It depends on the size of your field and how broad your thesis topic is going to be.

You should always be on the look out for new papers though

I think asking their current PhD students is useful, I was told things my supervisor did and was like which sounded as if he worked in a similar way to me and I found this to be true.

I am also aware of a number of people who have poor relationships with their supervisor that have warned off other PhD students.

Also if you are staying at the same university don't think because someone is a good (bad) lecturer or tutor that they will be a good (bad) supervisor, I know alot of people who have made these mistakes

You have to do what would make you happy, you can't let other peoples opinions/expectations stop you from doing what you want to do. I'm in a similar position in that I'm thinking about what I'll do when I finish my PhD, and although I'd love a highly paid job etc I'd rather to something that made me happy

Are you emailing specific supervisors or the people in the department incharge of postgraduate studies?

If you are emailing supervisors is this because you have seen adverts for these PhDs or just in a speculative manner?

If the positions are advertised are you responding in the required way?

Also there could be a problem with the email system you could be sending emails that are being filtered out by spam filters alot of emails to my uni account from yahoo or hotmail etc are filtered out

I'm just over 18 months in.

I have a great relationship with my supervisor, I couldn't ask for a better one.

-I've never had any feelings of quitting
-Never wanted to do this either
-Yeah I've phoned him at home at times
-Most of our meetings are informal
-Also most of our meetings involve talking about other stuff for half of the time
-I want to stay in accademia and he's given me some really useful advice

I've not been to any conferences yet but I know quite a few people who have had a holiday either before or after and the uni has been fine about it. Obviously the holiday time accomodation and other expenses you would have to pay for yourself though

The fact that you find something out that no one else knows. For a while you can be the only person in the world who knows something!

I'm not scared of any of it I just wish it wouldn't keep breaking!!!

Is it just on stuff you have posted to a university address such as your office? I sometimes get stuff with Dr on and I've just always assumed that it's because I'm using a university address

It would be interesting to hear their reasons. If it's just a university vivalry thing or just a couple of people in your uni who don't get on with people there, then it could be nothing, but if it's something else they could be doing you a favour. I'd ask them what they know and why they are advising against it

I'm 18 months in now and really enjoying it, although I'm not looking forward to writing up

This country will go back to a stage were a small percentage of people are extremely rich owning alot of property and everyone else is poor and renting off them, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The irony being when this was the case years ago education was the way out of this trap.

Matthew82, what you say about flipping burgers etc probably isn't too far off the truth. If you look at it from this point of view:

Instead of going to uni you just go out and get a job after A-Levels you would be starting a job with a salary probably ~12-15k and in the 6-8 years it's taken for someone to do a degree and phd with inflation and pay rises etc that would have gone up to 13-16.5k there's also a decent chance of getting a promotion due to your experience etc. That person is probably better off than someone who has done a degree and Phd and starting off as a postdoc

The way I see it at the moment is once I finish my PhD, I'll have to continue renting a place to live, and continue living like a student, in order to hopefully have scraped enough money together in a few more years for a deposit on a house, by which time I will probably be 30 when I take out a morgage