You sound like a bit of a prat mate, never mind a smart ar*e!

Click on 'Search Database'.
In 'keyword' box type 'Genetics' or 'Cytogenetics'.
Click 'search'.
Click on highlighted sections under 'Science and Engineering'
Look at list of projects displayed.

Ha, Ha. Very funny!

I know very little about molecular plant biology, but I typed 'plants' into the 'search' box and it cam up with 126 projects!

On the side panel click 'Search Database' and then in the box marked 'Keyword' type something like 'plant' or 'molecular biology' and then read down the list at various projects on offer.

If you can't find anything why not search for magazines related to Biology on the internet, or look at the New Scientist website that advertises PhD positions

My good feelings probably won't last and doubt will soon creep in again, but I think that at least if I get through low periods, then when another one comes along I will realise it and just try and ride it through.

At the beginning of the week I was seriously considering telling my supervisor that I wanted to leave my PhD at the end of the first year, which will be in September and to write an MPhil thesis. I'd been feeling this way for a few weeks, probably not helped by my nearly non-existant social life. I even thought about writing a poor end of year report just to force them to tell me I couldn't continue as a PhD student. I even thought about jobs I could do when I'd written my MPhil, such as train to be an electrican.

Today however, I seemed to wake up with a burst of momentum to actually succeed and want to pass the first year. In the process I found a really good paper that uses references to nearly all the papers that I have read since I started. I managed to solve a calculation that I couldn't do for weeks.

I'm suprised rjb203 hasn't posted a reply to this one. He/She is usually like a fly to s@$t with posts like this one!

This is the point I was trying to make rjb203. You left your PhD, but you are still lingering on this site as if there is an element of regret that you left. If I fail or leave my PhD I will try to move on and get a job. I'd hopefully be too busy and involved with something else other than to hunt for posts about people thinking of quitting ther PhD's. You left, get over it, get on with the rest of your life!

I didn't say that Lostinoz was a failure if she were to quit her PhD. What I was trying to get at is those who are still reading the posts and replying when they have left. It is as if they regret leaving and can't let go. Someone mentioned marriage. If someone gets divorced, for example, in general they don't still live, or remain friends with their ex-husband/wife, unless there's children or other relatives to consider.

I always wonder why people who dropped out of their PhD's still haunt this site, looking for posts from people who might be going through a bad time.
For those who dropped out, you failed, you couldn't hack it! Now get on with your lives. You obviously regret leaving or you wouldn't still be visiting this site! :-S

Click on the 'Search Database' or 'New Projects' tabs. There's lots of physics related PhD's on offer. You can even type in a keyword to search for a topic that interests you. e.g. type 'fluid','superconductor' etc. Good Luck.

I started my PhD in Oct 2007. It's been a bit of a rollercoater ride so far but I am starting to feel more confident and just getting on with things.

The first few months I spent time getting an idea of my topic and doing a few simple experiments. Recently I have discovered the results were rubbish, but it took some thought and more experiments to find this out.

In the beginning I read all the papers that I thought were relevant to my topic, but now I tend to be a bit more selective and only read papers that are very specific to what I'm doing.

I'm also designing better equipment to conduct experiments with, which I could only do after experimenting with what was already available and discovering its drawbacks.

At the moment I'm having to contact various manufactures, who sometimes takes days, if not weeks to reply. This delays progress.

In general I think progress can be slow in the first year, but if you get something done each day, however small, its progress.

Your chances of being accepted AND rejected are zero!

Oh really! Well why don't you try so"£ing search for a position!

Possible proposal:
To write a program in machine code to test the hypothesis that the answer to life the universe and everything is 42.