to clairet707:

Of course, everyone knows Oxford and Cambridge are two completely different universities. However, here in the UK Oxbridge is the generic term used for referring to both without specifing which one in particular.

To driven2insanity:

You're on the right track. I think you have better chances of making an original contribution by working apart from an academic clique that is only concerned with reinforcing the existing "paradigm" as Tommy Kuhn argued.

To coastalchick:

Thnx for your comments. Yeah, I'll go to see my university's counselling service sometime next week. I've already filled out the pre-counselling format. In the meantime, I'll concentrate on fieldwork for my PhD, which fortunately will take me away from Oxbridge until next year, by which time I expect to be fine again. Yeah, you're right in pointing out that I'm for the "slow and controlled" approach to relationships, and hopefully I'll eventually find a like-minded girl that is not already taken.

Yeah. Life is rubbish. PhD life particularly. It does suck a lot. Me wanna scream too.

The only time when I had to work like mad was when I was writing my PhD first year report, because we needed to get 70% or above to make it to the second year. During about 1.5-2 months I worked up to 20 hours a day and tried to compensate the lack of sleep with lots of food (the eskimo approach). It was good fun and the resulting paper was kinda fine. I suppose the writing up part at the end of the PhD is gonna be the same, so I look forward to it.

Today I got up at 14.30 (went to bed at 1.30), did some reading, went for breakfast at 18.00 (dinner time at college) and will probably work till 2 or 3.00, it depends on my mood as I might want to work till 8.00 and end up my day with breakfast (the real one) at college. I love PhD life.

Might be a good idea. I don't use one because my supervisor talks slow enough for me to take notes, but when I was working in the real world I had a boss who used a bunch of technical terms and I recored all the meetings to complement my notes.

To yick,

No one is ever going to kick you out of a PhD for having a minor personality disorder. They will only kick you out if you blow it in your PhD work.

At Oxbridge:
College owned accomodation: £66 pw, ie, £264 pm, ie, £3168 pa
Three meals a day at college: £250 per term, ie, £1000 pa
Travel expenses (Oxbridge-London): £100 pm, ie, £1200 pa
Other stuff: £100 pm, ie, £1200 pa
Total per year: £6568

To sue:

Yeah. Settling for something that doesn't make me happy doesn't make any sense to me. I've never done it and although at times it seemed I was not going to get it, I kept on trying, waited a bit, and in the end got it. That gives my ego a big boost and feels even better than my recent "falling in love" experience.

About Christianity, I really buy all of what the Bible says about behaving oneself, NSBM, honouring your parents, loving everyone, etc. It's a very practical set of guidelines. However, I really oppose to the idea that God came up with them and that he sent Jesus to pay for the sins of a bunch of strangers.

Yeah, you're right. "You have a tendency to make sweeping statements" my supervisor told me the other day, so I'll be more careful.

Although I'm now comfortable at Oxbridge, when I first arrived I was kinda shocked to see people that were weirder than myself. Like a housemate who wandered the house silently and hid in the kitchen with the lights off just to avoid saying hello. Or a PhD student who rocks forwards and backwards while sitting and talks to herself. Or a classmate who spends like 10 minutes aligning his papers on top of his drawing cabinet before leaving the PhD office. Of course there are normal people around, but I would tend to say that the proportion of "special" people is higher here than somewhere in the UK.

The first time I ever approached my supervisor I referred to him as "Professor W", but he suggested that I should call him by his first name, G, and that's what I do. It was kinda weird at the beginning because he's 60 and one of the two most respected Profs in my field, but now I just say "Hi G" whenever we meet or communicate via email.

Schizoid personality disorder on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder

Diagnostic tool:
http://www.4degreez.com/misc/personality_disorder_test.mv

Many famous persons throughout history have exhibited
schizoid traits. Some examples are Charles Darwin, Isaac Asimov, Bobby Fisher, Sigmund Freud, Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, Karl Marx,
and Isaac Newton.

Fairly common. For every paper in your references there'll be at least 3 useless ones you read.