Hey! I have enjoyed reading the messages on the forum but until now have not posted. My PhD is going really well as I find the topic enjoyable and have a great supervisor. What I wanted to discuss was the lack of support or respect in the dept, where everyone treats you like an undergrad. For instance, the admin staff have been telling me I cannot go into the kitchen to make tea as I am only a 'student'. Also one of the other PhD students asked about attending a conference being hosted by my dept on my campus and was told there are only a few spaces so you cannot really go unless its really important to your research and if your supervisor writes a letter to this effect. I mean this is just wrong isn't it? we shouldn't even have to ask for these sort of things in our own dept!!! and we our in the best position to judge if a particular conference would be useful ourselves!! sorry for the rant but I just feel like my dept is soooo crap at looking after phD students and it gets me down!!!

It just feels like there isn't much of a research environment, like I can easily spend days on end not speaking to a single person if the other phd students are not in, and its a bit draining when the dept treat you like this! advice welcome!!

My experience is that our research group was quite separate from the department and made these decisions itself [i.e. we could do all these things and had our own tea facilities]. The department was always trying to encourage people to talks, in some cases so it wouldn't look empty! People would be very picky about what was their area. It sounds like politics rather than anything that would affect your project, so I've no advice I'm sorry.

Not letting you into the tea room is just petty; we're allowed into the staff and tea rooms and it never occurred to me that it would be otherwise. I'd stage a sit-in protest

slinky, that sounds a lot like my department. it drives me mad too, that PhD students are treated primarily as "students" and only perhaps, secondarily, as contributors and members of the department.

there is usually not much you can do. but do try to resist being "downgraded". i once was surprised when a friend from back home visited and after some talking she noted "oh, you have really started identifying as a "student" again, had you noticed that?" and i realised that although initially i had found this absurd, i had got so used to it that i started identifying with it.