Thanks for your reply too, awsoci - I have been thinking about all the things you mentioned and I can't see anything I can do that would actually change the outcome - it would possibly just make me look like I don't know what I'm doing. Good luck with your marking - that sounds like a bit of a challenge.

Thanks for your reply, JStanley. I pretty much thought the same as you - there doesn't seem to be any way of taking it forward from the position of the 'assistant'.

I just wondered how others would handle this situation as PhD students.

I've recently shared the marking of some undergraduate essays with someone who is a member of staff (he is a new postdoc in the department). We were then asked to cross-check each other's marking by taking a sample of each other's marked essays. His marking was noticeably more generous than mine (mostly to the tune of giving marks that were 10 per cent higher than I thought they should have been, but occasionally 25 per cent, so putting students into the top grade that I thought were middling at best). I pointed out the bit of discrepancy I'd found, using a fairly gentle approach as I'm aware I'm the student and 'trainee' here. The upshot appears to be that he's not going to address this point but is going to overturn the few 'fail' marks I'd given to students, as he thinks they should be passes.

This feels wrong to me, but I'm not sure what if anything I can do about it as a PhD student. The person overseeing the course has no knowledge of the subject matter for this essay and won't interfere, and I'm conscious of being the one who is a student and who may come off looking worse if I try to take it any further. It just feels wrong as I think students are being given marks that don't reflect the quality of their work. To what extent would you assert yourself in this situation?

I discovered that making a pot of vegetable soup helped me warm up the other day. You don't even need to eat it - the simple act of chopping an extremely tough swede raised my body temperature by at least ten degrees, as well as giving me arm muscles I never had before!

I'd have a look and see if there's an HND or degree you can do by distance learning to start off with. As others have said, you need to build up towards a Masters, but it might well be that you can do a degree in the same topic by distance learning in the first case.

Have you spoken to someone in management or HR at your company to see if there is any assistance they can give with getting qualifications related to the industry? I'm just wondering if they could assist with something like an HND or a degree, even if it's just day release to give you some study time.

It seems reasonable to think that a potential supervisor would decline to work with you if he thought there was any feeling that would get in the way of the professional relationship - but again, this depends on his boundaries and his ability to be completely professional about it. You mentioned that the first time he spoke to you, he thought you were in his class, so it seems clear that he did have an understanding that you were a student, and it wasn't a completely independent meeting where he had no idea. He already had a duty to be professional towards you at that stage. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I do think there are some warning signs there because you have had some very mixed messages already from him.

Without knowing anything about your field, it sounds to me like your approach would be something like 'to apply method A3 to problem B in the new context of C' and your hypothesis would be something like, 'Method A3 can be used to solve problem B in a new situation, context C'. You could say you want to test two different hypotheses: 1. 'Method A can be applied to solve problem B in context C' and 2. 'Method A3 is faster/cheaper than other A methods in solving problem B in context C'. Hope I am on the right track!

I agree with others here that there is something uncomfortable about the situation. Like it or not, in a student/supervisor relationship there is a difference in power, and these personal relationships have a tendency not to be positive ones. There is something rather emotionally manipulative about saying things like 'I have personal issues.....but don't worry'. At the very least, he is not respecting the professional boundary that should be there. As Barramack said, if you do intend to pursue a relationship with him then I think you should get another supervisor, not only because this could have a huge impact on your studies, but because you would also need to put the relationship on a more equal footing, rather than one in which you are dependent on him.

When I lived in a cold flat, I always had a hot water bottle somewhere about me while I was studying. I also like hot orange, hot Ribena etc as a way of keeping warm without drinking too much tea or coffee. If your apartment is draughty, try to block as many of the draughts as you can. There's always the studying in bed option as well!

I recently had to present a poster at a conference without having any real results - I was fortunate enough to have piloted my materials with a few people so could include some feedback from my 'pilot study' but apart from that, it was just a presentation of ideas. I would ask your supervisor if they can recommend any decent posters around the department for you to have a look at. My supervisor sent me a copy of one of his and said just to be guided by the format of that. I also created it as a Powerpoint slide, put everything in large font (minimum font 36, as people don't tend to read it otherwise) and if you can put in diagrams or tables, so much the better. Go for something visually appealing rather than lots of text!

I can imagine you've been so close to your thesis for so long now that this feels like a huge deal. But you're almost there - they want one round of corrections and that's it. You can do it!

If your university or department has someone in charge of health and safety, they may be a good person to talk to. I had a chat with our H&S contact about doing lone working, and he gave me information on the risk assessment forms and so on that need to be completed to satisfy the university's requirements. If you follow the right procedures and the university is satisfied with your whereabouts and the measures you've taken to keep yourself safe, then your supervisor shouldn't really over-rule that.

Well done, LouLou.

It's very tough when people don't react in the way you'd hope they would. However, you can't take responsibility for that and neither can you live your life just to live up to someone else's hopes or expectations. You've made a decision about your future based on what feels right for you and after giving it a lot of thought, and hopefully with a bit of time, your mum will see that. Good luck with your future career!

I am not sure either, but I would suggest checking out the British Psychological Society (BPS) website, as they have some careers information on there, and you can see which particular courses are accredited by them.