I'm feeling a little lost...I tried to tell my supervisor I was struggling with understanding my experiemental work and I was shot down with in an extremely unfriendly manner- and I quote- "after 7 months, you should know more about the work than I do"...I'm more than a little cheesed off with his reaction. So Instad of wanting to be proactive about the lack of motivation I feel like disappearing off to the pub to wallow in self pity

Know what you mean. I'm finding it frustrating, because I can't even talk to my fellow PhDers about it. They don't like talking about the PhD, which I find absurd considering that it's something we all share! We could give each other support and take the weight off by just talking through any problems/issues we're having, but no one's interested. I have tried on several occassions to organise coffee meetings and no one turned up, and yet when I see them on campus, they all look so miserable. It's actually quite difficult to network with other PhD students.

I've given up now. I got so frustrated with organising get togethers. Everyone agreed they'd love to come along, and no one turned up. It seems such a shame if you have a shared burden and don't take the opportunity to forge relationships. I like working on my own, but would also like to meet up with people to just chat and remind myself that I'm part of a world out there!

In fact, I'm going to start a new thread on this right now...

cakegirl i couldnt agree with you more! trust me you are not alone. i have several friends that are also phd students, and we all feel the same way, because we're such good friends, we're completely honest. and i know phd students from different groups and uni's and the consensus is that

1. we all feel that we're fake and frauds and someone will find out that we don't know anything and be chucked out and fail our phds.

2. that we procrastinate far too much that we would like to admit to even ourselves!

3. that we dont really understand what we're doing, but pretend we do!

4. that we have wasted alot of time, on things that did not turn out to be fruitful at all.

5. that we ask ourselves over and over again, why am i doing a phd??? i wish i could go back in time and tell my self don't do it!!

Ziggyvic
how awful for you.

it took courage to admit that you didn't quite understand something, and instead of being praised for voicing that, you get berated. i totally understand how hard it is to get over such harsh critisisms...

i myself am trying to deal with it, and trying to move on. but it is hurtful. and there is no reason for them to be like that. encouragement always works much better than harsh critisisms.. these supervisors should go on a special course!