance learners. You really need to be able to speak to other students there to see what's normal. Have they got a department mailing list? What type of uni is this? Russell group, post 92?