Considering I haven't tweeted anything in over month and only a handful of times ever, I can't see this being an organic process of connection on a single platform (i.e twitter).

So a few days ago, feeling a bit peeved off and frustrated, I joined this forum to let off some steam and ask for advice from others about their experience. I created a forum ID that would be pretty anonymous, unless you knew me as a 16 year old kid, and went through the steps of filling in the form with my real name and email address thinking these would be seperated and used for verification purposes only.
A day later and I have a new follower on Twitter, PhD forum. They must have taken the data I provided and searched through other social media sites for me, probably garnering other data points as they went along.
So, what are others opinions on this? Is it okay for them to use my personal information to link up on other social media platforms? Do we just have to expect that we have one online identity connected throughout web?

Learning to labor: How working class kids get working class jobs

PE Willis - 1977 - Columbia University Press

Thank for your feedback Lydia, Kik and Tree.

I'm fine doing the project as listed but just wish that my supervisor would stop pretending like there is scope to do things differently. I wish they were just more up front about it. Now, how do I diplomatically tell them to stop asking "what is it that you want to research"?

Does sound disheartening Cloud - and frustrating. Reminds me of the classic piece of educational sociology looking at why kids from working class backgrounds went on to get working class jobs. Long story short it was because they didn't share the habitus (Bourdieu) of the teachers but the habitus of their working class peers. Those that shared a similar habitus as the teachers were the ones who were educationally successful. Basically, this is how class reproduces itself in education even though the rhetoric of education is that it is suppose to be transformative to class. Its not, still isn't. Is it fair? - no. Is it disheartening and frustrating?- yes

Besides empathising with you, I would suggest that you look at not the overall status of the university but what universities have good research profile in your discipline and in your area of interest. These are not always the big ones. Also explore what researchers/academics you share similar research interest with. Start contacting them, see if they are taking on PhD students or know of some funding coming up in your area of interest. Unfortunately, you are going to have to do some leg work and not get your cake handed to you on a silver platter. Not coming from a source of privilage (whether that be class, race, gender, disability or even educational privilage) usually means you have to work twice as hard to get half as far unless you are the tiny minority who rise above through sheer luck (and then are usually heralded as examples of how fair the system is)

I wish you well!

I was wondering from other PhD students on a studentship with a project already predefined how much room within a PhD studentship should there be to find your own research path?
I'm asking because my experience so far with being able to find my own path has been dismal. I feel like anything that I may bring to the project that was not in the original studentship brief has not been supported by my lead supervisor yet they keep asking "what I want to research"? The ideas that I threw around the first 6 months, whilst I admit quite uniformed at times (I was only 6 months in!), were repeatedly wholly dismissed or unsupported. I gave up trying to develop any new paths and started to treat the research like a case of project management, which I must say was pragmatic if I wanted to finish in 3-4 years but a bit unfulfilling intellectually. Now I am working on developing method and thought that i might be able to find some space within the project to make it my own. After three months of bashing my head against a wall trying to develop a methodology that my supervisor finds suitable, I am resigning myself to undertaking the methods that were listed in the original brief.
So my question is, beyond getting a sense of what the experience of other students on a studentship is/was, what should my realistic expectations of a studentship be? Is it just a piece of project management bringing someone elses research plan into empirical fruitation?