Agreed, it doesn't really matter what your reason is. You can work your working hours, but not beyond that, that should be fine to any reasonable employer.. Personally I would just say I can't make 8am meetings as my start time is 8.30 and it's difficult to get there before that. If they ask why, I would tell them the reason, but whatever they thought of this reason, I still wouldn't come in earlier. Employers often want far too much and give back too little. Are they gonna pay you for the extra 30 mins? How forgiving would they be if you rocked up at 9am when you felt like it?

We don't get our reports after the viva, probably could, but I'm too scared to ask! I have a feeling my internal and external had a battle between minor and major corrections for me and luckily my internal won out.

If this report was written before your viva, then maybe they didn't rate your thesis, but you did extremely well in the viva, so they changed their mind in the end? I've heard examiners make comments like this.

Maybe it's different in different fields. In the biology conferences I go to, I see the poster/presentation and then the same info in a journal article published later and vice versa. Of course I don't know whether they reworded things or not, but the data and at least some of the figures are exactly the same.

Write up results, then discussion, then intro, then methods. This is because it's easier to write the other stuff once you know what your results are.

Yes it's a down step but does that matter if you are doing it to fit your lifestyle? It's possible to get back on the academic career ladder afterwards if you so wished e.g. in the UK there are career break grants available for this kind of thing.

I think that's fine. Very common.

Can you go and see your supervisors rather than emailing?

Agreed pm133, I'm talking more about Russell Group unis, since that's where I'm based and most of my interactions are with others from Russell Group unis.

I'd say within those unis you mentioned it probably doesn't make a lot of difference. Think about other things as well - publications from the research group, cost of living in the city etc.

Sorry to hear that, sounds like a fairly odd viva. Generally it should be pretty obvious as you go through what they think the 'holes' in your thesis are.

What does your supervisor think? Is there any grounds to appeal?

Lecturer positions are basically impossible to get without a postdoc.

A lecturer position generally requires anything from 3 years postdoc to 3-10 years of a fellowship. In order for you to get a lectureship after a postdoc, you can expect to have several Science/Nature papers + have just been awarded a 3-5 year fellowship grant, going on the people that have just got lectureships at my uni. That is the bare minimum. At the other end of the scale there are people at my uni that are fantastic researchers with fellowships and 10-15 years research experience but just can't seem to find a lectureship. Basically, you can't count on ever getting one and if you do then you are pretty lucky.

The alternative route into academic positions is a teaching role, like I'm doing, but these are generally temporary and may be non-progressable, although the pay and benefits is the same as an entry level lecturer.

Totally agree with satchi here.

I started looking once I'd done about 1/2 my thesis writing as by then I was confident I would finish it by the deadline. This was about 3.5 years in for me.

What sort of job are you looking for? What you've described is enough for a postdoc.

I always totally reword abstracts. I think this is best practice anyway really, but I also do it because the paper is probably being presented in a slightly different direction to the information presented at the conference, so it needs to be amended anyway. Plus of course it's always easy to look back at a conference abstract and think it is terrible so I end up wanting to totally rewrite it anyway!