Dear all,

I'd appreciate a little advice from you. After scoring top marks in my MA and teaching for a year after that, i worked for three years in an office pondering on my dream of writing my thesis. In September 2009, after a number of failed funding attempts, I got into a top university and won AHRC funding. Hurrah! Dream in sight.

The course has however been a nightmare from start to finish. It became clear that the institution approached my subject in a very different way from how I had been taught it, and I found myself floundering and feeling I'd gone from the brightest to the dumbest overnight. Add to that an awfully unfortunate official complaint I had to bring against my supervisors which was finally upheld but necessitated me moving to a new supervisor and basically writing off all my work of the past year because her specialist field differed. I have since had two months to come up with an entirely different project and I am really having grave doubt that this is for me now. I have gone from an outgoing and sociable person to one who - with the continued pressures of the past year and a bit - cries almost daily, has had numerous stress-related health problems, and lost my partner who couldn't deal with the hours I have been working.

I am truly thinking that I don't have the energy for this anymore, and I decided over the summer that academia isn't going to provide my career. I'm still in my twenties and had a successful and well-paid job before this. I am not sure, however, what happens with the AHRC and this is currently giving me nightmares. If I am re-failed at upgrade (which I have a horrible feeling is going to happen) do I just leave or can they force me to repay my loan? Surely not? If I DO get upgraded, but say that I don't feel I can carry on due to the toll it has taken on my health, can they demand I repay the grant? The smallprint isn't clear.

If anyone has gone through anything similar I would be interested to hear. I feel crushed, defeated, in the wrong job and wasting my youth.... I am working 50-60 hour weeks consistently and I'm still not on the same page as the institution. I feel terrified about making myself voluntarily unemployed but at the same time I have never been as unhappy in my life as I have been doing my thesis...

Thanks chaps.

I would expect that AHRC would want you to repay anything you have received in advance. So, for example, if you leave on 1st March, but received funding through to the end of March, you might be asked to return the portion for March. Bit not anything before then.

I think that's the case because I left a funded PhD in 1996, though mine was with EPSRC (my second go at a PhD, part-time this time, was AHRC-funded). And I wasn't asked to pay back anything before the time that I left. I think I left just about bang on the time we got more money, so it was all easy. I left due to a progressive neurological illness developing, though it was sometime afterwards that I was finally properly diagnosed.

Leaving does have consequences for a department, so they will want you to stay. But if it really isn't the right place for you maybe you are better leaving and cutting your losses.

Good luck!

Many thanks for that; that's reassuring. I have been afraid that they'd make me pay back monies I've already used to live on. It's such a tough choice to make but I think ultimately it's for the best and I need to acknowledge that I shouldn't spend more time on it now, given how it's affected me...

I'm glad you ended up going back and getting your PhD, too.

Thannks again!

Hi MadMinerva,

When I read your post, it felt as if somebody knew how I really feel deep down and started writing it. So I'd just share my experience a little...

If it would be any comfort for you, I too have been crying almost daily over my Phd. I keep a straight face in the office, but I cry late at night when I get home. I am also consistently working, no weekends, I practically live in the office, but any output I produce is just not good enough. When I finally produce something good, my sups expect me to produce even higher quality work.

It doesn't help that my colleagues are extremely competitive. We don't have fun in the office because we are so busy trying to one-up the other, it just kills any form of social contact. When you tell them you're tired, they look at you and ask sarcastically "really?" as if they never get tired of working.

This is really exhausting. It feels like there is no limit, and I don't know when enough is enough. I am at a breaking point.

On the second year of my PhD, I started to doubt whether I really wanted it. I convinced myself that I was just scared of the work, and I challenged myself to continue the study to prove that I could do it. Now on my final year, I realized that the "doubt" I had was not fear of doing much work, it was the voice of reason that said that this is not what I want to be doing after all. But I ignored it. Too late now, I have about half a year left, and it would look really lame on my CV to quit a PhD six months to the end.

Maybe if you have that gut feeling that you really don't like it, it's probably a sign that you don't want to be in that place after all. I think that when it gets depressive, that's really a big sign that the fit is not there.

Sorry about losing your partner, and this is so cliche, but maybe somebody better is yet to come along. Remeber, when you really get sad and helpless, think that somewhere else in Europe another PhD is curled up on her bed, crying, looking for a way out.

Hope next time when we visit this forum, we'll have something lighter to share and smile about :-)