Hi everyone, I've been registered on this site for a while and found it really useful, so wanted to ask some advice myself and hope it might be useful to others. Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere.

In my third year of a PhD in arts / humanities, I have basically been told that my department won't allow me to submit my thesis as they think it is not ready and that there's a good chance I will fail. I am also suffering from anxiety and haven't performed well at the yearly panel I did this summer, which I have to take in order to progress to the next year and / or submit.

Setting aside the fact I'm pretty angry at my uni for how they've handled this, and that it's only now they're telling me that this is really the only option they're giving me, I wanted to ask for advice in how to present this interruption of study on job applications and CVs?

Also, does anyone have advice on what sort of work it is best to do during an interruption - where can I apply for with an as yet incomplete PhD? Ideally, I would like to do something that boosts my CV academically but am looking both within and outside academia for work.

Have you considered either intercalating or having a 'year away from the university'? I believe most universities have to look favourably on intercalation requests for financial and / or health reasons. Could you perhaps say you've run out of money / need to recover so wish to intercalate.... and then while intercalating perhaps you could also make some alterations to your thesis?

Jobs wise, I guess it depends what you want to do. But there are lots of Teaching English as a Foreign Language jobs at universities in Korea, China, Taiwan etc. where you would only work about a dozen hours a week, have enough money to live off of and time to complete your thesis.