I know how you feel, I've been through the same thing with my friends. Some of them left school at 18 and our lives have taken a very different route. They are all married with kids now, which couldn't be further away from my stage in life. It's hard not to feel like the outsider at times, which did make me really sad at one point earlier this year, especially as all my PhD friends have moved away. So what did I do?

I accepted that the nature of friendships change - we are always going to be on different trajectories, but at the same time, we have our childhood in common so we always have something to link us, too. I also thought about ways that I could interact with them better, so because I don't have kids I've become the one that helps out before and after events like parties etc, because the rest have to take their kids home. They appreciate someone helping and I get to spend time with them when it's not all about their kids. I also make sure I go to everything they invite me to, even if it's things like taking their kids to the park or the zoo. Obviously these are things we wouldn't have ordinarily done, but we can't do the same activities that we used to when their kids need be in bed by 7pm and I understand that.

Of course they don't understand or care about my work and that's not going to change. Sometimes I talk to them about stuff they can relate to from their jobs e.g. people or meetings, since they may be more interested in that.

I think there's always ups and downs in relationships, so whilst we may not have many shared interests now, we may well do in the future, so I maintain these friendships as best as I can.

Your thesis can be anything you want it to be - you don't have to include everything you did in a paper or you can add extra stuff. If someone were to compare my thesis with one of my papers they would find I'm saying one thing in one and something else in another - they are actually both true, it's just for the thesis I am using the whole data set and for the paper I am using a selection of the data set. This wasn't planned, it was just when I was writing the paper a year after submission I realised that some things should have been excluded initially.

Go for the one with full funding, every time.

You don't want to waste half your time looking for ways to pay the rent.

I think that's good advice from Pjlu. If that's possible then you may be able to discuss ideas further with a potential supervisor as well.

If you can't register formally for a PhD, then I would see what training options there are for academics or PhD students that might help you - you need to be able to approach the research properly, otherwise it just won't work.

Technically your titles should be the same yes. People will still be able to find you though because you will be allocated a number in the abstract book and then given the same number for the poster board. No one will notice or care if you change your title.

People don't usually put abstracts on their poster.

Yep, all the logos need to go on somewhere. And any funders or conference attendance sponsors usually. You can put the logos elsewhere on the poster if you prefer though.

I agree with all of the above. You also might need to visit your GP if you have been having thoughts like this for a while.

It's more likely that your PhD supervisors will pay if you need to pay at all. They will be on the paper too right? So it's in their interest to do so. I very much doubt your current research institute will pay, since the work is nothing to do with them and won't benefit them in any way as your affiliation remains at your PhD institution for this work.

Thinking about it, what would happen in my case? I'm on a teaching contract; the university has already told me that they won't pay anything towards any research I may choose to do. If I write a paper without my PhD supervisors (who will still pay for stuff if they are on it, but not if they are not), how I will pay for this? My only options are: pay myself, find free ones or apply for funding from a university charity we have.

Thanks for raising this - made me realise I need to think about this too.

Please stop spamming the forum, thanks.

It's highly unlikely you will be able to switch supervisors at this stage, since you are now post submission and what happens next is between you and your examiners. I would go and see the head of graduate school or similar and see what they suggest.

Chuck them in the appendix. Problem solved!

I don't think it's usual to contact examiners - I think you are supposed to make the corrections and then they approve them, or not. If you give valid explanations as to why you have taken the actions you have, then there shouldn't be an issue.

I would ignore the first offer, since this isn't a postdoc and there is no guarantee that this will come to anything.

For the second offer, I think it sounds fine. How do you know the other students don't have many more publications in the pipeline? I think 'checking up' on you is fine - maybe they were just getting a reference?

It's not good practice to accept an offer and then reject it a year down the line, and you may burn bridges by doing this, but you won't be the first and you won't be the last.

If I were you, I would stick to a standard size of poster, otherwise you may find yours looks odd in comparison to everyone else's!

Most academic posters are A0, which is 84 x 118 cm.

The dimensions they are probably giving is for the poster boards.

It does matter, because the resolution changes if you try to print to a larger size than you have sized it to on powerpoint. It won't matter if the parameters are only slightly out. What are you trying to change it to and what does it reset to?

You're still a student until your graduation, so you can still use the letterhead. But I really doubt this makes any difference at all, especially in the UK.

I don't think it matters whether you get a postdoc now or after your viva, or even after graduation, or even a year down the line. As long as you show you have been active in research ie writing papers, publishing, attending conferences, or even doing a job vaguely related to your field, you will be fine for applications. Everyone knows how hard the job market is, so it's not surprising if it takes a while to find a postdoc.

I think it took me 3 months to find a postdoc and I started the postdoc about 3 months before I had my viva. It took me 6 months to find another job (any job!) when I wanted to quit the postdoc for something else.