Can you give more context by mentioning the rest of the sentence?

Maybe you can go back to teaching after the PhD?

Well I think you need to identify what help you need and then find it from elsewhere if possible because I don't see how else you will be able to complete.

Sorry to hear that. Do you think you are able to achieve this? What do you need from your supervisor/other people to help you?

Exactly. A postdoc is still, in many ways, training. It has to be because of the reasons above. Postdocs are not supposed to be fully fledged academics, and the ones I know are not. They still require input from their PIs. They are asked to write their own grant proposals and projects though, and I think this should be achievable for a postdoc, as long as there is a lot of feedback provided and revision expected.

As to how you can do this, I think just force yourself to write 5 project ideas. At the initial stage, don't worry about them being stupid or unobtainable, don;t think about anyone else seeing them, just write something down and go from there. This is a lot harder though if you don't know much about the subject area. I'm afraid it comes back to doing a lot of reading, seeing recent departmental publications, looking at which techniques are being used, and thinking how this can be applied to a new project idea. It's not easy, but once you've done it once it will be easier to do it again.

You are probably better off working on your interview technique - If you have got 2 interviews then you must be doing something right, but now you need to know what will give you the edge over other candidates. You need to find out what to do to make them pick you.

Or maybe they should just train a select few that they think may 'make' it. Maybe they already do that and that's why different students are treated differently. Hmm...

I disagree. That's exactly what a PhD is for: training. Whether this is training technical skills, time management skills, people skills or writing skills etc etc. There are very few students who begin a PhD and are proficient in every area. I had zero technical skills when I started and my supervisors were aware of this, but took me on because I demonstrated abilities in these other areas. In their opinion, it is easier and faster to develop technical competence than it is to develop competence in other areas.

PS I have absolutely no desire to be a technician of any kind. I don't fancy being a dogsbody doing the boring repetitive stuff for the rest of my life. I prefer teaching, tutoring, mentoring and management.

My original point was, they are hiring PhD students to do research on the cheap. If they want better, faster results to get more publications and continue their careers, they should stop 'training' PhD students and start 'telling' them, to save themselves time in the long run. It used to be beneficial to train PhD students, because they would stay in academia and produce good research in the same field, resulting in collaborations etc. This is no longer the case, so there isn't much point in investing time in training a PhD student to be an academic.

You've hit the nail on the head here for me. Why are our supervisors bothering to get PhD students up to a good standard and ensuring that they write a decent thesis at all when they know the majority are unlikely to be able to get an academic job? It seems logical for them to just give us a project to do so we don't have to think independently, make it as easy as possible for us to do the PhD by teaching us the technical skills rather than let us figure it out, write the papers themselves so they don't have to teach us how to write properly and mentor us properly so we don't stress out and can actually get results. But this isn't what they do in my experience! I think they are missing a trick here somehow! They should treat us more like technicians and it would be easier for us and them and more realistic. There's no point in training us to be independent researchers if we are unlikely to ever do independent research. That's my cynical thought of the day.

Hi, sorry to hear about your situation.

In order to be awarded an Mphil, you will still need to have some sort of original contribution to knowledge. In the sciences, this is normally considered to be one data chapter (a PhD would have 3 data chapters). A Mphil thesis is usually about 30,000 words, but this will vary.

I think you should discuss this with your supervisor, or if you would prefer, your head of year or an academic that provides pastoral care.

Well in the UK and in sciences, it's generally best to do a project with funding, and the best way to get funded projects is to apply for ones that are advertised, rather than email academics directly.

Having said that, I do know a couple of UK biology PhD students that got funding by contacting academics by email. If you know what you want to do, then I think your approach is fine. Emailing 4 per university is ok, if it is a large university and these people could genuinely supervise your project.

Which country are you applying in and which discipline? The acceptability and usefulness of this method depends on this.

It's not great to send emails to many different members of the same department.

It's not really awful of you, it's the right thing to do. You should care more about yourself than care about an employer - after all, you need a job to be able to afford to live, the employer will go on just fine whether you take a position or not. I would do the same as you. My priority is me, not some organisation. Obviously this could backfire if other places you are applying to are interconnected etc...

Also, they might just be being lazy - it's much easier to interview someone via skype and there's no interaction with students, tours round the building, free lunches etc

Nice response marasp.