Sure, as long as your chapters and thesis end up linear at the end (i.e. tell a story), it doesn't matter how you get there. Another useful strategy is to extract a particular paragraph from a chapter and to focus on getting it right, before pasting it back in. This allows you to remove much of the background noise in your head.

Great advice from previous posters. Another useful thing I found was to put chapters I was struggling with to one side and not look at them for a week or more. Often the solution to finishing a difficult section or passage would come to me in the meantime, and I could return to the chapter with confidence.

At what draft stage were your chapters at when you gave them to your supervisor? In my experience, supervisors expect chapters to be reasonably well developed before they take the time to seriously read them and provide objective feedback. I made the mistake of giving an underdeveloped draft of one of my chapters to my supervisor, and he essentially ripped it to shreds, and told me to rewrite it before we discussed it again.

Welcome to the world of academia haha.

As others have said, wait until you have the job in the bag before talking to your supervisor. If you get the job, then a good thing to bring to the discussion with your supervisor will be a (realistic) timeline for completion. Keep in mind too that switching to full time work can delay your submission date significanty, especially if you are starting a new job. Hence, get as much done as you can while you are still full time (assuming you still are).

I don't believe in sugar coating my contributions on this forum either. Some of the best feedback/advice I've received in regards to study/work has been brutally honest, and at times, bordering on what some (more delicate) people would consider rude and condescending.

LouLou15, whatever decision you make, all the best.

If you really want to pursue a career in nursing, then follow you dream. Don't stick with something you can't stand, especially a PhD. It's going to get much harder and more stressful the longer you stay with it. The key with a PhD is that you need to be passionate about your thesis - which gets you through the rough patches midway through, and then in the later stages when you are 'over' it.

No, you won't be an employee, unless they offer you some part time work (e.g. research assistant, tutor). The majority of full time PhD students in Australia are on a scholarship, which can sometimes include a 'top-up', either from the uni or industry. A PhD is just a qualification, and afterwards you will need to compete for a job with everyone else, unless you are offered a postdoc. Check out some other threads, where people have obtained their PhD, but are still looking for work 1-3 years later.

A supervisor is allocated a set number of contact hours for each of their students per week. In other words, they are being paid for this service. A student is well within their rights to complain if the supervisor is not keeping their end of the bargain.

The problem with many academics is that they take on more students than they can handle. The ones that do this tend to be the ambitious movers and shakers, who are also inundated with other research and administrative commitments. Students take a back seat, unless they are part of the PhD student production line of publications with the supervisor's name on it.

Living tax free for three years on a scholarship paid for by the taxpayer would be considered by many in the community to be exploitation. Heck, in Australia, we can even apply for (and in most cases, get) a six month extension to a scholarship. Given those very generous concessions, it's not unreasonable to expect students to finish within that time, and if they don't, to adequately provide for themselves in the interim.

See duplicate thread:

Buy a couple of undergraduate textbooks off Amazon and use the time before, and in the early stages of your PhD to catch up on the relevant material. Or you could even sit in a few undergraduate lectures.

Your Masters qualification is superior to an undergraduate degree, in terms of having the necessary skills to do a PhD.

In that regard, it's no different to most other professions - where you have to 'play the game'. Hard work and commitment are another key to success in academia (again like most other professions).

I like turtles.

Sounds like you are making good progress. An important thing to keep in mind is the 80/20 principle, especially when it applies to thesis writing. Getting the thesis to a complete draft is an important milestone, but you should give youself a few extra months as a buffer if possible. There will be a seemingly endless number of ammendments and small rewrites to do on top of your edits and polishing.

It varies from journal to journal, and electronic only journals have a faster turnaround. Was there information about review turnaround time in the instructions to authors section for your particular journal?