Hi,

i submitted my phd last week and so far it looks as if the supervisors and reviewers are quite happy about the whole thing, despite my not so good feeling about part of the work.
Having started to look for postdoc positions i am wondering what kind of money is reasonable. I was already offered one position paying 1500 euros a month (after taxes) - that one i actually turned down because that just seems like too little money to me.
I applied to another position and after emailing back and forth with the person responsible it turned out that they would pay 1700 euros a month. I seriously thought that i would at least scratch the 2000 euros barrier :-( Am i expecting too much? I dont want to get rich from a postdoc, but i also want to be able to afford more than during my student days.

-monkey

Google Scholar works for me - it shows you how much every paper is cited, possible sources where it can be downloaded without needing a journal subscription, you can sort by year of publication ....

Hi,

i have to submit my thesis within 4 weeks and now that i read and re-read my work i find it all pretty trivial. no amazing findings. just writing up stuff that other people have done, proposing small changes and examining it on slightly different data sets. nothing else. i am really panicking that my phd committee is going to laugh their heads off over my work :-(

is this normal? i cannot extend anymore, i need to submit now :-(

Hi,

putting talks online is common nowadays - just look at videolectures.net. and to be honest, as an academic, i think this is invaluable, much better than reading the usually boring papers. If you don't have any specific issues (e.g. a stalker), just generally don't want to be filmed then i would suggest you dress nicely, rehearse your talk and get over with it. But if it REALLY bothers you so much, just tell the organizers you object and they will surely consider your request of not filming you. But it would be unusual.

I also doubt that any ordinary person goes and watches academic talks online - way too boring for the average person .... youtube is much more exciting ....

Hi,

congrats to the babies :-)

In which country are you doing your Phd? In France/Holland for instance, women usually go back to work after 2-3 months, in Germany it is frowned upon if you stay home LESS than a 1 year .... it really depends.

Can you work from home for your PhD or do you need to go to a lab/office? That might also influence the decision.

thanks for the answers! a few months unemployment are ok money-wise (the unemployment insurance kicks in, pays about 60% of previous salaray), but i fear that it might look bad on the resume, if i just stay home for half a year.

i don't have any prior industry experience, only a couple of internships/side-jobs while doing my bachelor/masters :-(

Hi,

when is a good time to start looking for a job to not end up with too much - unwanted - free time after the PhD? I am still writing up, will probably submit in september and aim to have the defense in feburary next year. So in theory i could start working in october. On the other hand, i don't want to be bogged down with writing cover letters, attending interviews etc right now. Mh, i dont really know what to do, i'd would be glad to hear somebody else's experience with that.

Job wise i look at both, industry and academia, but it seems in both areas there is hardly anything right now. 2 days of job search and not a single nice advert for a job in my area :-(

Hi,

don't give up! When you submit papers you must always expect really harsh comments from some reviewers, either for political reasons (ie you are a competitor in the field), because the person didn't understand the paper or simply the person did not like the approach at all. There will hardly ever be papers that multiple reviewers have the same postive stance towards. Try to see it positive - if you get critical comments now, you can adress them in your thesis and in case that person becomes your external you already know what kind of weaknesses that person thinks your thesis has. Again, you can adress that upfront and think about possible explanations.

I used to shed a tear or two when i got really harsh comments, but by now, i see the value in them. The more critical the comments, the more it makes you think about your work. Hard, but in the end it is invaluable feedback for you. Just dont take it personally!

do you never have meetings with both your supervisors at the same time? it seems to me, supervisor A says one thing and then it is your job to go to supervisor B and convince him, that A agreed or suggested a certain line of work. This is a NO-WIN situation for you, it can only be changed if you insist on having meetings where both of them are present so that they can do the in-fighting themselves.
another thing, which helped me a lot with my 2 supervisors, is to write up a summary of the meeting after each meeting and sending it out to both of them or putting it on a wiki. in this way, they will always know on time what the other person said.

to 2.: in my group this is generally down (e.g. tickets to the zoo, wine, etc), but only after the viva and once you have passed, not before (that could be interpreted the wrong way).

Hi,

i either use passive "It was observed that", "Thus, it can be argued that ...."

or sometimes "we did this and that"

my supervisor hates "I", but is happy with the above two!

======= Date Modified 26 Jun 2009 23:34:27 =======
to be fair, supervisors (male or female) will always react angry, if a PhD student gets pregnant a few months after starting a PhD. a PhD is not a "normal" 9-5 job, it requires indeed more than average comittment, working weekends and if deadlines loom, working through nights, day after day. this IS expected. if you want to a career and babies at the same time, you should not consider a PhD where you need to work in a LABORATORY (which is surely bad for the unborn baby!). if you can work from home (like in most areas) no problem as long as you keep to official leave times/inform your supervisor/ (which was apparently not done in this caseg), but if a lot of practical work is required in a dangerous environment, then yeah, babies will cause years of delay .... costing a lot of money, making supervisors mad.


/me being a girl, thinking about a baby, but luckily doing a PhD that requires only sitting in front of a computer

uff, that is hard stuff. sorry about your baby :-(

i do have a few questions though.

1. you say, the young assistent prof is not the best person, but how is he as a supervisor? does he give you justified critical comments? does he give you directions for ongoing work etc?

2. you are in year 3. how many chapters do you already have? how many article/paper submissions? do you think your work is good enough to get the PhD? i am not in natural sciences, but having less than three papers suggests to me that you don't have much to show for right now? (i could be completely wrong here, as i said, i am in a totally different area)

3. the rule about three published papers appears to me quite common, at least i know of a few departments that have such a rule. But for you all that counts is: is that rule written down somewhere? when was it changed? does it work retrospectively? just because someone says this is the case, doesn't necessarily mean it's true ...

4. about your leave: when you stayed at home, did you take holidays or sick leave? did you officially sign for this? are you funded, ie were you paid during your sick leave?

get a German account! for one, there are lots of free accounts, it doesn't cost you a dime. two, as already pointed out, many bills can only be paid by bank transfer, shopping in germany is much easier with a debit card (credit cards are often not accepted) and last but not least, once you have a German account you can transfer money in many countries for free (not the UK though).

apart from that, i doubt that the employer is willing to put money into your british bank account - why should they have the hassle when you can get a bank account in 20 minutes?