Thanks for your reply, it really is appreciated!

I probably am being totally unreasonable. I also don't mind and actually quite enjoy doing a bit of training here and there but I already know one of the people that will prob take on one post (she has been in our lab before) and she requires a lot of help in the lab.. So I am really hoping that my supervisor can help out a bit there as I think it will be fairly time consuming. Let's hope we can keep the post doc!

So I have just heard through our research assistant that my supervisor is taking on two new PhD students in September as she has suggested that she should apply for one of the posts. She is a brand new supervisor (I am her first student) and is currently on a grant that is due to run out in August and is busy a lot of the time with undergraduate teaching.This grant may well not be renewed which means my postdoc will be leaving and assumably my supervisor will not be covered on either. She hasnt even told me that she was applying to get new students which has peed me off slightly as they are apparently advertising next week! In an entirely selfish way I am worried for my own project, it is my final year next year (only got a 3 year studentship) and I am desperate to finish on time as I cannot afford to be still working unpaid and now it will be my responsibility to train two new PhD students during this time. Am I being unreasonable? How do I approach my lovely yet not very approachable supervisor about this? Any advice would be hugely appreciated, I am a natural worrier/stressed!

EDIT: forgot to add this is a lab based PhD hence the need for a lot of training!

That my phd/lab research interests are entirely different to that of the department we are in?

So to set the scene...

I have just started a PhD in London at the start of October after leaving a graduate scientist scheme in government to pursue this qualification and experience. During my time on the grad scheme, despite only being there for a year, I got involved in some amazing science and research very quickly and had a hands on role where I got to do lots of my own work.

My PhD is with a brand new supervisor who is known to be up and coming in her field but has only just returned to work from maternity leave and only properly started at this university a few months before I did. There is also a post doc who is helpful and answers all my questions but despite working all hours of the week, doesn't seem to get much work done and I question the quality of. The three of us are a 'lab' but we are inside a much bigger open plan either lots of other labs but are very immunology based whereas we are more cellular biology and epigenetics.

So my predicament is, I am in an environment which I find very alien, not that friendly and not very proactive. My supervisor makes time to chat to me about ideas but I often leave meetings with more questions and confusing than before and no clear direction. My phd grant seems to overlap with another larger project budget and it seems at times that a lot of the parts of my phd I would like to cover have been allocated to the post doc or to a masters student project. I also feel highly impatient as I have not spent much time in the lab at all except for helping with the post docs work and the odd tiny bit of work that I've managed to think up for my own project. We are also still waiting on the delivery of equipment and ethics/MTA type paper work which is halting my work.

It may be impatience in that I have come from a busy working environment but I am feeling increasingly anxious about lack of progress and urgency, especially echoed by the fact that other phd students in nearby labs who are on 4 year funding (I am on 3) are already producing data and in the lab lots!!

Any advice/reassurance/comments would be hugely appreciated...