In EU it's usually a PhD made of publications, the numrber of articles depends on the supervisors. However this can change to a normal PhD thesis according to the University/Supervisors decision.

I guess some supervisors deserve this kind of behaviour from their students :-)

I know lots of people that respect the PhD ethics, but I also know a few that would do anything to have the title... whatever it is.

I wonder how many of you thought about changing supervisors or just give up the phd or move to another lab?

Is it ok to suffer like an animal (small exaggeration... or maybe not) until the end without any help from the supervisors, to end up with a phd title... for what you have given years of you life with no joy. In the end you should thank your supervisors for all the "support".

I lost all my motivation sometime ago, read all type of info about "what you should expect from a phd"... but it only makes me fell even worse.

I've talked with people that had to work 7 days a week for workaholic supervisors, crazy supervisors.. what about non-existent-supervisors? I have no problems to work like a crazy person... but I am kind of tired of working like a crazy person in the dark, in a new subject I never seem before with no supervision, no post-doc student around, no one to talk/discuss...