Hi damned,

my undergrad supervisor was equally bad! All the traits you mentioned: favouritism and "big" talks and hypocrisy, the whole package. I worked my a** off and in the end, he let some bimbo from my class in the lab who contaminated all the reagents and my samples as well. I ended up with no data to present in my dissertation and on top of that he refused to give me reference! I've never heard of anybody ever to refuse a reference! That shows how mean he was. All his support went towards his favorite student (a girl of course), anybody else didn't matter. My point is, he was a lousy supervisor and so are a lot of them from what I've read in this forum - I wish the universities read this forum from time to time - but I did get a my degree and I got reference from elsewhere and he's always gonna be that horrible supervisor I (and a lot of other students) had during my undergrad. The irony is that a students from the year above me warned me about him but I didn't want to listen. I learnt the hard way. So, hang in there cause in the end it will be over and you'll get your degree and you won't have to deal with him anymore. I also agree with the above post, search for guidance and advice elsewhere, like friends or anybody in your field, or even this forum I guess. Anything to keep you sane.

D.

I have an Olympus WS-321M. I got it record my lectures cause I have trouble keeping notes and following the lecturer. It's small, with loads of space and you can even use it as an mp3 player or just as USB storage. Has a USB port and it can record from quite a distance. During lectures I'd sit about 13 feet from the lecturer and it would record just fine.

Hi all!!

I'm in a bit of panic! I was filling in an application for a PhD and on the website was saying that the deadline was in January so I was taking my time... My luck... I know one of the lecturers teaching there and she dropped me an e-mail to ask what's going on with my application cause the interviews are in 2 weeks!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh dear... You can imagine the panic in my head!! LOL!!

Anyhow.. I need deeeesperate advice about writing a personal statement. DOs and DON'Ts and any other advice are more than welcome!!

:-)

I think must be a tough option because really i'd need a supervisor to work with, mostly because of the nature of the topic.

I've been looking at other PhD topics to see what's around. Some of them are interesting but this particular one I mentioned (non-funded) is exactly what i did for my dissertation so I know quite a bit about it. Unfortunately (or fortunately) most of the PhD funded researches in the biology dept. are focused on diseases which is not quite my topic.

But to be totally honest.. I don't know what my topic is anymore. I studied Forensic Biology for 3 years and then Archaeology, Anthropology and Forensics. I could go into Archaeogenetics (like the un-funded project), conservation-restoration-museum studies or.. DNA-based. After having a terrible experience with my last supervisor who hated me, initially i didn't want to attempt a PhD but then I found this Archaeogenetics one which sounded interesting and thought I'll see what's around.

Unfortunately this is the only research project that I found on this topic - Archaeogenetics, a combination of ancestry and dna research.

Ubu: what's bgp funding?

I guess I'll have to look for a different topic, right?

Thanks for the replies and the advice!

Hi all again,

A little update. So I contacted the supervisor again, and he said he never got my e-mail. Then I realised I sent it through the form on www.findaphd.com. Probably there's something wrong with the system or was sent to another e-mail.

He told me that he has no funding. I need to apply for the PhD and apply for a scholarship through the university but he never got one all these years he's there :-( which is very discouraging. So where do I go from here?

Hi,

I don't know if this has been mentioned before but I've just graduated and when I apply for places to gain experience (mostly labs) I don't know what to put under work experience. Do I have experience? Sure.. Odd jobs and some admin jobs and some coffee shop jobs over the past 10 years but I have no commercial lab experience so what do I put down? Does it matter that my experience is not relevant?

Thanks!

======= Date Modified 22 Sep 2010 13:54:16 =======
Well the first time around I wrote something like :

I have come across the PhD project you have available and it's a topic I'm very interested in (and then I explained that I did exactly the same research for my dissertation and I asked for more information on the stage of the project and said that I would be willing to find funding if this was an option.

The meeting option would have be arranged cause I live in Southampton and this is a PhD at Leeds university but I guess that is not possible until he replies to me (?!).

It's just that after my bad experience with my recent supervisor, the whole experience has put me off of following research really and I'm worried like I will bump into the same arrogant unhelpful kind of supervisor :-( which is a huge turn off.

Thanks for the encouraging replies. It was painful finding something to say the first time around, apart from 'I'm very interested in your research' so what do I say now? 'Hi, you didn't reply to me so I'm stalking you?' lol. Sorry, I'm new to this and I have a recent bad experience with my last supervisor which puts me off of contacting supervisors.

Hi all,

so I found a PhD that I am really interested in and it's been 2 weeks and no reply from the supervisor.. That's not a good sign I guess. Shouldn't he have replied by now?:-(

Thanks guys, I feel a bit better now. At least I see I'm not alone.

The thing with this guy was that he wasn't weird all the time. He'd be fine one day and the next he'll just treat me like I'm stupid in front of everyone. And for the record most of my classmates had no clue of his topic, even though they were doing their dissertation with him. I think his issue was that because I did already 3 years of biology I was able to see his mistakes and that bothered him. I hope if I manage to get a PhD position that my supervisor will be more open-minded that this.

======= Date Modified 08 54 2010 18:54:59 =======


Hi,

I just finished my undergrad with a 2:1 (Biology/Anthropology) and I also have a Diploma on Biology again from another university. Even though I worked really hard on my dissertation I only got a 68% cause my supervisor really didn't like me. I informed him that the reagents he had available for use were contaminated but he sent my samples to be sequenced anyway which led to me having to results to display after over a year's work, among other things. Plus he asked me out of 10 students to pay extra to get my results done (about £100). And on top of that he refused to give me a reference. For the record, no argument took place between us, except in the very end when I couldn't take the discrimination any more.

I have now found a PhD in another university (Biology) which is exactly the topic I was researching for my dissertation and I'm very interested in it. I do have two other academic references from my course. One is from my placement supervisor who I have excellent relations with and from my year tutor.

So I got 2 questions:

1) Will the fact that my old supervisor hates me create a problem for me in my application?

2) About the fact that the project is self-funded, can I look into finding funding myself or do I do this with the supervisor (before the project starts)?

Thanks

Hi Mark,

I'm sort of on the same boat. I have the option to go into conservation (which doesn't pay as well as research) or biomedical research (which pays much better).

My advice is ... take some time off (maybe a year), do a bit of both as practice, maybe even go abroad try it out. Basically give yourself some time. Even though I always believe that if you really love something you'll be great at it and you'll always have work.

I will agree with you Sylvester.

I can't do much with people and noise around. They are all so energetic and annoying during the day. Where during the night all the annoying noises (including people) are in bed (thank God!) and you can work peacefully knowing that nobody will call you start telling you how drunk they got last night (which you couldn't care less about) or other little things interrupting. And I always get more work done when I'm sitting on a desk instead of sofa, bed etc. :-)