Now here's a writing tool ,-)

Make sure you check out Kamikaze mode...

http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html

Jean Bolker's Write Your Dissertation in 15 mins a day is very good on this. As is Writing your Dissertation by a Scottish woman whose name escapes me. The Bolker one touches on the psychology of this stuff, which imo is what your post talks about too.

It all depends on the people and the situation. I had a career for 10 years prior to leaving to do my PhD. I don't get treated like I'm the greatest, as in a research environment I'm not and wouldn't expect to be treated as such, but I do get treated with respect. I don't get treated like a student, I get treated perhaps like a junior member of staff (although they don't distinguish much). I can join in staff stuff, or not as suits what I want to get out of it really. They do seem to have the impression I am much younger than I am, which is fine as it makes me feel young. :)

But, the unavoidable for me is that it's massively different to the more tangible work environment. So I think it would be easy to develop crises of status, purpose etc. And that would make it easy to feel that you are not respected.

I think a key difference for me is that I am pretty much the only PhD in my section, so it would be difficult to isolate me without totally isolating me. So I don't sit in some PhD area, I don't have other PhDs to hang around with, therefore I don't get lumped in with the other PhDs. So they pretty much have to treat me like staff, or totally isolate me.

Congrats. Zotero. You just need Firefox. It's more sophisticated than Endnote imo, but obviously you need to check it does what you want it to.

I agree with what others said, they work it out as if you are getting that money every month, then you claim it back.

Also wanted to mention though there is an exception, which I don't think applies in your case, but it might and it might in the future...
If you are only working in the holidays, there is a special form to fill in for students, then you don't pay any tax and NI. This is on the basis that the assumption is then that you won't hit the threshold as you are only working in the holidays.

Your method is interviews, your methodology is a different thing. That depends on your theoretical framework and how you are analysing things. Interviews is just a tool (or method) within a broad range of methodologies.

Yes it's something that I dislike about this forum. And I can't help but find it rather ironic that this is meant to be a forum for academics, where surely the idea is discussion, voicing views, debating them, being challenged on them, back them up etc etc. I am far more active, and a moderator, on another forum about something so much more trivial, where we respect freedom of speech, unless the circumstances are extreme. Even then we do not delete posts, although people can be reprimanded.

I've not read what the OP said, and for all I know it could have been as blunt as anything, but give people the rope to hang themselves not censor them.

My particular censorship gripe is if you mention jobs.ac.uk is response to someone's question. We are only allowed to recommend findaphd.com, not jobs.ac.uk which looks to me to be set up not for profit by universities themselves. No, even if its a social science/arts/anything not science query, people have to be sent to the search engine which puts Arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law in one category, whilst splitting science into about 6 categories. The other forum I am in is also run by a private business, but we do not censor out the competition.

There must be a PhD in this ;-)

I am awaiting lots of disagreement, but 3 colleagues of mine who all did their PhDs in the last 10 years, and who are all now lecturers, told me that if you knew what you were doing, you could do a whole PhD in a year. The rest of the time is spend procrastinating, going down blind alleys, hiding under the duvet, writing on forums ;-) etc. So if it is really all written in your head, and you know what you are doing, and can just get on and do it, then logically it doesn't take so long. Of course, that is a huge "if" as working your way through all the mess is what the PhD process is about...

I've been to things where you don't know when you are presenting till you arrive. Everyone just makes sure they are ready from day 1. Not saying this is what will happen, but couldn't you prepare for the 1st day? Wouldn't you rather be able to get the most out of the other aspects of the conference rather than needing to work on your presentation? If it's international I assume registration would be the night before, so you'd get a pack that would tell you then, so it's not going to be a case of you walk in the door and you're on.

Personally I wouldn't keep chasing them. You don't want to be the person who hassled the organisers.

I'm not saying I would organise a conference in that way, or that it's right, but it might not be insurmountable.

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Yorkshire Dales every time! The Lakes gets busy, the Dales not so much. Here's a couple of campsites for you:
http://www.keldbunkhouse.com/camping.html
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/babrarukin/campsite.htm
It can be rainy in Yorkshire too, but not so much as the Lakes. Lots of the rain gets dumped on the West before it gets to us.8-)

I'm doing a PhD in English which is my first language, so not in the same boat at all, but just wanted to give something from that perspective. People in England are so used to hearing non-native speakers speak English that it often doesn't register when people don't speak perfectly. I have been in situations with my non-native speaking English friends where they all turn to me to adjudicate an error in someone's English, where they aren't sure or in agreement and I won't have even noticed. I mention this as I think it's hard when speaking a foreign language as you think native speakers hear all the mistakes, and I just wanted to say that much of the time we don't Certainly not if we're used to hearing non-native-speaker-English, which in unis people are.

And for what it's worth, the time when I realised I could really speak German was when I thought in German rather than thinking in English and then translating. So immersion, and embracing English all the time is imho the way to go.

I agree with Walminskipeas. I think not using I is in response to the dominance of positivism; even where people reject positivism it's still hard to actually make that break with the little hangovers that sound 'normal' and 'academic'. Particularly if your work is self-reflexive then I can see how you can be that without I.

Could be wrong but I thought the operating system was something you can't change. The computer will be built for that operating system. Like I can't run Windows on my Mac (for me, thankfully!). You can get PC emulators, so I actually can run Windows on my Mac, but only cos it fools Windows it is a PC. Maybe you can get the same of Linux? I've found that it makes it run very slow though (I only use it when I need to use MS Access) so I don't think it is the best solution. Could be wrong though, maybe you can get Windows for Linux, but I thought they were both operating systems, so you can't have two.

You will get told no quicker, it's easier.

Personally I think it is more likely to reflect on the institution's HR than him. His hands may well be tied with what he can do and say outside of the official procedures. I had a similar experience with a job a few years ago, job was great and manager was great. HR operated slowly, just like I could tell from the hearing after interview process, but it seems pretty common. Of course it could also be him, but I wouldn't assume it is.