Something I've found helpful actually is to remember that this isn't the end. The PhD is nearly over, but it's the start of a research career not the end of one. The work I've done in my PhD is not the research that is going to define me, I'll do better work in the future. I mean, the PhD is a research training degree. You don't start off knowing how to do research, and so, your "poorest" research will come during your PhD.

Also, I agree with the whole "it just needs to be finished not perfect" but I've heard someone say recently, that you "abandon rather than finish a PhD". Which I have found INCREDIBLY helpful. Even if I spent another 2 years working on this beast, I don't think it'll ever be something I describe as finished. It'll be submitted and done. But never finished. There will ALWAYS be more things you can do. More literature you can discuss, more analysis you can do in a slightly different way, other approaches to conceptualising the data etc. etc. etc.

What it needs to be is submitted. And mine, needs to be submitted in 15 days. I've abandoned 4 chapters (of 10 so far). Drafting the discussion and conclusions today.

And teets90 - I am exhausted too. Term starts a week on Monday. Teaching starts in 18 days. I am NOT ready for either of those things. If I sat and thought about it for to long, I'd probably curl up in a ball and weep. But, just. Keep. Swimming.

Congratulations TreeOfLife! That's awesome news. Is this your first teaching job as staff rather than as a postgrad?

I learned soooo much about the business of university in my first job as staff rather than just a postgrad, it's amazing how much bureaucracy and "other" stuff is involved in teaching. In my view, nothing sets you up better for the academic rat race than getting a staff-level teaching post. The day to day business of teaching is so much more than delivering lectures/seminars, and it really becomes obvious when you get up to this level. The red tape is frustrating, but there's lots of fun opportunities around as well - if you can get involved in doing the postgraduate certificate of academic practice (or equivalent) then I'd highly recommend it. Just think how strong your CV will look when you're going for permanent jobs next time! Well done!

Anyways, when do you start? And I'm intrigued, how did the job you've already started take you handing your notice in? Are you even working notice?

I find writing abstracts really hard! Writing well with a limited number of words while trying to get across complex ideas is really difficult! The word limit for abstracts at my uni is 300. Which seems like nothing. Agh!

How is everyone? I have 18 days til submission. Panicking ever so slightly....

Have you checked if your uni has a set structure for the thesis? Mine does, and the reference list has to be at the end. But, as with others, I think it would be unusual for the references to be anywhere other than the end. Think of the examiner, they're not reading the thesis as a set of single essays, they're reading it as one body of work. I know that when I read other people's work, I often go straight to the reference list early on - to see if what they're citing highlights anything interesting for me. It would be super annoying to have to find multiple sections of references to do that....

Yeh, this is completely normal. And, if you're thinking about academia afterwards, then being productive while continuously context-switching is a real must-develop skill.

I mean, I'm not a permanent academic but I am a full time associate lecturer. My day today looked like this - this morning I was working on editing a chapter of my thesis. Then I had to do some teaching prep for my first lecture of next term because I've got a meeting about that module tomorrow and needed to figure some stuff out. Then I had to mark a reassessment that came in today and needed to be marked ASAP. Then I had some time to go back to thesis-ing before I had a meeting about a research proposal for a training course I have to take because the proposal needs to be approved before the end of Sept. Then I had more thesis time. And then I responded to some emails. And now I'm back home trying to get some quality thesis time when I can ignore emails!

And this is during summer vacation when there isn't even any formal teaching going on!

It's fun and definitely not boring but juggling lots of balls and getting used to context switching and managing your own time and commitments is a really useful thing to learn during your PhD. Especially if you're considering an academic career afterwards.

There's also the THE job site -> https://www.timeshighereducation.com/unijobs/ which has international posts - not sure how many are at post doc rather than more senior posts, but worth a look probably.

I am also 100% certain this is absolutely not something to worry about. At the beginning of the thesis do you have an "author's declaration' or something similar? We have to include one, and that's where we list which chapters have been published.

You can write something like "Chapter 3 was first published as XX" if it's exactly the same. Or, as I am doing, "the work in Chapter 3 has previously been published in part in XX"

You absolutely can do this. And so can I :-) NEARLY THERE!

I felt like i wasn't making a lot of progress today, so I decided to write my acknowledgements. I said I wouldn't write those til last, but I'm glad I've done it now. After 6 years of effort, there were a lot of people to thank!

Your supervisor should really be discussing your plans with you and supporting you through it. It's okay to have your own ideas and approach, but you should definitely be doing this in consultation with your supervisor.

I think it's fine for a supervisor to expect you to go and find approaches for the method, and come up with a justification for your chosen one yourself. But, I would always discuss that with the supervisor - the justification for choice of method is really important, and they may have some ideas or disagree with your reasoning.

So no help in doing the initial search or creating your own initial justification is okay. But no help ever, is not something I would consider normal.

Have you been discussing your ideas with your supervisor? Or just trying lots of things out?

No publications isn't necessarily a problem. What do you mean by no progression?

In my PhD, I have done a bunch of legitimate and sensible experiments trying to get closer to understanding a particular problem. I am no closer to understanding the problem, but have raised a load of questions through the experiments I have run. It doesn't feel like progress, but it is. It's very hard to publish this kind of 'result' though.

Identifying more questions is a contribution to knowledge. It's not a very satisfying one, but it can get you a PhD. I'm submitting at end of Sept - my section where I spell out contributions is essentially a list of new questions that my research has raised and ideas for approaches to answering them in the future.

I'm sorry chemon but I very strongly disagree with your points here. The advisor must "control every step of the research work" - heck no. Absolutely not. In my view, that would be an EXTREMELY poor advisor. The advisor is there to advise, not control. It's up to the student to take control and ownership of their own work and go to the advisor for support and to discuss approaches and methods. If the advisor is coming up with the research plan that is pretty poor too. The PhD is a training degree. If the advisor controls everything then the student only learns to become their advisors monkey and not an independent researcher.

In terms of the original question, the fact that you've been promised fees and not received them is dodgy as hell. Do you have that promise in writing anywhere? I can't really speak to the cost of obtaining materials or the direction of research as it's not my area at all. But, there may be budgets that have to be followed. I think the best thing to do would be to try to understand your supervisors perspective better - ask them why they are going with this method over the alternative. Is it just cost? If so, why is the cost prohibitive?

I'm sure it'll be fine. They're not going to fail you because they don't like the font :-) But, I understand your concern, I am the same about formatting!

I'm using 11 point and I've set line spacing to exactly 22pt rather than using 1.5 spacing - my reasoning for this is that I've got a fair few subscripts and postscripts (bloody stats) and they make the spacing inconsistent if you use 1.5 rather than a fixed pt value.

If you go to Tools->Fonts and then select the Advanced tab there are some Advanced Options. To change the number baselines select Lining from the Number Forms option. It doesn't work for all fonts, e.g. Georgia, unfortunately. But does work for Constantia. After uhming and ahing I've gone back to Georgia actually. The stats are more readable, even if the numbers aren't all with the same baseline.

I'm using Word for Mac, but expect it would be in a similar place on Windows.

Just do your best to act with honesty and integrity. It's a difficult situation for sure.

Your new job is going to be pissed off if you leave, no doubt. But, you can work your little butt off in those 3 weeks or so and make it worth their while that they hired you even if you do leave. Be the best employee you can be to make up for the fact that you're leaving them in the lurch. Be smiley and grateful and be a benefit to them.

Anyways, best of luck, and let us know how it all goes!

Crumbs. That's a really tough position to be in :-( I see why you're struggling with it.

I think, in that case, you should just see how the fates lie and deal with each issue as it arises. Apply for the jobs, go to the interviews and if they offer you a position deal with the negotiations then.

You may go to the interviews and decide that actually the jobs aren't better than the current one you've got. This happened to me last year. I was interviewed for what I thought was my dream permanent job after accepting a fixed term position at my current university. I was extremely happy when I wasn't offered the dream job because I didn't actually get a good feeling about the place while I was there.

What does your supervisor think? Also, when you applied for the non-academic job were you giving the impression that you had given up on academia and wanted to go the non-academic route? Or, had you been honest about your dreams to pursue an academic role? If the latter, then you're probably fine. They would have been expecting you to continue applying for academic roles and probably knew you wouldn't go through the entire contract. If not, then it's definitely a bit awkward.

The only way I would consider withdrawing from the job you've got, is if you could afford to be without a job for a year. Because, even with short term jobs on short notice the competition is really tough. We just appointed someone last week to start early in Sept on a 9 month post. There were 30+ applications for the position. It's tough out there.

Oh and there's plenty of cross faculty talk at universities. I was manning a stand at open days and the head of a completely unrelated department that is based on a different campus came to talk to me and was all "oh yes, I recognise your name, you did XX thing didn't you?"

Also, don't lie in the applications or interviews. If they ask, be honest. You've accepted a non-academic job at the university which would start on XX date. You have an XX month notice period. So, you would ideally need to start working for them earlier or work the notice period.

I don't think you need to be up front about it though. Most employers will expect a notice period. And, you might be able to do a deal with the job you've accepted to shorten it, or even have no notice period - they'll probably want to save the money and hire someone else ASAP.