It depends on what transferrable skills you have. You would have to look at each postdoc and see how many of the job responsibilities you can do. It will obviously vary but if you can learn certain skills as part of your PhD that you think you will need in a future postdoc role it would be great. The mathematical physics field could be different but most PIs I know care less about the degree and instead what you can contribute.

@Nead, I believe we are in very in similar fields, as I am doing a weird biofuels & biogas PhD

The cynic in me says if there are zero 3 paper theses in your university library, is that an acceptable structure. I would look at your rules to make sure you can do it as it is weird to see no one else do it.

Also, I don't know if this relevant but my main theses examples are the ones I cite. I found a couple of recent theses on topics very similar to mine and have used them for inspiration.

If you are already losing internships because you aren't doing a law PhD, it is probably an indication of what is to come. I would talk with your supervisor and start looking for other PhDs. I would assume that other universities/academics would understand that you want/need a law degree.

The academic world can be surprisingly small especially if the two universities are close. I would tell your supervisor so that they don't hear about through other people. What happens if the second uni lists you on their website and your supervisor finds out via a google search? If you have already talked with your supervisor about teaching and career prospects, they will probably be understanding of why you are doing it. There should be no conflict of interest but it is respectful to tell them

Thanks for replying Bob86! I really appreciate it.

Congratulations on submitting! That must be such a relief, what does freedom feel like?

I am doing well, just plenty of lab work and I am putting of writing a paper. My supervisor is doing her usual lack of feedback routine, sent her a draft of a paper and they restructured it instead of commenting on the text. Granted it is a far better structure it is just frustrating that my supervisor seems incapable of giving feedback. Apart from that my PhD is ticking a long through 4th year.

Hi Fridamore,

I can understand your frustration somewhat. I did my undergrad and masters in Chemical Engineering, my PhD topic is effectively Chemical engineering but I am in the Mechanical Engineering department. My main supervisor has a PhD in product design despite researching bioenergy and my second supervisor did a PhD in Chemical Engineering but is a now a reader in healthcare science. So your PhD department doesn't affect your academic career if you are good enough.

I don't want to be rude but do you want to define yourself on your department or your own research? Because if your research is good you can always say that "you have a PhD on topic X", and avoid having to say what department you are from, that is my plan at least. I have also changed my title so that it is both vague and sounds like a chemical engineering project. Also despite not being in a Chemical Engineering department it hasn't stopped me using a lot of the transferrable skills and doing a near pure Chemical Engineering project. So even if you are in the Arts department you can still do a Law PhD in all but name, gain the same skills as a Law PhD student and carry on as normal. The only question then is; is your department more important to you than your PhD topic.

Although saying all that, if you don't feel comfortable, don't force yourself to continue. A PhD is hard, there is no lying about that and trying to do a PhD with minimal motivation will be even more difficult. You can potentially still apply for a new PhD and saying your main supervisor left is a very valid reason for dropping out.

PS: Have you asked your new supervisor if you can do teaching support in the Law department? Some unis let you do that for cross-disciplinary students.

Hi sciencePhD, I haven't reached out to any potential supervisors myself. Though I thought you could email them saying, I read your papers on X and it compliments my work on Y so do you want to work together on Z. If they are interested in your work they might talk with you more and pay off. I understand your hesitancy to email people because of funding but funding can always be acquired after your first contact. Ideally if you contact them you will become their first choice for a later postdoc without having to work about the application process.

Hi everyone,

I noticed there have been a lot of new posters recently and I would like to say welcome to everyone!

I don't want to be a pain but can I nudge people that are posting new threads to occasionally reply to other people, please :) This forum is a great place to talk, get advice and support from other PhD students but requires other people to post. We all go through issues during our PhD and everyone's advice is welcome. So please don't feel afraid to post.

Other than that how is everyone doing?

You would need to find out who is funding your post-doc and would they be flexible. If you are working on a specific external project it might be more difficult as the PI would need to hire someone else. Although, you could simply ask the head of teaching in the department that you want to work in if there are any opportunities for part time work.

Hi Naj18,

I understand what you are going through. Though you shouldn't be comparing yourself with other students, as often they are going through the same issues. Your supervisor sounds "delightful" but if you say the speed not the workload is hurting you can potentially fix it. I find that deadlines can trigger anxiety and there is a lot of help out there for dealing with pressure anxiety. Otherwise, if your supervisor still focuses on speed you could adopt a "good enough" attitude and learn to be comfortable doing just enough to preserve your sanity. I would also say you could talk with your supervisor but that isn't easy sometimes but more importantly have you talked with anyone in your lab/depart meant about this? As talking with someone you know can present some very easy fixes or other people might have learnt to manage your supervisor.

I would as your supervisor for guidance on what to include as every university/department is different.

Although, usually for the first year progress report they want to see some progress, a clear plan and reassurance that you will finish. If you don't have any data you can submit a condensed lit review and explain how that builds onto your data collection period. not everyone gets data in their first year so if you have a decent excuse they will accept if you can reassure them that you know what you are doing and will finish on time.

I would ask your department/supervisor if they have any advice or if there any rules. Usually in the student handbook or online course notes will give you a basic understanding of what is required of you. Though I would say it is safe to stick with the generic thesis template but slimmed down.

With regards to timelines, work backwards from your submission deadline and figure out what you need to do. Your first timeline does not need to be perfect but once you have an idea of what you need to achieve you can work out when to schedule it. For example, if you have field work your timeline might be categorised as before fieldwork and after. I would say writing is less important at the start as it is easier to write when you have everything done and it is better to focus on actually getting data. Though I would consider talking with your supervisor about all this as they might already have a rough idea of how low everything takes in your specific field.

PS: if you need ethics approval, drop everything and do that now! As the ethics process takes an ungodly amount of time and you want to get it in ASAP.

Depends on how big your files are our and does your computer have any issues. If not the sky is the limit. As Nead says, it is a lot easier to edit a combined document but it there is nothing wrong keeping separate files. I personally keep my chapters separate but have a custom template to make formatting consistent and use all the autoformatting tools. Though from the sounds of it you are nearly there if you have 3-4 publications. To be honest I don't think you should worry about your supervisors feedback that much as you clearly are good enough and have done the hard work already. I know it is easy to strive for the prefect thesis but if you have 4 publications no examiners will ever fail you.

Nead, 6.5MB for entire thesis is small, or maybe my chapters are big as one of my chapters is 30MB! I have to send my chapter via dropbox because of all my bloody 300 DPI Graphs.