Can anyone offer me any advice, I have been working as a postdoc for 9 months, research assistant for a year before that, however do no have any publications as yet, I have several which will be published in the next 6 months, and I am trying to publish PhD data, which was negative, however I finding it hard to get another postdoc because of this, does anyone have similar experiences, or advice?! thanks!

Has anyone else had a resubmission and decided not to? I recently had to go through this and came the the conclusion I just cant do it!

My ex partner once commented on my weight once, not that id put on weight but i was eating a cake and he took it off me and said i dont want you getting podgy! i think if your with someone you love them for who you are. Weight doesnt matter, he once told me if i had a baby id better lose the wieght within 6 weeks otherwise he would be off! hence why he is an ex. anyway if hes saying things like that to you maybe you should mention it to him, as in lets get fit together, and see how he feels then. And to echo an earlier post id love to be 8 stone, id probably have to amputate my legs though!

The main problem i have is im going to lose my job, which is why im tempted to chuck it all in. i dont have 12 months. im lucky if i have 3 or 4 before my initial contract will be terminated because i dont have a PhD as it was on the condition that it was all done and dusted. Which means no maternity leave for me. I also feel that i defended it to the best of my ability and there isnt really much more i can do.

everyone in my dept was confident id pass with minors! id expected the problem to be the writing standard per se, not the actual experiment content, which bascially there is nothing i can do about. To be honest though no, im probably giving up because i cant physically face another 6 months for her to say actually no sorry still not enough. feel like everyones now looking at me thinking i must be a failure my family especially as ive put them through so much financially and stress wise! my supervisors told me to be hopeful, that said, as aforementioned i cant actually change what i did, the theory was there, also a lot of the justifications were drawn from the lit reviews, which is why im feeling despondant because if its already there i dont know how i can change it! i dont want to appear rude and say but look ive written it all there in black and white.

sorry that should read its not a pass nor any security of one!

sorry that should read its not a pass nor any security of one!

its not a didnt pass. Saying that BEFORE i went in i had always been told it was a case of pass/major/minor. hoever i found out from my examiner that no i have not passed, and may not. Its up to them to decide if i carried out the revisions sucessfully, then it goes to the board. However ive lost all faith now because she has been so harsh that i dont feel anything i say will actually change the outcome now. For example they are asking me to justify standard methodological practises as if ive performed them wrong, yet hundreds of published methods routinely did this. Makes me feel so sick to think after all this time ive wasted 4 years of my life for nothing and now look like a complete fool to friends and family and a failure :-(

Im not sure how to take what they have said, as the examiner was pretty rude in her reply, and a failure would impact hugely on my job (nonetheless now because i need the maternity leave!) therefore if they fail me at the end then i will be left high and dry. Im more hurt that it was my internal examiner not external that slated me to bits!

hi all, i was wondering if anybody knows how often people actually pass after submissions, i had my viva not so long ago and have been given this option, however due to lots of reasons (baby on the way being one!) i'm considering just walking. I've never felt so despondent in all my life, and feel the changes they recommend don't reflect what i've written and that they seem to have missed the point of the whole piece entirely. Also is it better or worse to be offered a second viva, as i wasnt and at first it thought this was good...however now i'm more scared at the prospect of submitting the simply failing due to the boards recommendations and also that my internal examiner was shall we say less than supportive, so much so has told me i may or may not pass after submission. I'm actually genuienly scared of the stress it took to do the PhD and therefore having to go through it all now whilst pregnant and the effect this may have on me!

hi, i know this is an old thread but i was wondering what the outcome of your resubmission was, as im in a similar situation and consdiering just walking as i dont feel i can do it!

I felt exactly this way, i almost left on 4 occasions, but finally after 4,.5 years i got there, and it does feel worth it in the end. Sometimes you need to take a step back and think about why you started in the first place. bascially with mine i spent 3 years being told i was not good enough by my sup, and it was a horrible time, however now i have a job in a similar field and am really good at it, which made me realise the challenge wasnt the phd it was the environment. i wasnt published, still am not, but i finished in the end. i always felt like i was not good enough but try not to compare yourself to others, what i realised in the end was some people are lucky and get results straight away, because they are following up something already know, i had to develop methods for a year which made me feel inadequate that i had no results, so dont compare yourself to others, and take something from the face that at each stage you have to pass review meetings and if your passing them then yo must be doing ok!

Mine was set 5 months after submission, but i found out A month later than i actually submitted because no one communicated to the examiner from the graduate office that i had submitted, i was more annoyed when i found out it was that long to wait, and to make it worse it was cancelled due to snow, even though i had already travelled there at great expense, and resulted in it being held a month later.

i had a similar problem with my internal being the one to shred my work completly even though she had clearly not read the lit review nor the results leaving me in tears at the end as she kept asking the same question yet rephrasing it then getting annoyed when i didnt answer the question as she saw it. i felt she missed the entire aim of the thesis and also my objectives (having clealry read very little of it) i thought i was unfair of the internal to criticise to much given they are supposed to be supportive yet i felt i was defending myself to her, not my external examiner!

well it got 'postponed' which makes the stress even worse!