======= Date Modified 10 Jul 2011 12:35:39 =======

======= Date Modified 09 Jul 2011 23:41:38 =======
As a psychologist and national agony aunt, could I just advise you that your remit may not suit all? People need to vent. They need to share worries, concerns and anger. Life isn't candy-floss. It's pretty damned hard. And everyone has every right to express their own concerns, especially during a PhD which is a mind-threat on every level.

Like you, I'd love a generous world, where people take due account of the human beings they encounter, but actually, without being too cynical, affirmation isn't commonplace, in any walk of life, except perhaps in psychiatric wards and counselling sessions. Real life is hard-knock. We all do our best to survive.

And academic life, in my experience, and in the experience of many here, is no different, and may be even harder, because it's peopled by hugely inflated egos. We get hurt by them. And we're entitled to say so.

Having said that, I still believe in the resilience of the human spirit.

I've been toying with the idea of responding to you, and kind of putting it off. But actually, thinking about it very deeply, I don't really agree with you. I have other issues.

To address yours - I am 14 years older than you are, and have considerably longer than you have in the 'real' world - meeja. Tough old world. But one of the things I liked about doing my PhD was being challenged. I loved it when I had to defend my position. That's the intellectual cut and thrust I signed up for. It was why I was never scared/apprehensive about my viva, and didn't worry about it at all. I knew my stuff and had defended it and supported it for years. It was only when I was in the last throes of the viva and saw that I'd been misinformed by my super, that I had to back down on a couple of points that I didn't expect, as they'd been passed by my super. But even so, on corrections, I placed on record the fact that I was wrong, and the internal examiner was completely correct in slamming me for it.

Understanding others, and negotiating with them, isn't a skill academics usually have. Not a problem.

You need to get your head around that. My arguments, as a mature student, are rather different. I really knew that I was going to have to stand in my corner and fight, and was happy to do just that. The critical stuff was welcome - in fact meat and drink to me.

I don't think I ever will. My experience of academia has been so bad, looking back at my super's past behaviour when he just wanted me to work for peanuts for him and was jovial and flattering while squeezing my brain and competence dry, to his current behaviour when the work he 'gave' me to do to relieve my own financial problems is now being touted as his own work.

I thought he and the Uni were trying to support me. But a senior Admin staff member very close to him said to me, ' Don't think of them as friends. No one here is a friend'.

This unethical and brutal careerism has totally altered my view of what goes on in ivory towers. He's a taker, and there are too many of them, on tenures of one kind or another, demanding that others (usually students) prop them up

I've never loathed, during my entire 35-year career in media/publishing/broadcasting, anyone quite so much. And I don't do loathing as a general rule.

Hi Doodles!

Thanks to your prodding, I'm almost there. Another week should see this paper put to bed. Today I talked to my (world expert) 'co-supervisor', and he'll read and do a peer review before I submit. The journal I intend to submit to is one that's carried his papers. So that will be really useful.

How're you doing with the new job, etc?

Will respond tomorrow. Currently caught up in ethical events beyond this forum. To those of us who are ethical/idealistic/honest journalists, the events of the last 24 hours have placed everything else into second running. Bear with me..

Have congratulated you on the other thread. But I'll do it again!(up)

I sent him an cheery email with the title on it, and asking why he hadn't told me, and why it was just his name,. I got a reply yesterday saying that he'd completely rewritten it and felt that the paper was his own, now, as it was based on presentations he'd done, and not on the Report we did together (ps, nothing to do with my PhD, just something I did while I was doing my PhD). The presentations were AFTER he'd submitted the paper!

I've read the paper (which he doesn't know!) and he's just wriggling out of it. Yes, he'd done some editing to cut down the length, and added an odd sentence here and there, and one of the 7 sections is one he did, but essentially it wouldn't get through Turnitin!

Congratulations, Dunni!

I know that there have been similar cases here, so please share them with me if you succeeded or not in doing anything about it.

Yesterday I discovered that my ex-supervisor has published in a peer-reviewed journal a paper derived from an 80,000 word report we wrote together for a national government. We wrote the report, with me doing the Lit Review (which is what the report was all about) and him doing the intro and conclusion. At the time I was working as his Research Associate. I took 8 months out of my PhD to do this job as I had no money. I believed he had saved my (financial) life.

He turned the report into a co-authored (with me) book. Early this year he emailed me to say a 'paper' we'd written had been published. It was an extract and summary of part of the report, He did this without asking me or telling me, but at least my name was on it.
But he'd actually published another, at the same time, that one in his name alone. Again, he hadn't told me - perhaps wisely!

We did have a falling-out but both papers were submitted 6 months before that.

I'm bewildered. Are academics allowed to do this? And might this have any bearing on the fact that he became very nasty towards me and now seems to be standing in my way? Is his attitude a cover-up for his duplicity?

Filled in Intention to Submit in late February (we have to give at least 3 months' notice), submitted in late June, Viva was end of September.

Just finished for the day. Now 7.40pm - over 10 hours. Am going to have home-made curry (I even made the sauce!) and a glass of wine and chill. So far, 3,000 words, and a heap of new references. Thanks for being there! I really appreciate the support.

======= Date Modified 04 Jul 2011 20:54:07 =======
Your post now starts to make sense after your lengthy explanation!
I don't do whinge - not big time - so I'm deleting the miserable story of my PhD life, and just leaving you with a quote:
Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait.

Lots of :-)