Hi all,

Finished my PhD two years ago and took an industry job as I was feeling a bit disenchanted with academia. Last month I applied for another industry job, interviewed and got an email saying I'd got the position and formal paperwork would follow.

Formal paperwork hasn't followed and its been over 3 weeks. I've already handed my notice in at my old company too so as to comply with the start date the new place gave me, so I'm wondering if they've just decided now that they don't want me, or if I need to get in touch and push the issue? I've been in touch with the CEO who hired me who's confirmed my start date, but I've got no contract or anything.

Reality is I've been in academia for ages now and I realise I'm not well versed in how these companies operate and the time frames they work on- is this entirely normal for the corporate world? Would emailing or calling to check be frowned upon in corporate? I know it wouldn't in academia because I've worked in it for a long time now, multiple jobs all really good at keeping in touch and getting these kinds of documents out. However looking at it, every response I've seen online is 'corporate HR happens when it happens lol' and a lot of sites say I run the risk of marking myself out as a problem before I'm even there.

Is this the case? It seems bizarre, but I'll admit I've got no experience and need to know if I should email their HR department or start grovelling for my old job back.

Thanks so much for your messages, I really appreciate it! I think it's difficult to realise that they want to pass me- it seems like they just can't be bothered with me at the moment! I emailed my supervisor for advice, and he is also ignoring me so I think it's just been the double-whammy that's getting to me. I appreciate that my examiner being on research leave means they're on a different time scale than when they're teaching but this just seems really thoughtless when there's a student trying to submit and finish- it's been almost three weeks of zero reply.

If I havent heard by Saturday I'm just going to forge ahead and email them a corrected version, with the reference replaced. Fingers crossed!

Thanks again for your responses- that's my plan, to just replace it with a similar reference that I *can* substantiate. I'm just waiting for them to tell me that this is an acceptable form of correction, as I'm loathe to do anything without their say so.

Hopefully they'll get back to me sooner rather than later--and hopefully won't tell me that I've missed a deadline because it's taken them weeks to respond to me :')

Thanks for your feedback guys- overthinking it is exactly what I'm doing I think! The issue is that I can't find the reference I've misplaced-- I think the document must no longer be online because I've looked very thoroughly!

I have to admit, the timescale is worrying me more: I'm officially over my three-month deadline for these corrections and I can't find any university guidance on the issue. Do you only get one shot at corrections? I've been kept really abysmally informed of the whole process.

Hi all,

Essentially I passed my viva with minor corrections in December 2018- it all went well, and I was given three months to work on my corrections. One of my corrections, highlighted by my external- an expert in my field- was that I'd used a reference from a book that never made it to publication (I'd found the PDF of a single proof chapter about six pages deep on Google) and it needed to be referenced as such.

Unfortunately when I was doing my corrections, I found that I could no longer find the PDF- I did have a copy saved, but I had my laptop stolen on the train a few months ago so lost my copy. Because I couldn't find the reference, I omitted it from my thesis as it was only a small supporting point, however when I sent my corrected thesis off to my internal, they've said that "if I had a point from [reference], I can't just omit the reference, I have to acknowledge it". I've emailed them back saying that I've erased all references to the document from my thesis and that the hypotheses surrounding the reference are my own (because they are), however I'm worried: can they accuse me of just stealing ideas from this chapter as I can't provide a copy of it any more? Will they doubt it ever existed? Can they deny me my PhD because of this one bit of prior wonky referencing I've since omitted?

It's quite stressful as they're on research leave at the moment and are only checking their emails once a week, which is pushing me into a timeframe I'm not comfortable with- I handed in my corrections on my three month deadline, and now I've got further corrections; so does that make it officially late?

Any insights would be appreciated- I'm currently sitting in the bath eating haribo, deeply paranoid and paralyzed with fear that I've wasted five years of my life.