Hi all,

I've never made any secret of the fact that I'm doing the PhD for a regular income and for something to do as opposed to being unemployed. I've no interest in the topic but do treat it like a job and am getting through the work though not as quickly as I'd have liked but through no fault of my own. Anyway, perhaps because the end result is not the be all and end all for me, I'm quite chilled about supervision, or rather severe lack of it!

I've only had a handful of supervision meetings and am now in 2nd year. I've never had any of my work handed back to me but get the impression that they're delighted with my work but how can I be sure they've read it? I expected feedback about the layout for a data set which I provided more than two months ago but never received it. I've just assumed everything is OK and went ahead worked on it further. If it's not OK I've just wasted more than two months of hard work. My supervisors are nice people but if I was to detach myself I would have to say I am not impressed with the actual supervision. I also think the research has been ill thought out and I could get hammered at viva for this, even though I didn't design it. Although I don't think so, I could be going down completely wrong avenues but I'm not really concerned as such as long as I keep getting paid. However, perhaps I have a responsibility to other potential students? I know if my heart and soul was in this and I was studying my passion, thought my career depended the PhD (I don't), or was seriously struggling I'd be in quite a bad way. I suppose I'm asking, should I speak up and risk rocking the boat or keep quiet?

Delta, speak up to your supervisors!! You could be going down the wrong track and you don't want to find that you've wasted months of work. Regardless of the reasons you're doing a PhD, even if it's just a job to you, you need feedback so you can get through this. No feedback in the first year is really bad, and you're right, other students would be experiencing lots of difficulties without any feedback. So if I were you, I'd firmly request feedback, and discuss time frames with your sups.

Thanks. I forgot, they did feedback about ethics but as regards the literature review they said it was very good for the level I was at or something like that but they didn't hand me anything back or talk in detail about it. I'll make sure to say something as I think it would be the right thing to do.