I really meant to say "failure to pass" but in the circumstances maybe failure isn't the right word. You are correct, R&R isn't the same as failing.

It is not essential that you have a clear vision of what you want to do with the PhD afterwards. It is far more important that you simply want to do one in a particular area you are interested in.
You really cannot plan your life 3 to 5 years ahead. Especially not when you are as young as 30.
Life will almost certainly change your plans. You will be a totally different person when you come out the other end.
There is no guarantee that a PhD will get you out of supermarket work.
You have mentioned your age so you are clearly concerned that it migt be a factor. It won't be. You grades shouldn't cause too many problems either.

If you are genuinely interested in this I would go for it. You might regret it if you don't. Try and find a fully funded position first though. Borrowing that sort of money for a PhD is bonkers.

You need to be really sure before you do something like that.
Exactly what research did you do which led you to this conclusion?

True but these sort of ridiculous attitudes towards age persist to this day and it probably isnt a bad time to raise them again.
The problem with age stemmed from a time when people retired at 65 broken from 45 years of backbreaking work.
We simply dont live in those times anymore but people, especially young people, seem to be struggling to understand this. Old age now is when you are well over 70 and in some cases 80 or older. People are better educated and in better health. Both have improved to a point where today's 50 year olds are in a totally different league from their parents at the same age. Intellectually, people in this age group can not only compete with people in their 20s and 30s but are perfectly capable of routinely outperforming them. There is absolutely nothing special about those two younger age groups. Personally, I didn't peak until this current period of my life now and I there is no obvious reason why i wont continue to improve as I enter my 50s in a couple of years.
It is all about attitude.

It is a very real university.
A PhD is a PhD. Produce excellent work, publish regularly and attract funding and it genuinely does not matter where you get your qualifications from.

I think this would be a very damaging attitude for the original poster to adopt. Trying to blame anyone else is an extremely bad idea.
Your last paragraph is potentially disastrous advice. You want the original poster to start taking that sort of attitude with the one person they need to be on their side right now?

It's one thing to ask your supervisor what YOU could do better on. It is quite another to be expicitly blaming them for your failure.

At 29 to 30 years old, you are VERY young.

I am confused. What is there to deal with? The comments are clearly offered in jest and not intended to offend. Why on earth would you then not accept them in good faith without getting upset and offended?
I have never understood why people take offence at utterly trivial things. It really is a miserable way to live.
Lighten up a bit and maybe start thinking about how to respond in a teasing manner.
For example. Your boss wants you to do something to make his company grow? Tell him your idea for that is to sack him and hire a competent manager. You might want to smile when you say that in case he has no sense of humour either.

In which case you probably want to make sure you treat it to the 40 hours which ToL spoke about above so that you give yourself the best chance of not wasting your time and money.

There are no guarantees that this will be worth your time but equally there are no guarantees it won't be.
My philosophy is to do something you enjoy and commit like hell. At least then you can say you have achieved something worthwhile.

It depends on what unintentional mistake you made which resulted in your entire PhD being revoked.

Personally, I would ghost these fellow workers. I would essentially pretend that to all intents and purposes, they were dead to me. I wouldn't acknowledge their presence in any shape or form.
I have had to do it before but I have not had problems to the extent that you are suffering.
I would work through the night if I had to and I would try to establish contacts outside the immediate lab and use those people for help.
Finally, during my talk, if another student laughed or chatted to a colleague I would stop talking and ask them to shut the fuck up. If a member of staff did this I would ask them what the problem was and deliver a silent icy stare. A second incident and I would stop presenting and either sit down or leave. The key is to do all this without getting emotional or angry. It is all done in a calm but assertive manner. You need to be able to convey an image of supreme confidence even though inside you are all over the place. In fairness it took me years to master this.
They are treating you like this because they sense you are weak and possibly needy. People who portray strength tend to avoid this sort of bullying.

I dont know if any of that is going to be helpful for you but I have not experienced bullying in the workplace since I adopted the above.

Do you have solid proof that this is even an issue?
This has not been an issue in the UK for 40 years or more.
The perception doesn't match the reality.

In my opinion, you need to treat the Masters as a full time job to get the most out of it. Whether that will mainly be reading or not will depend on your course.

It really depends on what you want to get out of the experience. You can get the classic mediocre pass or you can excel depending on how you approach it.

Exactly what do you want from it? Can you put a value on it?

Again, I have to bang the drum on this. Outside of a very small handful of universities, there is no advantage in talking about "rankings". Most universities are as good and as bad as each other unless you can pin point a very specific reason why a particular unversity is especially suited to the degree you want to follow. Having a good "ranking" is not a good reason. It means you are falling for marketing hype and not thinking for yourself. If it is "to get better jobs" then I think you need solid evidence of that before you start throwing money at that university.

In the UK for example, we have Cambridge and Oxford. Outside that there is no significant difference between the next 100 universities. There is a quaintly amusing obsession about Russell Group universities over here but the reality is that graduates from almost any university over here will compare well regardless of where they graduated from. At the end of the day, Physics is Physics, Chemistry is Chemistry and Maths is Maths etc.

It certainly CAN be more intense than a full time job but very few students engage to that extent in my experience. Most will cruise through with a bit of cramming around exam time or dissertation submission date. It really depends on what you personally want to get out of it.

I don't recall much in the way of social interaction in my Masters year or during my PhD. It was a struggle to get quality family time at stages. For me, it was absolutely all about attempting to master something I enjoyed. I was, and remain, obsessive about that. I wouldn't have had it any other way but many people are uncomfortable without lots of social interaction.

Books are great as a reference source but there won't be time to read many of them cover to cover. I should have used them primarily as sources of high quality problems to solve. I am getting the opportunity to read them now but during the Masters/PhD? No chance. Most of my reading was journal articles. I should have made more use of Youtube videos and online lectures and tutorials.

Stay organised using lists and a traffic light system. High, medium and low priority. High priority gets done first, then medium and then low. To prevent things being left, all medium and low priorities get upgraded after 1 or 2 weeks. If they don't get done after that time, they get relegated to the blue list which is tucked away out of sight. A "rainy day list" if I run out of other things to do. Be ruthless about this or you will sink in a swamp of tasks.

My Masters and PhD were both fully funded so can't help you there.

A word of caution about following my "hyper intense" approach.
1) It's very isolating. I love this but most will not like it at all.
2) You'll find it hard to achieve these levels of technical intensity again. Work almost certainly won't do it. Work will bring intensity of hours and tasks needing done but will usually not provide the technical rush that throwing yourself properly into a Masters/PhD will give you.


Good luck.