It is possible. If the professor feels that the previous topic will not produce enough research material or if the research output might not be what the department was looking for. You can expect such changes in any university.

Congrats on defending your thesis successfully Dr. Jinkim65.

If you are comfortable with working at home than I would say go for it. But you also have to make sure that you visit the insitute atleast once or twice a week to keep track of any new information related to your institute and meetings with professors etc..

I would split it like 3 days at home and 2 days at institute so you dont end up wasting time travelling a lot but at same time also dont miss out on the networking , seminars etc.. with people/colleagues.

Good thing that you had it sorted out. Now its time to keep fingers crossed for the scholarship.

Hi,

I think the question of you moving to third year depends on the Professor which is why the admin people said they cant give a letter like that to you. It would be better to get a signed letter from your professor stating that you will/have complete/d the academic requirements and will move to third year of studies under his supervision. This is what I normally do as the Professors have the final say regarding their phd students.

Regards

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Hi keenbean,

I can completely relate to your experience as I myself had to teach a batch of 70-90(mix of undergrads and masters) students last week. This being my first experience, I was completely nervous :$ . I kept reminding myself that everything will be OK. Went to the class on time for setting up the LCD projector and OHP. The class was suppposed to begin on time but I was struggling with getting the two devices to work properly. With each minute it felt like what the hell am I doing here :-s . Fortunately the undergrads knew that I was having some technical problems and offered me help in setting up the equipment (up) . It was all sorted out and class began about 15 min late. Initially there were some problems to talk face to face with the students, but slowly as words starting coming out of my mouth I began to feel more and more comfortable. Some things I do when I feel nervous is not looking at the audience directly but say at the back wall of the conference hall. Or occasionaly looking towards the writing board or the slides etc.. when explaining things. For the initial classes you could look less at the audience directly and than with each passing session increase your frequency of interacting with the audience. :-)

As you say that your professor is a very great person, he will understand that with passing time you will get better. Why even my professor said that he would take over in case I needed help. But in the end everything went well and I am already looking forward to the next session.

Cheers

Hello people,

I have been procrastinating a lot lately. Reading every forum thread here for the whole day at the part time job I am doing and going through all the phdcomics archive from beginning to end in a single day just to avoid doing the part time job. And I have'nt even started with my PhD. Its still a month away before I start. :-)

I wonder how this will be during the course of PhD. Looks like I am going to be infected a lot with this and need some cure.
So what do you do to keep yourself from procrastinating at your work?

I understand your concern and I am sorry to hear that you quit your PhD . Hopefully my circumstances will not be the same as yours. The PhD topic itself is something relatively new and research in this field is being carried on by only a handful of universities in US UK Germany and some other countries. There is lot of scope to do work in this field and few topics have already been suggested to me to work upon which can lead to a PhD. My background work has more or less prepared me for such topics. Moreover the professor has said that his former company has shown interest in the project as well. And these industry guys know the topic quite well which would lead me to build a good network with them through my professor for any suggestions criticism as such. I am fairly capable of working without supervision. So for the PhD I expect it to be no different. Little supervision from time to time to say I am on the right path is all I need.

In the end it comes down to how motivated I am and this is something only time will tell.

Thanks for all your advice and suggestions. I do understand the risks with taking up the offer but after a lot of thought I have accepted the mentioned PhD offer. I will be beginning my PhD shortly in about 2 months time. I plan to contact people with knowledge in this field during this time and have a network of contacts ready to refer to in case of dire need.

Hopefully the experience during the PhD will be a good one with little or no bad experience. :-)

Well that I plan to do once I have joined the PhD. Build a network with people working on similar projects or having such experience.

Thanks for your reply. As you mentioned, the supervisor was indeed working previously as the director of a department and managing the day to day tasks of his team. From the interview I had with him , I felt he knew what he was wanted,about how the end product should look like at the end of the PhD. As you said it will take somewhat longer than usual to complete the PhD since we are both relatively new to the topic. But I guess this is alright. And besides there are other PhD/postdoc students with whom I can have discussion on the topic. He is an easy going guy and from what I know so far he gives complete freedom to the PhD student to make their own decisions with little supervision from time to time. So far so good.

The only sticking point is than his knowledge on the topic. The topic is interesting to me and so if I put more effort than I guess this is is also not much of a block. I think overall the offer is not bad at all. Thanks for your help anyway.

Hi everyone,

I am new to this forum and would appreciate your help in deciding about the PhD offer that I have. The supervisor was associated with the industry for the past 12 years and only recently(about 3 months back) became a professor at a university in germany. So he is fairly new. He has presumably good contacts with his former employers as well as other industry personel.

His past work in the industry has very little relation to the PhD topic that I was offered. Although he has done some work on the same or related topic but that was during his own PhD which was about 12 years back. So in essence his knowledge on the topic is little. The PhD is fully funded and the university is well known in germany among the top nine. I am interested in the topic but I am also worried about other facts such as him having no prior supervising experience, or his little knowledge in the field. His learning curve will be the same as the PhD student. He seems to be very enthusastic about the topic and I guess the interaction level with him during the course of PhD will be more.
I must mention that although the topic of research is something he has not done before but he has worked on projects which can be usefull since these projects fall more or less under a sub category of the topic.

So what do you think about this PhD offer. What more should I be considering before I make my decision. If you would like to know anything else about him I will be glad to answer.

Thanks & Regards