Hi all. I've been a long time lurker on these forums but this my first post.

I've been a full time PhD student at a UK university for 4 and a half years now. Things haven't gone so well for me and after a series of extensions, during which I have tried to get my thesis ready for submission, I have decided to temporarily walk away from the ivory tower until I can work things out.

Issues which have held me back;

1. A long term health complaint which I take regular medication for, but which evidently needs a small operation to fix which is proving hard to get done on the NHS. It will cost me around £8,000 to get done privately which is not the kind of cash an in-debt PhD student has lying around.

2. Supervision issues; First supervisor (the reason why I came to this particular university to study on this particular programme) is completely disillusioned with academia, rarely gives proper feedback, has been disinterested in my project from the go, and complains openly about how he wants to leave academia (even recently writing an open "I Quit" letter in a major education publication).

3. No second supervisor; I changed the focus of my research early on in first year and we agreed to use a different second supervisor for the bureaucratic side of things, but he then left to take a consulting role and I was never allocated a second supervisor. This is partly my fault though as it was made clear that I could find my own second supervisor from within the department.

4. My transfer from MPhil to PhD at the end of the second year was a bit of a disaster. My research proposal which was signed off by my first and second supervisor was trashed by the internal committee and I had to rewrite taking onboard their criticisms. My supervisor's advice? "write what they want to hear then just do your own thing again after they pass it."

Continues below......

Because of a combination of all of the above, I really didn't start making headroom with my thesis until the start of 3rd year, and because of these ongoing issues I came to the end of the 4 year limit for full time students (we have a very tight cut off point in the UK for those American PhD students who don't know) without a finished thesis, although things were well on their way.

I managed to get a series of extensions over the last 8 months due to my medical condition in an attempt to try and put a finished thesis together, but unfortunately a combination of stress and depression has meant that I am still no longer in a position to submit. The only thing that makes me feel good at the moment is the thought of packing everything in yet the thought of walking away from the thesis at such a late stage with nothing has been a major factor in me staying.

I made the decision to quit this week though and have discussed my options with the head of the PhD programme. They are fully supportive of my decision to leave although they did offer me the following options;

1. submit for an MPhil. - I'm not keen on this as I would not be able to use the same material to go for a PhD at a later date.

2. more extensions - again, not so keen as I haven't got very far with the previous ones.

The reason why I wanted to do a PhD (work in academia) is still valid although having been inside the ivory tower for so long I realise that job prospects are grim at best so have been actively looking for work outside.

I really feel as though I am making the right decision but it would be interesting to hear from anyone else who has been in this situation.

Rather than extensions, can you take a leave of absence? It sounds like you aren't quite absolutely sure you want to quit. And if you do quit, then you almost certainly won't be able to get a job in academia.

I took a leave of absence for health reasons and while I was away decided that I really missed academia and definitely wanted to come back and finish because I love teaching and don't hate research. I then got an extension, so am still going. But, am definitely going to submit the thing by the end of September. That'll be 6 years after I started, but 5 years 3 months of registration.

It's been a struggle, but for me it's worth it. And, now that i'm doing my PhD while I'm well I'm really starting to enjoy the research aspect again.

Sounds like you need some guilt-free time out to figure things out without the pressure of the deadline getting closer.

How much of the thesis have you got written?

@ IntoTheSpiral - someone suggested that on another forum. I need to speak to my PG tutor but it could be a possibility.

@ bewildered - if I could work to the level I used to be able to before I got ill then I'd say 2-3 months tops until I completed a first draft of the whole thesis. At present I have rough / work in progress versions of all chapters with only a couple of sections which I know need some more research and reading time. I already have copies of the literature needed for those sections as well

I think then it would be worth investigating a leave of absence for the reasons IntoTheSpiral gives. I'm not convinced you see that another university would be that happy for you to register to finish off at a later date, you see, so if you can keep the candidacy at your current place alive, I suspect that's going to be easiest.
Regarding the operation, have you asked if the NHS would refer you to get it done elsewhere in the EU if the waiting lists are that long? There was a recent story in the guardian about someone doing that.