Hi everyone, I'm in the third year of my PhD now and really feeling the heat. I find the pressure I am under is directly proportional to the amount I drink (the more pressure the more I drink) - and the cheap offers ASDA currently has on beer doesn't help! Currently, I'm struggling to get participants for the second phase of my research - and that's not good at this stage. I therefore think that my PhD is going quite poorly at the moment - especially since I have teaching duties in addition to the need to churn out some chapters. I've even started to listen to A-ha, Human League and...Peter Gabriel, which definitely indicates things are not going well (I used to be a connoisseur of music, which meant I necessarily hated U2 and Bono).
I'd be really interested to hear what other people's current experiences with regards to how well their PhD is going. I've even established a wannabe Likert scale (not really possible with only 4 scale points) that people can use to rate how well they feel their work is going. At the end of the poll, we can then see what the overall range of experiences are. If the worst comes to the worst, I can even submit it as my PhD!:-)

Hey Walminski

Have you conceived this under the influence? ;-) Here here for drinking beer instead of studying!

I'm nearing the end of my third year, and can assure you that my PhD is also going not so well! It's a toss up between so-so and poor, so already there's flaws in your research, as it's influenced by my particular mood at the moment. But I guess that's the nature of social science research!

And hey, up until recently, the highlight of my day was watching 'On the Buses' on Foxtel at lunchtime - I think that beats out A-ha for poor taste! And I saw Human League earlier this year, and they were just fab.

Thanks for the fun post - a nice change from all the others asking about where to do a PhD/find money (!).

What's wrong with A-ha and Human League? :p Child of the 80s me you see.

I'm going to answer well, because I've nearly finished and expect to submit before my final registration deadline. I've nearly finished the thesis and am just doing final polishing/edits over the next few months, very slowly. But if you'd asked me anytime in the previous 2.5 years (I'm a part-time student) the answer would have been much worse.

It's a horribly up and down process. More down mostly than up. But at the moment I'm positive.

So so (somedays poor) . I have to have a complete second draft by Christmas, and submit in the end of Feb. I am currently regoing over chapters and filling in gaps with secondary literature. Some of the arguments I have been making earlier have been superseded by work published in 2008 and 2009. So now I am unclear how special parts of my argument are, or indeed what my overall thesis argument is.

It would be a total disaster, but at least with three publications there is something of publicaton standard in there. I don't really have much confidence in the thesis itself though and expect corrections to perhaps major level. So depressing. I just want it to be over. I have come this far and now I just feel like the bottom is falling out of my thesis and I don't really know what I have done!

I am now 3 years and 2 months in - and I have been lucky enough to get an extra funding award abroad for six months, which runs out in early 2010. So whatever state my thesis is in then, it will have to be submitted as such.

sometimes I think its going really well, but then I am woken up to the fact that I have not even written my lit review in full, have not written any of my studies up, have a lack of participants for my 2nd study, and my 3rd study is being impeded by a load of bureaucracy at my industrial partner AND I am in my third year like you walminskipeas! Urgh, after seeing it on the screen I now want to die - or more precisly put off doing any more work today and go an watch a chick flick before my other half returns home and wants to play his ps3.

Hi Walminski, thanks for this thread, it is really interesting to see how everyone elsethinks they are doing. I'm almost 18 months in, part-time, and have had a swap of institution and supervisor - my first supervisor was rubbish as well, so I feel the frst year was a bit of a waste of time.


I think I am doing 'so so'. My conceptual framework and planing are vastly improved as is my wrting and the direction of my reading, but I'm going soooo slowly. I'm still writing a version of a thesis outline which will be approximately 6500 words long after about 6- 8 weeks. I hope to finish the forst draft of it today or tomorrow. Then there'll be re-drafting, then finally I will get to talk to sup about it and all the other bits and bobs on my mind. I don't have my upgrade, hopefully, fingers crossed etc that will come soon. I also still have a considerable amount of key reading to do.

Beer is such a good idea!

Hmmm...interesting. Most of the time I think mine is going quite well, although it is easy to compare oneself to others and think they're so much further on or have more participants than me etc! But often I'm not comparing like with like- my project is using a clinical population (NHS patients) as participants, so it is always going to be running behind those that are using students as participants which don't have to go through NHS ethics. The paperwork just for working with a clinical population has taken me over 6 months to prepare and have approved by the NHS so sometimes it feels slow-going. I'm very happy with things overall though and tend to rely on feedback from my supervisor to reassure me that things are going well. I'm especially happy now I'm out and about testing people and not chained to the desk like I have been for the last year! I am finding it hard to balance everything this year though...I seem to have little time for writing and it really feels as though my teaching commitments are negatively impacting upon my PhD work at the moment which is frustrating. But the essentials are in place, I still love my topic and what I do which I think counts for a lot. So the little frustrations will be overcome and somehow I'll muddle my way through just like you guys will too!! Best wishes all, KB.

Hi Guys

Nice thread,

At the moment I feel like my PhD is going OK, I'm at the very end, and am aiming to submit by Christmas all being well. Most of my thesis is written, and I have maybe 2 more experiments to finish, both of them repeats.

Generally my PhD has gone quite badly I would say, and have generally felt this way about most of it. I don't have any first authored publications, although may get on 4 publications as 2nd author in the quite distant future, (not sure 2nd authorship is of much use or not, any input, much appreciated). I'd say some of the reasons for this going badly is my fault, although for a lot of it I blame poor supervision (critical equipment not working when I started, and not fixed for 1st 14 months, lack of interest from boss generally, lack of any constructive input from boss, and lack of respect from boss generally, and regarding my input into other people's projects.

At the moment I feel fairly ok about it all, I think my thesis will get the job done, though will be glad to get finished. My biggest worry is finding employment. I've applied for four jobs so far, and am eyeing up a 5th (1 industry, 4 post-doc), only one has closed for applications yet. My funding expired 2 months ago, so I'm writing up whilst living off savings which is not ideal.

also slightly worried about my boss giving me a reference, just have to hope it will be ok.

Hmm, am worried, for I ticked extremely well. After reading through later posts, and thinking through the first year which I have just completed, I feel a little scared that things might suddenly go wrong (I might burn out if nothing else) but I still think its going well. There's (touch wood) brilliant supervision, a great dept, that helps it and balances the working every day to earn money bit i think.

But, I thought I had to give myself and all who help me a pat on the back, and hence ticked Extremely well :-)

A few months ago I think I might have said quite well... But now I'm down to a so so!

Thanks for the input on this thread so far, guys - seems like the So So's are winning. We're all more or less experiencing the same issues to one degree or another. I hated the person who ticked 'extremely well' until I realised it was PhDBug and how hard she works to do so well for herself (not to sound patronising I hope). Chrisrolinski, it seems that you have it worse than me at the moment - it's quite sobering to read your post. My best wishes to you for getting it all sorted (you deserve the bloody thing (PhD) now). Sue, I love On the Buses - 'I 'ate you Potta!' Not to sound an odd-bod, I really think Olive could look more glamorous if she dressed with a bit of style and got some contact lenses - that program is so mean to her! Bilbo, Human League aren't that bad really - I'd just never admit to the few friends I still have (due to this PhD) that I listen to them and jerk my shoulders, in a pathetic attempt to dance, as I try and work on my PhD.
I'm sure Eska will agree, the thing I hate most about doing my PhD at the moment is having to rely on the good will of participants, the constant worry that you'll never meet your sample size requirements. I hope that this isn't indicative of what it's really going to be like when researching as a career, because it takes me back to a job when I used to have to sell mobile phones, always worrying about hitting targets to keep my job.

Hi Walminski, thanks for the personal mention, but I don't have the participants issue, I'm just slow! I seem to have a natural talent for it.

Sorry, Eska, I've just checked and I meant Keenbean, though you still deserved the mention. As regards the natural talent for recruiting participants, I wish it was the same for all PhD students, like me!

Hey Walmin - I don't have people to survey; I'm Film Studies. What I mean is that I just take a long time to do things generally with regard to my PhD: that's my natural talent! For example, this morning I'm sifting through a couple of intellectually dense, and emotionally hard gong, Patrick Keiller movies to look for elements which are useful to my argument and I'm dragging my heals because it's so heavy, although when I do it my chapter outline will be straight forward. I also have some workmen coming round to fix my doors, and my life seems to be full of such interferences.

It's really comforting to me to know that I'm in the majority in feeling my work is so so at the moment.

so so