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Thank you for your replies!

I think I was having a bad day but I am glad I received such helpful replies!

Some things in particular have helped: first, I'm focusing on the fact that no job or PhD can make anyone *totally happy*! Anything is always going to involve some tough days or doing things which seem less interesting. It's just a case of rising to those challenges.

I found what Hildagarde and Maria said about it being fine to spend time reading very encouraging and while the project is still only on the horizon, I think its a good idea to use these initial months to build up a good understanding of an emerging area.

The comment about going for conferences that I think will help my research, even if my supervisor is not so convinced, was also encouraging, and I think I will look out for more opportunities. Getting used to PhD study also involves finding conferences where my research will be best received, and it is not always as obvious as a conference title which mirrors a major topic area.

Finally, I've been thinking that even though some limits are defined by the funding proposal, this remains a project in which I am free to decide which approaches best support it and which perspectives underpin it. It's a challenge worth going for!

Sorry - I was cut off after going over the word limit! Basically, I concluded the problem by explaining that I need to continue with my PhD in order to support my family and also because for my future career (in academia or elsewhere), I need to show resilience. I just wondered: has anyone encountered similar problems? What kind of solutions would you suggest?

I recently started my PhD in April.

I have always had an interest in doing a PhD, but equally in other types of work. However, I took up this opportunity because I was worried about unemployment. I was due to finish my Masters course this coming September but had already started applying for jobs and studentships in February. Being offered a studentship offered me financial security for 3 years and a way to ride out the recession. However, the downside involved signing up for a PhD which was slightly out of my comfort zone in terms of my existing knowledge, and also taking on something that was very technological with some theoretical basis in the social sciences and a supervisor who thinks along those lines. Although I have an unusually broad background, I feel frustrated if I can't assess the value or worth of things, from a philosophical perspective, instead focussing only on the utility of existing things.

Since April, I have been fairly upbeat despite my reservations because of the fact of obtaining a studentship and having employment. However, now I am starting to get cold feet. One problem is that I am not very interested in the theoretical perspectives I have to study. A lot of them are based on finding information, and I'm much more interested in weighing ideas and looking at motivations, rather than just how people forage around for information. I have found it hard to formulate research questions without feeling engaged by the study.

I am also rather bored. I find that my workload is not heavy and wonder what I am doing wrong. Although my project looks ambitious on paper, from day to day I feel like there is little to do. This feeling is made worse by my practical outlook: I feel that with a practical project, I should just do it, and see little added value of researching all these theories. The benefits in terms of the finished product seem minimal. I am discouraged to see how many people there are in academia, and question the real importance of a lot of research because so much seems like common sense, or alternatively based on fleeting theories that seem to lack intellectual rigour to me. I realised I had an ideal idea of standing in front of a class and inspiring students with new ideas, encouraging them to think critically, but research is nothing like that.

I am also tired of sitting at a desk with a computer all day. I enjoy "people work" and meeting people in the course of the day. I have considered getting more deeply involved in conferences but my supervisor discourages attendance at all but the most strictly relevant, and only if I present a poster. This frustrates me because I want to bring new, philosophical perspectives to my work, which will involve going to a wider range of courses, and transferring ideas across disciplines, but he seems not to understand this. I am surprised that there is so little communication across departments and universities, and that I can't make connections or find p