I completely sympathise with you, CB. I guess the options vary from being completely frank and honest about what you're doing, to being a little vague, to lying. I'd guess the best option is somewhere in the middle - talk about what you do, but don't give too many details. This is the thing about academia - you'll go to a conference where someone is giving a poster/presentation, so they clearly want people to know more than the brief facts about their work, but at the same time, they're often cagey if you ask them for any more information...

Dragonbreath - I wish I did have flexibility! My PhD's lab-based, and I pretty much have to be there when my cells are useable - this generally means 9-9.30 starts every morning, and leaving some time between 6 and 7 in the evening...

I was thinking today, how do people try to stay fit and healthy while doing a PhD. The combination of long hours, often sat at a desk/bench, often requiring lots of mental concentration leading to possible snacking... And then after the long day you're too shattered to cook a proper meal or go and do any meaningful exercise.

So can you share your tips for staying fit and healthy?

I've checked and double-checked. We got this drummed into us in our induction fortnight. Harsh but at least they don't keep it from you...

Do they ask for your bank details along with your review? Is the Editor called George Agdgdgwngo? Are you also informed about a very rich, very distant relative who has also passed away?

Whatever the reasons, this sounds very suspect indeed - perhaps a positive reply would prime them for future targeting of fraud...

Button, unfortunately it is three years. The way it works here (Med School, UK University, Med School) is that a conventional 3-year student gets three years of funding, but can take up to four total to finish, while the 1+3 students get four years' funding, but have to finish within those four years. Nasty, huh?

I get three years for mine, and not a day more, literally. I start my PhD proper on 1st October 2010 (I'm in the "1+" masters year at the moment) and have to submit in full by September 30th 2013, unless there are extenuating circumstances. Such as dying.

I'm afraid this is going to be a bit of a rant. I've got so much on at the moment that I feel completely and utterly overwhelmed by it. I have a talk and a poster to do on a different topic to what I'm working on at the moment, and another poster to do on the background to my current work, all to be done in the next four weeks.

I also have work to pick up from a postdoc who's left, so I have to try to decipher her method of labelling everything. The techniques I'm using aren't familiar to me, and I'm in a new lab, so I have all that to cope with. In about 9 weeks I have to submit a report on my work, including a short lit review.

There's so much to do that I feel like I don't know where to begin. I'm prone to anxiety/depression anyway, and I feel close to breaking down at the moment. There's certainly no one here who I can talk to about this, my family are 250 miles away, and I don't like to bother them anyway as they have problems of their own, and so I feel like there's no way out. I guess the best way to describe it is like a plate spinner who has several plates on the go, and is so overawed by the prospect of trying to keep every single one of the spinning that he ends up letting them all smash.

Oh, and I've not had any decent amount of time off work since Christmas, and have no prospect of any until September.

:-(

Does anyone know whether New Scientist ever offer cheap/reduced subscriptions? I know that they do a student subscription, but I was wondering if there are ever any reductions on top of this, which might be worth waiting for, or whether I should just go ahead and buy...

Thanks :-)

Are there any texts (co-)written by members of staff in your dept? If so, you could buy them - at least they'll get some royalties out of it!

Are there any texts (co-)written by members of staff in your dept? If so, you could buy them - at least they'll get some royalties out of it!

Some days, my brain feels like it's running with a Ferrari engine - whatever I want it to do, it does. Some days, it feels like it's running on a Lada engine. With treacle in the petrol tank. Insofar as it's possible, I keep the intellectual reading and writing stuff for these days, and spend my brain-is-an-old-banger days in the lab, doing stuff which is a bit less demanding intellectually.

Can anyone suggest a Word 2003 font that looks good printed or on screen for easy reading? I'm finding Times New Roman a bit crap, but Arial looks pretty bad too, in my opinion...

If I say that I'm made happy by "not working", I don't suppose that really helps, does it? So I'll say that I'm made really happy by something nice to nibble, and nice pint of real ale, and a good book.

Yeah, I'm thinking of making the switch to WoS. It seems a little less "good" in terms of the searches, but it seems to have a knack of giving me what I want - I suppose a bit like google vs some-crappy-search-engine. I might try to get acquainted with it though, as Ovid seems the default database for med schools to recommend.