Thank you!
I am not sure whether I should say this is the best time to start a family as you are more flexible then in a 9-5 or it would be much better to have a "5-o'clock work is done" feeling. I most certainly didn't plan to start family during my PhD and now I suppose I just have to get on with it and try to cope with sleepless nights, nappies, papers, long days and the feeling that my brain is not woking anymore at all and I just want to stay home and change nappies...

Hello everybody!
I am back and my brain does not want to do research - it was so relaxed just having to think about nappies and feeding and sleeping ;-) but nevertheless I am sitting here in a huge pile of papers and don't know where to start.
But anyway glad to be back on the forum and nothing has really changed.

In case they grow stronger and he is trying to get in contact with you it might be worse asking him whether he thinks there is another supervisor out there who could take over. In case he only asks whether you think he does not know his subject you have an idea about his feelings and can come up with - more experience in the area xy would be good as you thought about yz after your thesis. In casehe agrees you know where you stand and you have a chance for this relationship.
Or go on holiday for four weeks and travel around the world - it will change things inside you!

Dear Lamp,
I understand what a horrible situation you must be in. Is there a possibility to have someone else attending the meetings as well? Second supervisor, somebody else working in the field? Or move the meetings from the office to a more public area: staff room, coffee place? Reducing meetings will be quite good as well. Perhaps you can limit yourself with the emails, it will be hard BUT if you do not see eachother for a while and have less contact the feeling will either grow stronger or weaker.

It is really funny and reading this discussion gave me the impression that some of us never ever fell in love and certainly won't before checking the others persons background Sometime these things happen and I was in love with a teacher from my school and after my graduation we were together for quite some years and I don't think that had anything to do with High School etc. Lamp might be 29, 30... for all we know and would you then still call it "High School"?

Hello aprilflower, I am in the middle of my PhD and I am basically going of on maternity leave every day now. It was not exactly planned to get pregnant during my PhD. I always thought I do it like you, get my PhD, than a job and than have a child. But to be honest I think there is never the "right" time. You will always think: I first get a job, I first proof myself, I first... but your live changes so much when you are pregnant that the high flying career might not be what you want anymore and giving your child to nursary brakes your heard. Therefore I would make the desission depending on whether you and your husband want to have a child now and than try. There are always problems and there are always solutions.

...continued:
I think the other thing is that you might need a break and get away from it all for a while - did you have a holiday in the last three years? Perhaps this would help and perhaos you could find someone you can talk to about everything which is and was going on on the more personal site.
Don't give up now! You have come so far and I am sure you will get your PhD in the end. After all you have worked hard for three years so the writing up will be a another challenge but not a waste of time if you look at the overall time you spend on this project.
(Parcel full of energy)

It sounds like you had a really hard time and after three years of PhD I can imagine how shattered you must be. I think there are several things you should address. One is with your supervisor. Ask him what are the last experiments about, what he hopes to get from them etc. A PhD is not about finding something worth a Nobel prize (even we all dream about it). It is a training process where you should show that you can work scientifically, organise yourself and your work, write reports and discuss a topic knowledgeble. I always have the feeling this is not enough and I think I would be frustrated if someone next to me would make the big discovery BUT (can we have a poll on this) I assume that at least 90% of us do not find anything live changing.

I tried to sort them into top-headings; at the beginning I just used very rough categories "Introduction, Method ..." During the last year I came up with a finer structure every month or so and moved the papers I had read accordingly. This way I hope that during writing up I can just pick the folder 2.Chapter, 3 Sub-heading and have everything relevant together (I add ideas, graphs, free writing texts etc as well) - additionally I put them into the reference manager and copied in the abstract and made up some key words. However, I am not really systematic enough with it and therefore I need the back-up of my paper system

(comma) ????????????????

I don't get it - what is the word for what we see? "yellow circle with two dots and a comma"

smiley_turkey

Can somebody please give me a hint whether it is in brackets like the or not otherwise I will bring the thread up to 2000 just with guessing

(turkey)

"snowman" "caravan" "tree" hey, this is really going to keep me busy (and everyone else from winning )