hey guys. just wondered if anyone has come across any kind of phd group that regularly gets together socially, to discuss phd's, share tips, etc etc? i'm just finishing the first year of my phd, but i still haven't met very many other phd students as my lab mostly consists of post docs. it would be great to meet others, to share the load, get others' perspectives, and generally feel like i'm not on my own! the forum is great, but in person even better i imagine. unfortunately i don't think my university has such a group.. let me know if you know of anything :-)

for me, its just conferences. Although I have deliberately contacted PhDers from other unis doing similar subejcts (initially to make sure they weren;t doing the same stuff) but we get on and email, not so much swap ideas, but there's someone to moan to about the work load!

Hi Ems84. I can totally understand - my first year felt lonely too. I found out that there are Postgraduate Associations for nearly every discipline in the UK. I joined the one in my discipline and we are quite active: we maintain regular contact, meet at least once a year, organise postgrad conferences and workshops, etc. We also provide academic and emotional support to each other. I've managed to meet other PhD students in my field at other universities around the UK. May be do a search online and try to find websites, associations or blogs dedicated to potgrads in your field. Best of luck with your PhD.

Hi Ems84,
Totally know where you're coming from! I'm not sure if you've heard of academia.edu? It's a site where students/ staff of universities post their research interests and a bit about themselves. Some universities use it more than others but it's worth a try. Might be a way to meet other phd students as you can follow people/ send people messages - bit like Twitter/ Facebook, I suppose. Good luck ;-)

just started mine last month. my prof told me every year he send phd students to Msc. research methodology class so as to make friends coz he kn rows the lonely ness. in my uni there is podtgrad loaunge but mostly used by mscs. ave been talking to phd students in my RI for get togethers

I find it hard to meet PhDers who don't have an alternate agenda - if they are in my subject area, its like a huge competition, so no one wants to talk about research, let alone any difficulties they are having, so it makes you feel worse when you hear

"oh, mine - I finished all my data collection in the 1st month and wrote up all the chapters in the 2nd, I'm using the next 2 years 10 months to publish things that aren't related to the PhD" :-s

In my department you can't moan about staff either - as it goes about like wild fire, very gossipy. I find it best to moan on here and find peple who aren't doing PhDs - then you can moan away.

Luckily, my prof. organizes seminars every quarter or so among his PhD students doing the research in the same field. So, giving presentations, sharing ideas in the seminars is a good idea. Besides, our department runs PhD workshops every fortnightly where lot of us meet and get to share. The other part is formation of PhD groups in the department itself, which recently started. The PhDers in different phases give presentations where sharing takes place. There are many opportunities to share but this forum is one of the best, though don't know each other, it is really a good place to receive help when needed.

Swetch

my uni has similar presentations - unfortunately all the other PhDers seem to use it as a chance of oneupmanship and decide to tear eachother apart. So you think its a nice friendly audience and then your research is criticised by everyone!