Just over a week ago, I finally submitted my PhD thesis, almost 11 years after my initial enrolment date. Now I'm wondering where I go from here.

I still have to wait at least 3 months to get my results, but I'm wondering if I should start looking into a Post Doc or even if I want/need to do one (assuming I actually pass and get my doctorate). While I enjoyed some aspects of the research, some aspects took a huge toll on my mental and physical health (my candidature was a dumpster fire; see my post history). So while I think I would enjoy doing some research in the future, I would prefer my career to be largely teaching focused (I have already been tutoring for more than 10 years and lecturing for the last 3).

If I plan to be mostly teaching-focused and concentrate on lecturing and unit/content development etc, will a Post Doc even be useful? I was briefly discussing it with my supervisor the other day (in a rushed meeting in the hall as each of us were on the way to other commitments, and she's now on leave due to illness) and she said she did not think I would enjoy doing a Post Doc as you are essentially dedicating 1-3 years of your life to someone else's project you may not be that interested in. So I'm leaning towards not doing it, but if even a teaching-focused academic career requires one, I will still need to consider it.

Has anyone else done a Post Doc and then gone into a teaching role? Did you find the Post Doc helped advance your career or would you choose not to do it if you had your time again?

(for context, I am in Australia in the Information Technology field)

I'm not sure if there are any 'hard and fast' rules for whether you should do it or not, but I have included some new references in my Results and Discussion chapter in the same manner you have: comparing my results and findings with those of other studies (I have also included a handful in my Conclusions chapter, but literally only 2-3, and only as a signpost for future research I might do, eg. "Bob and Smith found xyz by doing abc, so in future it could be beneficial to try a slightly modified abc in this project to see if it resolves issues 123").

I would probably avoid bringing in TOO many new resources though. If there are a lot of similar studies you want to mention, I'd suggest maybe putting some in the Lterature Review or Methodology chapters or whatever and then just mentioning some of the more recent ones in your Discussion/Results.

Sorry for the rant, but I'm just so angry and upset and bitter that after putting so much time and effort into my PhD, I didn't get it because of other people not doing what they were supposed to do, and the utter lack of support makes it worse.

Has anyone else discontinued a PhD after investing a lot of time into it? How do you manage the feelings of being directionless and a failure? I only discontinued 2 weeks ago so it's still pretty raw and my mental health is still in tatters. I feel like I should be trying to do something but I don't have any energy.

I recently discontinued my PhD after wasting 6.5 years on it, walking away with nothing to show for it. Throughout my entire PhD, I had issues with getting programmers to work on the system I needed for my data collection (it took 4.5-5 years to get a working system; keep in mind that when I started my PhD back in 2013 I was told by my supervisor that it would be "well and truly ready" by the time I needed it the following year). On top of that, the faculty moved me out of my office with no notice and fumbled around organising me a replacement testing room, which meant I had to cancel the test sessions I'd organised, and when I went to reschedule them, there was an interpreter shortage, so I couldn't book one of those for more than a month (I booked some earlier but instead of telling me they couldn't fulfill the booking, they just waited until I called the day before to confirm it was going ahead).

By the time I finished my data collection, I was going to have like three months to do the data analysis AND write up the rest of my thesis, which wasn't possible anyway, but because my mental health was shot to hell and then I had to deal with my own health issues as well as running around after family members, I had no choice but to discontinue. I had asked for support for several years as I expressed concern that the system delays would mean I wouldn't get my PhD finished, but I was always brushed off with "It won't come to that" or "Just keep working at it". Except when it became clear that it HAD come to that and I asked for help or advice, I was told "You'll just have to discontinue."

(continued in next post)

Doing a PhD utterly destroyed my mental health. It wasn't just all the things going wrong, but also the complete lack of support I got from the university, even though a lot of my delays were caused by them.

I can't imagine how stressful that would be for you :( I have no advice but can only offer support. It's disgusting how your university has treated you. I hope you get it all resolved positively as soon as possible :(

Hi everyone, I'm new to this forum and though I'd say hi. My main challenge has been getting the system I need to use for my data gathering ready. It's basically an offshoot of one of my supervisor's projects and when I started my PhD I was told the system would be working within a fairly short time (well before I needed it), but between programmers who were working on it leaving and new programmers being unreliable, the system is STILL not complete (I am in the last 12-14 months of my PhD), though it's hoped that it should be functional so I can do my data gathering in Jan/Feb next year.

My supervisors have said I'd be able to get an extension because my progress has been delayed by circumstances beyond my control, but still... I just hate the fact I need to apply for one :(