You are not supposed to copy and paste from your PhD thesis and it is classed as plagiarism.

This is what we were told in a plagiarism seminar we had to attend at my university.

Hello,

It is a difficult decision and I don't really have any words of wisdom to help you. It sounds like you have thought a lot about it and have already made up your mind.

All you can do is discuss again with your supervisor, and if you still feel like you want to quit, then tell her there is no point in doing the first year review.

You might be able to negotiate continuing as a PhD student for a few months, in an official capacity so you still get paid whilst you look for a job, but just work on things that are helpful to the lab.

Good luck and I hope you find a job that fulfills you in the future.

As per the previous posts on this thread, it varies by institution and course. You should take a look at your course handbook.

In my experience, you get a paragraph of feedback on your dissertation if it's a taught MSc.

It seems rather hasty to quit.

Maybe he intends for you to be an author, since you are the one who has done the work? For example, if my supervisor talked about publishing work I had done, I would just assume I would be first author, because it's my work. What has happened to the research published by other people in your lab? Were they first authors? Ask your supervisor what his intention is.

This will depend on the PhD programme, but seems unlikely if you have an MSc in a science subject as the two topics are rather unrelated.

You're both welcome :)

Try looking on http://ethos.bl.uk It's a website with a lot theses available from the UK. Sometimes you have to wait a month or two for them to scan and send them to you though.

You're right of course: just because he can't, doesn't mean he won't! If it was me I would gently let him know that he is not legally allowed to do that the next time he mentions it. If that didn't work, I would try a more persuasive tactic.

I don't know about the Netherlands, but in the UK you can often take a 1 to 2 year top course if you already have a BSc but want to do an MSc in a slightly different area. You should look at MSc courses offered and then check entry requirements and possibly contact course leaders directly to see if they will accept you or if they can offer advice on top up courses.

I think that's rhetorical.

I think it's ok if you leave industry to be a research assistant and then return to industry. My question is why would you want to do that? I don't think your age matters too much.

Either your supervisor or university can give a reference; I think it's the norm for a supervisor to do it directly though. In employment, usually the HR department writes a generic reference about attendance, performance, duration of job and sickness.

Your supervisor is not allowed to disclose information about your health in your reference. The university however can disclose the number of sick days you have taken, but not what they were for. The only person that can disclose the nature of the sick days is you, or with your permission, your GP.

Going forward, you should probably reconsider telling supervisors/managers information about your health or personal problems because in my experience they often tend to use it against you in some way, whether it's like you have described and or in not bothering to ask you to do extra work or attend meetings etc if they think it's going to be an issue for you.

I guess this depends on the person though. Personally I like to present the facade of 'everything is perfect in my life' because my life is my business and I want to be in the best position possible. This works for me because then when everything is falling apart in my life, I can still pretend everything is great when I am at work. It's a coping mechanism for me.

Agreed

I think this depends on the person. I've ended up doing molecular plant pathology. I had no interest in molecular biology at all - in fact I avoided it during undergrad, but now I really like after doing it for over 2 years. I enjoyed plant path but my interest initially was on the plant side, but actually I'm working mainly on the pathogen side so now I love mycology instead.

For me it doesn't matter whether I have any interest in something at the start - after spending months working on something, I start to love it.

I feel the same about a postdoc - I don't care what the topic is, I just want to do one!

Thanks DrJeckyll,

I hope that's the case. I know results-wise it can go either way: one minute you have nothing and then suddenly it works and you're fine. I hope this is what happens for me but I'm not sure it will to be honest! I just wonder why my assessors wrote this at all - maybe to motivate me to work more or maybe to cover themselves if it all goes wrong, I don't know.

I'll keep trying anyway, that's all I can do. I've been given some other projects now that are contributing to a larger project and these will definitely generate results so hopefully that will be ok.