Hi all,
In the last year of my PhD and still have masses of work to do (thats an entirely different post) but I just wanted to ask you all, are any of you getting a gate fever about what you are going to do after your PhD is over. As in into the 'real world' again, 9 to 5 and things like that. I must admit my brain is in a complete tizz about it, I don't even know where to begin!

yup I have no idea what I want to do.. academia? industry? civil service? waiter in a cocktail bar?

I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago which was about 'what to do next' but it left me with even more options rather than help meto narrow down what I want to do!!

Given the economic climate, our options may be very limited anyway. Try getting a job in the City at the moment.

I'm definitely in a tizz over what to do too.

Most likely I'll try to get an academic job or a researcher position somewhere.

I've been asked by friend to help them run a company (nothing glamorous), but I'd like to work in an area that will put my PhD knowledge to good use.

Yes! Absolutely... At least once a day I start getting distracted by looking at job websites... it is a bit depressing though in one way, I don't think there are that many options for me... I don't want to do postdoc work, I do want to get a full-time lecturing position but they are very few and far between, and the time for me to go into industry (Computing/IT) has kind of passed i.e. I have been doing a theoretical PhD and have forgotten how to program... *sigh* Any jobs I have seen are a 2/3 hour commute away... The good thing is after thinking about jobs for half an hour or so, I am actually happy to get back to my PhD!!!

Me too, I think it's one of the things that's keeping me going with all the work I've still got to do. Moving on to something else, though I'm not exactly sure what yet. I'm going to stay put in my part-time job for a while and get some publications out there, though I'm not sure how it works if your thesis would be an (apparently) good book as it's quicker to get a couple of journal articles published than get a decent book published and I need more things on my CV asap. Hopefully my supervisors will have some good advice.

I'm quite interested in getting teaching in different colleges for experience too, so I can compare other places with my own uni. I feel a bit institutionalised at the moment as I only teach here, but sometimes I think other places might be less stressful to work in, though it may not be the case! A friend got a new lecturing job really fast after completing her PhD but soon realised it was worse than her old job, apart from getting more money, so I'd rather check other places out a bit first myself. There seem to be so many other possibilities, so I know what you mean about your brain being in a tizz!