Jane92

To be honest, the fact that your supers give you a lot of feedback is great in itself.

You may not be good enough at this point of your academic career. Its difficult to say because you have been vague about the feedback you receive! What kind of stuff do they say about your writing? Is it sloppy? Do you just make wild claims and fail to back them up with evidence? Do you struggle to put together a rarional argument? Are you not quoting the relevant authors?

Anyway, at this point of your career this is just learning to be an academic. It would be much worse if you were sending out your papers to an academic journal and they were rejected. Basically you have nothing to lose by following your supers advice.

Ghostgirl

I am also in the process of arraging interviews for my postdoc research project. I just moved to Japan and am emailing people and contacting them on linkedin. Its not so bad, I have already interviewed 2 and have 4 interviews set up for november. Dont give up! Its a bit of a slow process, but also interesting because we get to interact with people and for me its always fascinating to learn about other people’s lives, practices and culture.

Ghostgirl,

Could you tell me more about your research? Are you doing social science? Maybe you need to spend more time with people doing research, as you seem to be spending a lot of time talking to people outside academia. That may be the reason why you dont feel confident about your research.

Do what pm133 said, that is how I got into my humanities PhD as a mature student.

To whoever may read this thread: the post above is pure crap.

Ok, so you are considering it? Well, why not ask her then? Its better to plan these things early, especially if you are aiming to get external funding (like I did). It took me three attempts before I finally got my project funded.

TQ,

I just moved to Japan to start my postdoc. I lived in UK for 20 years before that. I would say go for it, depending of the conditions of the postdoc. Are you going to be paid reasonably? If so, give it a shot!

Moving abroad is always a nice experience. Initially I didnt feel like moving away, but now that Im here I am happy that I did. I can always go back to what I was doing before, but at least for two years I am guaranteed a nice salary among other bonuses.

Emilia

Sorry to hear what happened. There is something I want to say, and it may sound harsh: maybe its better this way. A PhD is stressful, but the way he reacted does not follow from the PhD. He may not love you anymore. My PhD was stressful, there were times when I cried (I am a grown up man) and was ready to give up. But I never considered leaving my wife because of it, not in a million years.

There’s a number of events that are harder than a PhD: raising children, being unemployed, moving abroad, death of a loved one, and so on. Any of these events could be an excuse to break it off. The truth is, you’re better off without him.

Cad

It was exactly like that for me too. I did extremely well in my MA so they offered me a scholarship to do the PhD. I always loved beng a student but the PhD is something else. Are you in the humanities? I feel like the lack of direction is typical in the field of humanities...

Having said that, you are in your first year, so its expected that most of your time will be spent reading up on your field. At the end of this period you should be able to come up with a good understanding of what needs to be researched, what questions are worth asking. If that isnt the case, you may want to rethink your research topic.

I get emails all the time from these kind of journals. Its all rubbish.

Publishing, in my field and in every field, is exahusting. The process is exhausting. So when I receive an email from an unknown journal that is happy to publish my work for a hefty price, I am skeptical.

Its the equivalent of a nigerian prince who has a fortune and needs your help to transfer his money. Its rubbish.

Tudor,

Sometimes the workshop I work with asks for longer abstracts in order to make sure that presenters are not going to half-ass their presentations at the last minute. Just make a summary of your presentation as if it was a written article.

My motto was that my thesis had to be good enough to pass. New PhD students tend to think they need to be brilliant, but the reality is that your first major piece of reasearch is not going to be your best. Its ok to be mediocre. A PhD thesis is a particular piece of writing, mostly composed of lenghty, boring, defensive writing. You dont need to be bold. Just make sure you cover all the obvious shortcomings in your research.

Your post already shows signs of this ‘delusion of grandeur’ so to speak. Nobody really cares about your research. People who are not in academia dont give a shit about research. People in academia rarely read PhD theses cause they are too long and boring.

So really you are not in a ‘stage’ and therefore you should not be frightened. Most likely, the only 3 people who will ever read your work are your super and your examiners, only because they are paid to do so. Nobody has really the time or the patience to read a PhD thesis unless they kind of have to.

Hi
Im not exactly and expert, but if I understand your question correctly, you want to submit a proposal to more than university? Sounds like a good idea to me. Dont put all your eggs in one basket, etc.

If more than one university nominates you, then you may have to choose the one that fits better your research goals.

Send it another journal, worst case scenario you will get proper feedback!