You get over it by realising that nearly every lecture has made the same mistake. Don't beat yourself up about it, learn from the mistake and move on with it.

One of the best of pieces of advice I have ever got was during my placement year working on an industrial plant. Long story short, I shut down a 4 million pound plant for nearly 36 hours due to misunderstanding about scaffolding. I was shitting myself thinking I was going to get sacked as I had cost the company at least 100 thousand. After everything was fixed/sorted, the managing director called a meeting to go through everything and I seriously thought I was going to get sacked. I get there and the director makes a joke saying "I was wondering when you were going to break the plant, what did you learn?" He was like everyone messes up eventually and it is perfectly acceptable as long as you learn from. The other engineers in the room proceeded to tell stories about all the times they shut down plants and their stories were a lot lot worse. So it is perfectly acceptable to mess up occasionally and most people understand that.

The thread necromancy continues!

Hi Nishanthi,

I am sorry but I am bit lost. So... you did an unpaid researcher role in this lab, left for 6 months for a paid industry lab role, rejoined the lab as a PhD student, your supervisor trusted you enough to not be micromanaged, other lab members doubted your skills making you doubt your abilities, you talked with your supervisor, your supervisor organised a lab meeting to stop the bullying but didn't reassure you, resulting in you having no confidence in your ability. If I have understood that correctly; you have a toxic lab, an okay supervisor and you have impostor syndrome. Your supervisor giving you support will not solve your confidence issues. There is a lot of useful advice out their to help with impostor syndrome and I would suggest taking a short holiday to relax and get a break from your lab/PhD. It also sounds like you have more relevant lab experience than your lab mates and you need to ignore them if they are being toxic. If you ignore them and you show that you can deliver good research they will come to respect you.

About the paper, were you already writing the paper? If you were not writing it yourself or hadn't discussed it with your supervisor in a while, what they did is fair. It sounds like the other student analysed your data and did a follow up experiment that you should have done yourself. You can't sit on data and expect people to wait. Your supervisor should have encouraged you to do it yourself but data analysis and writing is a significant amount of work equivalent to actually acquiring the lab results. I would be cordial about but make it clear that you want a first name paper next time and clearly state your intentions for all of your research. With collaborative research/labs you need to communicate what you want and maybe the reverse will happen to you.

Grants are usually fine but I never heard of someone getting two full scholarships. I am UKRI funded student and I have received 2 external grants with no issues - in fact it was encouraged to get external grants. Most of the grants I have applied for did not ask for my current funding situation so being fully funded probably didn't affect my application.

Though if you have a full UKRI stipend I don't think you will get a second scholarship, as you don't need it. As if they are asking for your current funding they might be awarding partially on a needs basis. I am not sure if UKRI forbids it but you could ask your PhD office at your university for advice.

Yes you can apply with a 2:1 but you need to sell yourself and show that you are capable of doing a PhD.

Supervisors do not black list students, so you are completely fine to apply elsewhere. Just don't ask for a reference.

Eng77, I kinda agree with your comment about woman/woman relationships often becoming awkward. Though both my supervisors are women and it is great, super supportive and they actually care about mental health. I think someone should do a study of PhD success rates with different gender configurations to determine this.

Your distinction during your Masters trumps the undergraduate degree. A masters degree is far harder so doing badly during your undergrad isn't bad as long as you can give a good excuse. Having undiagnosed dyslexia ruining your exam skills is a very good reason. You can definitely apply for PhDs with a Master's level distinction.

I don't know about academia in general and hopefully other people can guide you as well but no-one will judge you for having dyslexia. As fixing spelling is relatively easy compared with doing good research. The people I know with dyslexia just ask for help proof reading their drafts and usually someone will help proof. I don't think you should worry about it, as long as you are prepared to do the extra work.

You can but is uncommon. I wouldn't recommended you to do 2 Masters degrees in the same field without a very good reason, as it would be a bit redundant. Also funding options are very limited for doing two master's degrees so you will probably have to self fund.

I am sorry but what is p2 or p5 grades? I am not familiar with them so cannot comment about them without more info. However, grades are not the only way of assessing PhD candidates, so you probably have a chance. Supervisors want to see ability and potential. So if you can draw upon previous experience with genuine enthusiasm you can make yourself look like a good candidate without the grades.

I am glad I could help! When someone genuinely finds me useful it makes posting worth it :)

Hi Calmin57,

Your supervisor sounds like a sadist. Most supervisors are normal and don't care about how much time you spend in the lab but rather what results you have. Unfortunately some supervisors were abused during their PhD and forced to work ungodly hours by their supervisor, so they feel that it is fair to inflict the same punishment. As working Christmas is not normal and nearly everyone I know takes 2-3 week holidays from the lab over Christmas, or weekends. You should not need to work so much in the lab especially when you don't have any support or help with new methods. Though, I don't have much experience dealing with a supervisor like yours but talking with someone in your lab/department will help. Just ask for guidance or help on how to deal with the experiments/labwork and how to work with your supervisor. Just talking with someone might relief a lot of stress and make obvious solutions appear. I wouldn't complain about everything or about your supervisor but most people will give advice about a specific issue or how what your supervisor likes. You could possibly talk with your second-supervisor or post-doc.

If you supervisor still has impossible expectations, you need to take the work schedule into your own hands and tell him what you can achieve. If he sets an impossible deadline you need to stay strong and tell him a more honest deadline, don't let him keep pressuring you. Otherwise you will push yourself too much and burnout, which is not good in the long run. To make this work you need to work smarter not harder. Ie. do every process in big batches to save time. Or instead of doing 60 samples you do the most important 20 first, look at the data and decide if it is worth doing all of them. Spend the time to master one method at a time and get comfortable doing, so that you aren't constantly doubting yourself. Academics are very result focused and if you can give them results (they don't have to be good) it makes them a lot happier with your work ethic. You might have issues at the start but if you can consistently deliver results on your own schedule your supervisor will probably forgive you.

I might be wrong but I thought the student loan company only considers taxable income. I don't think I have ever seen an exemption for full-time study. So if your PhD is paying above the threshold and it is taxable, regardless if it is a PhD, you have to start repaying. Unfortunately the repayment system was designed around the UK were most PhD bursarys are tax free but the rest of Europe pays better.

While 13 workshops is really impressive, I don't think you can mention all of them. I would focus on the workshops that you think are most relevant to making you look like a well rounded candidate or are external workshops. Ie, it isn't that relevant to mention a writing workshop if you have a first on your thesis, they show the same skills. You can also probably change which workshops you mention depending on the PhD requirements.

And I also know a lot of experiments that will work but I don't have the right equipment. We would all do amazing research if we had perfect equipment, unlimited participants and infinite time. You are not alone in facing a resource limited research environment.

Talk with your student rep and students union about your situation. They will have lots of relevant knowledge on the university system and what you can do. Also, it would probably to make a list of your interactions with your supervisor and his lack of support/supervision, so that you have proof when you need it. You could potentially talk with lecturers in your department and see if anyone will volunteer to help you. It is a lot easier to swap supervisors if you have arranged the new supervisor yourself.