======= Date Modified 26 Jun 2012 13:16:40 =======
Hi Soladore,

It is true that a lot of PhDs ask for 2:1 or above, however the fact that you have an MPharm rather than just a bachelors degree might make a difference, perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me will be along to advise on that!

Do you want to do another Masters and then a PhD? That is an absolute minimum of another four years work, so you would have to be pretty committed to that path to make it worth it in my opinion, particularly as you would be funding the Masters yourself, which won't be cheap! You would also have to ensure that you get a 2:1 or a first, otherwise it would be a waste of both time and money.

Who was it that told you it would be very difficult to secure funding? I ask because if it was a professor then fair enough, but if it was just a fellow student then they could be wrong!If I were you, I would have a look around now for any PhDs you are interested in, and apply for them. That way you'll know if your current qualifications are enough. If you don't manage to secure a place, then that would be the time to start looking into Masters courses. Also, make sure if you do go down the Masters route that the course is really relevant to the type of PhD you want to make it really worth your while. Otherwise, even if you have a first, it won't necessarily increase your chances when it comes to getting a PhD afterwards.

Hope this helps!

======= Date Modified 19 Jun 2012 11:37:21 =======
Hi mmael,

I've had a quick go for you, the structure and content of the letter was good, I just felt it needed a few tweaks here and there!

Congratulations, have fun celebrating!!!

In my uni you can just sit in on any lectures you want - however, I just told me supervisor which mpdules I was interested in, and she got the lecturers to email me their slides/handouts etc, so I could just read through them in my own time. Didn't count as credits or anything, but really helped my understanding in areas I was lacking.

I agree that it might be best to wait a year and then apply for PhDs. What result are you expecting to get over all? To have a chance of getting onto a PhD, you need to have a 2:1 - will this be achievable? Another thing you could consider is doing a masters first. If your undergrad degree result ends up lower than you'd hoped, then a good masters degree will put you in a better position if you still want to do a PhD after that.
I never considered doing a PhD, so after my 2:1 I chose to go on and do a masters (got a distinction) and then started work as a research assistant for a year or two. I then decided to go back and do a PhD - there is no way I would have got the PhD I ended up with if I had gone straight from my undergrad as I needed that extra stuff on my cv to make me stand out from the other candidates, as my average 2:1 wasn't good enough next to other candidates who had a 1st, but my masters and work experience tipped the balance in my favour. Not saying you can't get a PhD with a 2:1, as you can and plenty of people do, just wanted to describe my personal experience :-)

Congratulations Dr Donzy!!

Really pleased for you, and glad to hear your viva wasn't as bad as you were expecting! I had to go back to work the day after, the same as you, and it takes a while for the surreal feeling to go and for it all to properly sink in. I finally graduate next month and I still don't feel like it's entirely real, maybe graduation will give me some 'closure' (horrible american word, but I the only one that adequately describes what I'm trying to say!!)

======= Date Modified 11 Jun 2012 17:11:03 =======
If you read the threads on here, you will see why it is so stressful - because it takes hard work, dedication, motivation and lots of other qualities to get through a PhD. It's nothing like being at school, and it's not even really much like being at university. To help yourself at this point, I would just concentrate on getting the best grades I could and getting onto the uni course I really wanted. Beyond that, I wouldn't worry too much - you've got a number of years ahead of you before you need to start thinking about a PhD. You might even decide, after starting uni, that you don't like it that much after all and don't want to do a PhD.

As for publishing, it's not a case of just 'totally understanding' academic content and just writing your own. Firstly, you need to have an original contribution to make to the field for someone to consider publishing it. Secondly, people don't tend to just write papers off their own back and send them in - most papers come from people in academia or industry who are affiliated with a particular institution - have a look at the papers you read, the address they come from will be a uni or company. The reason for this is that they are the people doing the research. You don't just decide out of the blue to write a paper - you do a lot of research and then discover that some of it is publishable and worthy of a paper. Again, not meaning to be patronising but journals are unlikely to accept a paper from a random person, unestablished in the field, no connection to a university, etc etc. If your research was brilliant they might consider it, but I've never heard of it happening before. Also, paper writing is a skill that you develop over the years, as it is important to consider things like referencing, plagiarism, original contribution, impact factors, audience etc.

I'm not all together convinced that you are genuine, but if you are then I think the best advice I could give you would be to knuckle down to your studies, and wait until you're doing your own PhD (MANY years in the future) before you criticise people who are experiencing difficulties with theirs.

Hi Nti97sma,

I think overall my PhD story is a positive one! Obviously I only really came on here when I wanted to complain or moan, but I'm pleased to say that wasn't too often (apart from in the last few months which I found pretty hellish, but I don't think anyone can come through the stress of submission and viva completely unscathed!). I had relatively supportive supervisors, a topic I enjoyed on the whole, and I managed to maintain a good work-life balance throughout. I passed back in April and I finally graduate next month, and I think I came out the other side ok! I would say I'm mentally a lot stronger than I thought I was, and although at times the stress levels were quite high (!), I still got through it and survived.

So please don't think it's all bad - the posts on here are biased towards when things are going badly - maybe we need a subsection of the forum where people only post positive things?! Best of luck, and don't worry too much, as long as you have the support of friends/family to help you (plus the great people on here, obviously!) then you'll be fine!

First piece of advice - don't ask for advice and then be rude about the people you are asking. Tends to annoy them.

Secondly, you are 18 - what would you know about doing a PhD? People are worrying about it because it's flipping stressful and at times you need support from the very helpful and friendly people on this forum. Don't expect them to be too friendly towards you though, given your attitude.

Don't go into your viva thinking you will do badly just because had a bad mock - that is what a mock viva is there for! To dig out all those points you hadn;t thought of and weren't prepared for so that when you're preparing for the real one you cover all of those things. I've seen a few occasions on here where people have had bad mock exams and then found their real viva was plain sailing in comparison!!

I have to agree though that PhDs are bad for your health - the run up to submission/viva was one of the most stressful periods in my life and I thought at one point I was just going to implode ;-) I think by their very nature PhD students are perfectionists who put a lot of pressure on themselves to do well, and so the thought of your entire 3/4 year PhD coming down to how you perform on just one day can seem completely overwhelming.

Wow, I knew someone would come along and prove me wrong Giblet ;-) You must be amazingly motivated to juggle all of that!!

Yes, I was lucky to get a fully funded PhD, but I am in the sciences where I believe it is more common as you simply couldn't manage to buy all the equipment, lab space etc that is necessary if you were self-funded.

For me, the sacrifices involved in working and doing a PhD full-time would be too great as I have an active and busy life outside of uni/work that I wouldn't have wanted to give up, possibly because I just didn't love my topic enough - I liked it, but was happy to step away from it in the evenings and at weekends and forget about it for a while. Obviously it is possible to do everything at once, but you have to be sure of your dedication before starting as that is the only thing that will get you through. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but admiration for those who do manage it all, but for me personally I would have to question whether the effort was worth it, and on balance I would probably have said no.

I have to agree with Screamingaddabs - there is no way on Earth I would consider doing a PhD full time AND a full-time job! There just aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done. Also, when would you ever be able to attend conferences/seminars/meetings with supervisors? I'm sure the odd person has done it, but I imagine they are very few and far between and would have chosen to do it differently if they could!
For me, the only option would be to work part-time and do the PhD part-time, as I don't see how else you would manage. My PhD hours were basically the same as a full-time job, so approx 35-40 hours a week. If you add in a full-time job that's 70-80 hours a week every week, and there is no way I could have coped with that for 4 years.
The only other possibility would be to work full-time and do the PhD part-time, but to be honest even this would be a struggle, and probably still mean working around 60 hours a week. Definitely less pressured than a full-time PhD though, and a very motivated person might manage better than I would!
Getting a loan to pay for the PhD is a risky strategy - this assumes you will earn enough in the future to pay it back. For me, this would add too much pressure. Also - is this even possible? It would be a massive amount of money - for example my PhD was fully funded and I got approx £16500 each year to live on. You could probably cope with less though, say £12000 (this is what I got during my masters), so that's still £36,000 for 3 years. Then there are uni fees - for me this was approx £3500 a year (but in the UK these will soon be up to £9000 a year). So even at the very lowest of my estimates, a 3 year PhD (and lots of people take 4!) would cost £46,500!! Can't imagine many banks would have lent me that when I was a student, they probably wouldn't now and I'm working full-time!

So in summary, the options for me would be (in order of preference!):
1) PhD full-time with funding
2) Part-time job, part-time PhD (and really cutting back on lifestyle to afford this - move back in with parents?)
3) Full-time job and forget the PhD
4) Full-time job and part-time PhD

Thanks for your update and a huge WELL DONE for getting this far depsite everything. Your posts always give me a warm fuzzy feeling when I read them as it is so inspiring to read about how amazingly well you have coped with everything life has thrown at you. Can;t wait for the future post when you will be Dr Heidi. What a fantastic role model Bea has :-)

Hello, and welcome to the forum!

Firstly, don't panic! EVERYONE worries that they haven't got enough done in their first year, and it isn't always the case!! And even if it is, you have lots of time to make up for lost gorund. PhDs tend to go in fits and starts, where sometimes you go for months feeling as if you haven't achieved anything, then suddenly you have a mad busy period and get loads done in a week!

The most important thing for you to do now is to get hold of that research handbook and try and find out exactly what is expected of you at each stage. My uni were quite strict in terms of form filling, and so every couple of months or so in the first year I had specific milestones to reach to keep track of my progress. Your graduate office should be able to help you with this. Then you need to deal with the lack of support from your supervisor. I would suggest you organise a meeting where you sit down and work out a timetable of what you need to achieve and when. This could be laid out month by month or even week by week to give you some structure and get a better idea of what is expected of you.

As for the equipment being broken etc, if this isn't getting resolved then you need to escalate it higher until someone does something about it! I was assigned an 'advisor', a sort of backup supervisor who I could turn to if anything came up that I felt my superviosr wasn't dealing with, or that I felt I couldn't approach them about; do you have a system like that at your uni? Fortunately I never needed mine, but it was good to know he was there if necessary!

Hope some of this helps. The most important thing to remember is that no matter what problems you're having, someone on here will be going through it too and no doubt others will be along soon to share their advice and experiences!! Good luck.

And you don't need to bother with cables with the kindle - if you buy a book on your pc, it just appears on your kindle by magic ;-) (or wifi as it's otherwise known!)