The PhD students I know had about 6 months for writing. Of course they can concentrate just on their thesis, so 6 month of full time writing seem to be okay for them. There is also no such a thing as a word limit, while it seems to be pretty important to have a lot of words or pages in the UK. Saw theses which were only 100 pages long. If the content is appropriate nobody seems to care.



Teaching seems to be highly valued in the UK, so you really benefit from that. I have the feeling that this is not everywhere the case. All PhD students have to supervise interns in the lab, correct their project reports and such things, but it is rather considered as experience that you gain over time. If you apply for e.g. a Post Doc, then nobody cared if you have been teaching. They just expect that you can organize a practical course for students. It seems to be exclusively about reasearch. For a professorship you probably have to proof teaching experience. But that's always super country dependent. I heard that they have to teach a lot in France too.

Might feel more of an achievement, but still. I would assume that not everyone deals so well with a long term high stress level and too much work. Not everyone has parents who are willing to give financial support or a partner who helps out. By reading here I get the impression that a lot of people are burned out after their PhD and need comparably long phases to recover from that, while in Germany nobody would take a longer break after a PhD (especially because it would be deadly in terms of a future job). I think it should not be that hard for the average PhD student.

I'm not questioning your motives. What else would you do except quitting the PhD and this way discarding three years of research...
I'm more startled that this seems to be considered as normal. As a foreigner you somehow expect certain standards of a country like UK regarding the working conditions. Not everybody has a partner or parents who are willing to finance them for so long. If it is just writing up, it is probably managable but usually people don't need one year to write up. As I already said, why do other countries manage that so much better? Of course countries like Denmark or Netherlands are much smaller than Germany or England but still....

Is their a debate about this in the UK (remember some protests regarding fees a few years ago)?

I truly can't believe that a majority of students accepts these conditions. I also knew some PhD students who had to write their thesis while getting social support of the state but using up all your savings (even your parent's savings), working 24/7 with no private life for a year or even end in high debt is another level.
I don't understand why they have such a fucked up system, when countries like the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and so on manage to have a tuition-free and fee-free education (neither for undergrad, nor postgrad degrees) and pay 100% positions with at least 1400 pounds a month (usually even increasing with every year of your PhD) for 4 full years. Somehow other countries seem to handle this.
We have quite a lot of debate about this in Germany and there are more and more 65% positions coming due to the public pressure, but the UK system sounds so much worse.
Considering the job perspective for Post Docs in academia and industry it is almost amazing that they find people who actually do a PhD in Humanities or other risky subjects.

You guys should definitely go abroad for a PhD :) Living in the Netherlands right now and they sound much more positive about their PhDs and actually enjoyed this time, while the average UK student seems to describe it more like a period of destitution in a "what ever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" way :D

Really hope they'll change something about that. That is definitely unacceptable.

But I agree with you TreeofLife, not really something you could do about it when you are already in the system. Quitting is no option...

But how do you do a full time PhD and full time working in parallel? That is not only hard but rather impossible if you consider sleep or food as necessities. The only way this could work is if you reduce your PhD work to a few hours a day, which in return means that it would take me not only the 4th but probably also a 5th year due to highly inefficient working. I don't get how that should work in chemistry, physics or life sciences :/

Is this common in UK or was it just bad luck that you couldn't make it in 3 years? I guess most people don't have enough savings to finance themselves for a whole year (especially as you have to pay tuiton and fees too I guess). I also think it's a matter of principle to not use your savings to conduct research for a professor.

If you tell me what kind of masters you have in the UK and what the differences are, then I could probably answer the question or compare it to our German one

On the other hand this is not really something you can prepare. You can know your subject well but that's basically it. Some questions can be maybe expected but in general it is pretty hard to prepare for questions you don't know in advance ;)

I think you made a good point. Thinking of myself, I sometimes sit an hour in front of a 10 line passage to make it, in my eyes, perfect. In the end, an examiner will probably not even notice the difference or sees it completely differently :D

If you have all relevant literature on your computer/mendeley/endnote/whatever, then cutting the wifi can help a lot. That's what I do when I need to be productive

ok

If the staff in the group is experienced and the labs look good, why not? Was their a special reason for closure/re-opening?

I guess it is especially hard when you are unknown and at the beginning of your career. We have several professors at my old university who always get there funding. They had some really nice discoveries in the past and are authorities in their field. They even admit that they don't have to try very hard for funding. The reviewer just sees the name and it is more or less funded. We are talking about projects where you sometimes really ask yourself if it is necessary to investigate this...often just for the sake of knowing more and probably without any relevant future application. But that's how it is, when too many people want to do research. I don't think that the funding was cut so extreme.... the more competitors, the less chance to be successful with your proposal. You will be never able to prvide enough funding for all good projects I guess.

I feel really sorry for you. Sounds a bit lunatic that not even high impact journals like nature comm or biotech guarantee some funding. Maybe the proposal itself can be improved an you just didn't present it in the optimal way? However, this could also be a result of the tons of proposals they receive for grants. There is probably always someone slightly superior in terms of publications. Topic 2 sounds like a great way to prevent any kind of discovery :D

Because the text is just confusing? Are they even living together ? She writes that he lost a place to stay. Does not sound like she lost her place to stay too.

Find a new job, get a new appartment -> problem solved. What else would you do? There are no real alternatives

I think it is really a pity that you rely so hard on the references. Even for PhD positions they sometimes demand 3 references.Brings you in a position, where you have to kiss ass all the time because every reference counts. If you had a bad relationship to your supervisor and he is not willing to recommend you then you are sometimes pretty much fucked...

Sadly I have no good solution to this. Try to talk to your supervisor again and tell him that this is unfair as you won't find something new without his reference....it will look really suspicious if you have no recommendation from your PhD supervisor, no matter if you find other references or not. It is as if he/she would blackmail you..."work for me or in an institution I approve or you won't get a reference"

Well, there are of course still promising fields like computer science, where know how is needed. Big Data is a hot topic at the moment and I heard for instance that many physicists try to get in there after their PhD in less applied fields like particle- or astrophysics. However, this is not representative and does not really show what the average PhD student can do.
The more programming you do, the better. People in bio-, neuro-, whatever-informatics usually find something appropriate. Significantly harder if you hold a PhD in humanities, protein biochemistry or physical chemistry) ;)