Not from the Australia (UK) but I can give some general advice.

1. You have good grades at undergrad and masters, research experience and a publication which is an great CV for PhD applications. You would have an amazing chance in the UK
2. They want see someone who has the desire to finish a PhD and the ability to actually do it.
3. From enquiry to interview many months (it varies) after an interview it can be 1-2 months but they usually decide fast.

I hope someone from Unimelb replies but goodluck with your applications

Retired professors can be a bit 'eccentric'. I wouldn't take it personally as it sounds like he means well. You have met him before and he must like you to reply. It might be he just wants to help as best he can to meet his high standards. Being rejected is gut wrenching but this guy is actually giving you significant feedback which is amazing.

I always say, do a PhD if you think you can spend 3 years working on that project. You could love being a PhD student and be amazing at research but hate the project. If you love the project you can do the crazy hours for awful pay without breaking a sweat - which makes things easier in the long run. A PhD is rarely a good investment but something you chose to do.

So I wouldn't rule either out, but look at the compare the contents of the job with the contents of the PhD.

I agree with pm133, read as much as possible without stressing yourself. You are not expected to know everything but knowing the basics would be a great help. I would also encourage you to read broadly and go over the stuff early in your undergrad. Having a firm foundation before you start is good way to go forward with your PhD. A few months into my PhD, I realized I had to relearn an entire topic from my undergrad because my memory of it wasn't good enough (even though I got 82% on that module), which was a drag.

I agree, the admin, bureaucracy and constant pressure is not worth an academic research career. But I haven't ruled out a post-doc or two. I don't mind people working for people and happy to move. I just have this feeling that my research could lead to something and I want to follow it this avenue as far as I can. I am fortunate that I have moved my work towards proving a concept that could be widely applicable. In a way the research could be bolted on to a lot of larger projects. Which is why I thought I had a chance of getting a lecturer job one day, but it is not for me.

I am listening to my own advice and am booking both a long weekend and a holiday in the sun. I am going to treat the PhD as a 9-5 job for a few months and see what happens. Worst case I still have no motivation but should have enough data for a thesis.

Someone in my office got a 3 month extension on her thesis due to dyslexia. So if you think you have, get a test and say something, departments understand. In exams you will get extra time and you can always game dyslexia exams by purposefully fail them. I had a friend in undergrad who did that and ended up with 100% extra time because he did a uni dyslexia exam hungover.

I am having a similar problem with anxiety and lack of motivation. And the fear of failure is hard to get past but the best way to get past it, is just do it. You haven't said anything that says you aren't able to do it under than slow reading. You have the skills to succeed and if you get started it will be fine. I would suggest making a manageable to do list. Break everything up into 15min tasks and you will see some reward for the work, hopefully increasing your serotonin levels.

You need to talk with your supervisor, not listen to her. It is in her interest for you to finish and it looks bad on her if you change supervisor. You can try and leverage that by making sure to compare her feedback to the other academics. I have a colleague who has a difficult supervisor but has 3 other supervisors and uses them to leverage her main supervisor. But again you can give her drafts (draft deadlines is a good idea BTW) and disagree with her comments. You are independent anyway, don't give her any power.

Don't let them win. You said it yourself, you have had a lot bad luck but that doesn't mean the bad luck will continue. You are admitting that you need help, which is the first step. Have you told anyone else? Don't let this bottle up inside you and please talk with someone. We can all understand why you are hurting, it must be so hard, we will listen and give as much help as possible. So please talk with someone.

http://ibpf.org/resource/list-international-suicide-hotlines

Call a helpline or talk with a counselor. Your mental health is important and talking with someone is the first best step. Voicing your problems aloud helps the recovery process. I cannot stress enough enough - talk with a professional about this. Everyone on this forum wants you to succeed.

On another note, you have a job as an RA, volunteering and organising a workshop at a top conference. You are not in a bad position at all. The RA role may be below your skills but it is a job that can go on a CV. The workshop will also let you make some good contacts and potentially find a better job. Forget about everything back home or in the past and only look forward, you can do it. Everyone has set backs but it is getting up from them is the key to life. You have had a lot of set backs but don't let them hold you back and think about the future and be positive.

There always seems to be 3/4 new threads on a Monday morning that a newbie tried to post over the weekend. Can you change that waiting time/approval process so that they can post over the weekend.

Reset or change or require activity for the top 10 posters. How many of them have posted over the last year but we see their names every time we log in, I know it is historical but they have moved on.

When someone uses a blog there seems to be a double post which is annoying clutter

Categories- Can you update the categories or let us make our own categories and display them alongside the title. So at glance value I can see what the thread is about or even add some sign to show NEW or HOT. The glance value of the forum isn't great.

Thankyou for asking for our suggestions

Engineer here.

So you did your dissertation in the area of your proposed PhD but worried that you also did other modules. That sounds fine to me, you have some knowledge and you can learn new skills during the 3 year PhD. As long as you got a good score on the dissertation and can discuss it in depth you should have a chance. I know in engineering having some wider knowledge/experience is considered favorably

You are right pm133. I am realsing that I don't enjoy academia in its current form but still love research. I just need to figure what I am doing with my life then. I am naturally quite lazy unless I am working towards something and that spark that has kept me going, has disappeared. It is probably just second year blues but I don't want this to continue for too long

The PhD honeymoon has died for me over the last few weeks. It is kind of sad but also inevitable as I have literally sat at my desk for the last 2 days or so with no energy or motivation to do anything. I have so much to do but just can't be bothered and surf the web.

Honestly I think I have too many commitments and not enough support. By not enough support, I have let friends drift and find myself with an ever smaller group of non-PhD student friends left to talk with, who unfortunately tell me to "man up" and just deal with it. And it is hard to organise to do anything with them as they all have good graduate jobs and every time I suggest something it ends up at somewhere way too expensive for me. When I tried explaining to them once

But back to the commitments and my PhD. Simply, never sign up to a conference organizing committee or volunteer to chair it. It has caused me way to much stress and anxiety just for a line on my CV. The organisation has been a complete shambles and a lot of it is my fault. None of us had organised a conference before and the admin person helping us hadn't either, I should have seen that it was going to be a train-wreck earlier. Plus my supervisor never supported me doing it (should have listened). But as it went over the months we always just scraped by until a few weeks ago when that admin person left. Another admin person ,who actually knows what to do, replaced him as our support staff and basically said we were massively behind. Cue mass panic of work and activity and it seems to be back on track but there is still so much to do.

I keep having to do a lot of the work because the rest of the committee just want to sit back. I ask them to do something and day of their deadline they either have a sob story or ask for help as it is due(having done literally nothing). We have people who don't turn up to meetings saying give us something to do and then refuse to do it. Or one person who doesn't turn up to meetings but starts an argument over the decisions we made in her absence. It is a dysfunctional committee but when I try and escalate anything the others sit back. I feel responsible and don't want to quit so close to the end but I feel that this conference will have wasted 1-2 months of my PhD. I can't go the graduate team as they think it is my responsibility to get the committee to share the work but I can't force other committee members to do anything.

But I also sit back and think in the last 2 weeks, I have submitted my first paper (finally), got some great results (that could be the basis for another paper) and made another price of equipment finally work after 12 months. I just feel I can never stop as I have way too many commitments between the conference, my needy supervisor, my own PhD experiments and everything else. It isn't helped by my lab space issues that mean and I could potentially have at least 6 months with no lab space at all. So I have to keep grinding out data now or risk having to do experiments in the final few months of my PhD after spending several months twiddling my thumbs.

And I have kinda just cracked, for the first time in 18 months I can't motivate myself to do anything because it never ends. I still hold the slight hope of a career in academia and I have been trying hard to do everything that will maximize my chances but I clearly can't hack it. I am seeing my dreams slip away and can't help but do nothing. I hope that after this conference is over, I can sit back and relax, even for a week. Burnout is 100% real.

Take a holiday, even if it is a long weekend and go somewhere away from uni. Take it is a complete break from uni and try to stop yourself thinking about your PhD at all. When you come back you will know if you really want to quit. As a lot of PhD students (in my opinion) get too caught up in the PhD and forget that it is just a qualification. A short break may help you clear away the insecurities and burnout.

Also, you owe your supervisors nothing and should not be guilty. Put yourself first, as no-one else will.

That sounds absolutely awful. The external should not have acted like that. If he is saying you missed stuff when you have mentioned it, it clearly shows he had an agenda or didn't read it.

I would talk with the admin team or whoever is responsible for the viva and complain that there was no chair. A chair is there for a reason and it clearly has failed here.