Hi all,
Its been a long time since Iv joined, so I must thank you all for your stories and support for each other.

Today I heard that 24 faculty staff were being made redundant next year in our School of Life Sciences. Thankfully I doubt my supervisor will be affected as she is one of those people with a finger in every pie and does very well at her work and getting large grants. However this has made me wonder what is happening at other universities throughout the UK. Apparently our university has been making a financial loss every year for a while and this has lead to the redundancies. But I was wondering how much of this could be due to the recession? I am an ecologist and I fully realise that this discipline is usually the first to suffer when money is tight. Also does anyone know if any other ecological / environmental science research groups are suffering from financial difficulties.

Thanks for any replies on the matter. x

Hey Wysiwyg,
I started my biology phd 8 months ago, and it is also a 1+3. My supervisors were keen for my to start an experiment early on and to do field work, as I will only have 4 summers available to me. So the first 4 months were spent doing a lit review on possibles plants species, and experimental variables and instead of writing an essay on it, they said to produce an excel table so I would be able to document the key points of the paper and be able to easily compare findings. I did the same when looking for my fieldwork sites and species. Now I have to give a departmental talk in October about my work (eek!). Although I will prob not have any results from my experiments just yet as the sample preparation and analysis will take a few months, I will talk about the basis ideas behind my topic and my methodology and what I plan to do next. I find that the powerpoint slides are very useful in structuring my talk, and I will be using this structure for my first year lit review/ report, because they allow you to design your lit review as if you are explaining it to someone. You can see what are the main sections of your talk/ lit review and the important points that need to be put on the slides, and what are the extra explanations required to make the audience fully understand the topic and its importance. So what I am trying to say is - 1) do you need to give a presentation and if so maybe you could use this a the backbone of you first year lit review, 2) you have to juggle plates, otherwise you phd will be either all lit review, or all random expts with no background! 3) I think Christmas will be fine - thats what I planning for! :p

Hope this helps...

Go for it! It will be more than what I have done today! And that way if your supervisor wants to do know more, you will have written something down.

Then maybe you should feel good about not going to that university as if the admin staff and profs are not helpful enough to let you know asap, then you may have had problems in other areas. I have also found that ringing up admin people rather than emailing them can provide a much clearer picture in 10 minutes than emails across days.
I am trying to get on with my work, my this site is just too interesting - i have been reading everything! My group doesnt seem to be very sociable - its hard enough to find someone to each lunch with! So this has been feeding a very empty niche. Have you any other funding options?

Maybe you could send a 5 point email saying what you have done, what you have found out and where you plan to take it. Then start to write up a report - in brief to start out with, and then in more detail as is required. It will help to consolidate your findings and will provide some material which may be useful for your thesis later on.

I dont care what it is called - but I do wonder how we survived without them!!! I remember saving my undergraduate work onto floppy disks and then cursing when they died for no reason.

Sorry I tried to simplify it. Tri-trophic means across 3 levels of the food chain - usually plant - herbivore - natural enemy of the herbivore. I have had a little look into other forums but have not spent much time on it, maybe that would be worthwhile procrastination! Oh I really feel for you about waiting for replies - it makes your whole life feel like it is stood still! My condolences for not getting funding though, have you got any other offers? I would not like to do a phd without funding!

Hello everyone,
I would just like to say that it has been a pleasure discovering this forum, reading all the questions and advice and realising that there is a lot of kindness and support out there. Even though I am finding the people management side of a phd tricky at the moment, I am sure I will find other aspects tricky in the future and am grateful to know that this forum and you guys are all willing to help.
So thanks! :-) I hope everything goes well for all of you.

I know that these are all the right answers to my questions, its amazing how much better you feel when someone else gives you support! I think short and to the point emails updating my plans will probably be better received after this episode as they will see the reason for them. I have already offered to help out the first student where I was shadowing the analysis but she declined saying that she had already done the tasks where I could of helped, and has made no mention of any future plans. So I think I will stick with the post-doc who is helping me at the moment as I think she is less stressed out than the others. Hopefully I will not make her more stressed! I think I just needed someone to tell me that this was a minor problem, and that the phd environment can exacerbate emotions.
I am researching into 'metal uptake in plants as a herbivore defence strategy and its tri-trophic interactions' Feel free to ask me any questions.
How are things going with yourself?

Hi,
Thanks for responding so quickly! Unfortunately the students which can advise me are not doing similar research although they are under the same co-supervisor, so I can see that helping me would be out of the 'goodness of their hearts'. The only guy which is doing similar work is due to finish writing up in September. He has a baby and has a sarcastic sense of humour with no time for daft questions really. Believe me I have tried my best at approaching him at the right time, but I always get the feeling that I am annoying him by asking questions, even simple ones!

Hi. I am seven months into my 4 year PhD (a sort of masters and phd combi), and I am finding it hard to 'ask for help' as I seem to keep on annoying people and getting in their way. My first attempts at asking one student to shadow her analysis ended abruptly as I was asking too many questions, even though I thought it was at an appropriate moment. Then when I try to use my own experience at designing a very basic practice run of the analysis, this also back fires as it is slightly different from the normal procedure at my new university. I have been 'advised' that everyone is very busy and not to ask too many questions (or so it feels) and then I get told off for not telling everyone my plans. Has anyone else had this problem and how did you deal with it? Thanks for any help or support you can give. C