I wouldn't worry about it. IF English isn't your native language these are very small things that will be overlooked if they want to interview you based on your experience and suitability. This won't matter, but do check more carefully before pressing send next time! Good luck.

If he's seen drafts before, it's ok.

My thesis was 70,000 words. Checking references took me one day, but I used a reference manager. Depends how much you have in your appendix. Mine only took a few hours, but I'd made the tables in it as I went along in my PhD. I formatted as I wrote. If you haven't formatted yet, use heading styles for headings and table and figure legends and then Word will format all that for you. Otherwise that may take days. Proofreading took me about 6-7 hours nonstop. Or, get someone to start proofreading it now for you.

I wouldn't worry about it. Even projects with a supervisor and a supposed trajectory can end up being wildly different to what was proposed. Supervisors tend to think about things at the last minute, so it's not a problem if you get an actual project a few weeks into the PhD.

The postdoc will probably have more time and be more keen to supervisor you than a typical prof/reader/senior lecturer would have/be, so I don't think this matters.

Ask them what potential projects are on offer, or suggest your own ideas if you have them, and see what they say.

Was your supervisor involved in the original conception of the ideas for your project, or did they provide any funding? What do your other supervisors think? In my case, they provided both funding and ideas so had to be named on the paper according to my other supervisors.

Better a bird in the hand than two in a bush.

All is not lost. I've known several students who have done this, it's not advisable, but they've passed with either minor or major corrections so I'm sure you will pass too.

Has your supervisor seen drafts of chapters?

Why have you been failing your coursework? I don't what else you can do, except ask your supervisor for some help with the coursework or appeal the decision and say you didn't get enough support to be able to do the coursework.

If you don't end up using your PhD directly, it still not a waste. The more education people have, the better off the whole of society is e.g. people are less likely to end up in jail, get pregnant young and a load of other things I can't think of now. So, investing in education is a good idea all round.

Sounds like you got a pretty sweet deal going on there to me. I'd probably stick it out and then take my career chances later.

Hi Carocore, this is a forum for people doing postgraduate degrees, mostly PhDs. I'm not sure we can help you here.

It's a difficult one. There's been things I struggled to understand at the start of my PhD but I was fine with it at the end after having spent a lot of time reading and writing about it. Sometimes it just needs time to sink in.

In my job now I feel like I know next to nothing compared to other academics (well they do have 20-30 years on me right? That's what I keep telling myself anyway), so I've decided from now until Christmas to throw myself wholeheartedly into my lecture content to get a really deep understanding of the topics I'm teaching, which I already should know to be honest (or should I, since I last learnt it back in 2006??). Anyway, the point is, you are capable of learning it, otherwise you wouldn't have got this far, so with a bit of dedication you can do it.

If you need to ask specific questions, maybe you can find forum based on your topic area and ask questions there, I do that sometimes.

A PhD isn't more work than a normal full time job and shouldn't think of it in this way, otherwise you will burn out early.

You can pick stuff up as you go along, but it is definitively more of a challenge. You may find you know lots about your subject but have forgotten the basics (I did). You might find it beneficial to attend undergrad lecture courses or reread text books (I wish I did).

You can pick up more money by working in the department if available (I got an extra £4k max this way).

Only you can decide what's right for you, but since you're back in the ring again, that probably means you will regret it if you don't go for this PhD.

Finding a random person to sent your summary to really isn't the point. Do you want a PhD on that basis, when maybe what you've written isn't good enough but you've passed anyway on a technicality?

Just look online and find people in your field and email them the document. You probably won't hear anything back anyway.