ya completely agree with doodles if your in a lab based phd such as molecular biology/life sciences then its impossible to take a 9-5 approach and its more common than not to work 11+hour days. As if you decide to take the 9-5 approach in my opinon then the quality of your research is going to suffer as you wont be able to fit in all the quality control experiments and experimental repeats to make results robust. not to mention find time to read the litreature, evaluate the research, pour over vast quantities of information on genome/proteome databases, design experiments etc. I am often envious of PhD students in other disciplines who can take weekends of and take the 9-5 approach but I knew what I was getting into before i started so I cant really complain. Also I come from a farming background so ive been working long days for most of my life so i guess if the bbc story is true then im in trouble. :)

If i think im having an uproductive day there are two things I do to change my day into a productive one.

first is I just think back to the days when i was working/slaving on a building site in the pouring rain and cold trying to get some money together to put me through university and realise that unless i turn my day into a productive one i could be back their again due to the highly competitive job market that exists for life science researchers (im a life sciences phd) especially for gaining acess to the ivy league universities.

Second thing i do to motivate myself to be productive is related to the first point. My current university is pretty rubbish for life science research where the dean and head of school amaze me at their incompetence. where orders or applications to gain extended access to labs to preform experiments can take up to 2-3 weeks to be processed by the university due to the crazy system that operates here. this is in comparison to my previous high ranking university where the day after i applied for 24 hour acess to the labs I got it with no questions asked. So i use such a scenario to motivate myself to work crazy long hours trying to get data together to publish high impact papers which will allow me to escape from my current low ranking university.

your PhD does not matter no one is going to read it apart from maybe 4 people at most ever. What you should be more concerned about is your publications especially if you are in the life sciences. from reading through various phd thesis it does appear to be very dependent on who your examiners are. In all i think the whole PhD process is a farce as its so dependent on who your examiners are a realtively average phd can pass with no corrections while a relatively good phd can be made to undergo many corrections depending on who the external is. So trying to jugde the quality of a PhD by anything other than publications is in my opinon a waste of time as to use an analysis from experimental science you are not comparing like with like and hence no comparison can be made its a futile exercise.

In my opinon the best way to do it is to be honest. Im doing a phd in the life sciences and for my personal statements i wrote when applying for phds, i just basically wrote about how the whole world of molecular biology fascinated me and the challange of trying to understand how life works at the molecular level was what i defiently wanted to do in life. I had previously done an undergraduate degree in a physiology based subject and so i talked about how the physiology answers didnt satisfy me as i wanted to know how things worked at the genetic protein level and so be able to manipulate it. this seemed to generate lots of interest from my potential supervisors and i ended up with 2 offers of phd positions. unfortuneately for me I choose the wrong one and ended up at a rubbish university for life sciences reseach :(

Go to oxbridge is my opinon especially if your working the molecular area (as I am). My reasoning for this is as follows if you go to oxbridge you will be surrounded by experts in all the different areas that you may need for your project so if you have a problem with certain techniques you can just walk down a corridor or go up a stairs and get an answer to your problem with a few minutes which will save you weeks of work trying to trouble shoot. Also the diversity of the of the other researchers you will meet should give you motivation for you own research and will allow you to look at your problems/research area from a different perspective for example if your working on a specific signalling pathway somebody from another tissue type may be looking at the same pathway and combining both views and knowledge will really aid in your fundamental understanding of the topic. The biggest barrier to a doing a really good phd in the molecular world is funding its pretty simple if you dont have the money you wont be albe to buy the reall good stuff. At my current uk university im surrounded by really nice people who are friendly and helpful however we severly lack expertise in many areas that I would like to include in my project and so i wish now i did not turn down an offer from a top german university. From my personal experience my advice would be to choose oxbridge.

Ya happens to me to I often dream about signaling pathways and how they are interconnected I think this is very common for life scientists as the majoriyt of us love what we do.

Things I like about doing my PhD are

1 Doing something I absolutely love and that I think about all the time. I dont look upon my PhD as a job I look upon it more as my lifes passion.
2 The days when you obtain some really interesting results from you experiments and your mind just goes into drive trying to figure out the meaning of them.
3 Reading excellent research papers that make you stop and think about certain dogmas.
4 Having great discussions with people far more intelligent than me
5 The constant hope that one day I could make a discovery that would help find a cure to some terminal disease.
6 Not having to work on a building site anymore for money :)

I had a skype interview for a PhD position in Germany. I was dressed very casually with a hoddy top and I got offered the postion. In my opinon for research positions especially those in the molecular field of research which is my area I think appearance counts for virtually nothing it all comes down to an ability to be able to discuss, criticially assess and be able to argue rationally any viewpoint you have on a certain topic. For a postdoc position I could only imagine that the last thing that a potential employer will think about is your appearance and be far more interested in you understanding of your research area as well as your research ideas and mechanistic research methods to test out those ideas at least in science anyway. If your postdoc isnt in science then I dont have any advice for you :)

Hi Sci fi

Im also doing a PhD in life sciences so i can understand what you are saying. However doing a PhD in life sciences is incredibly demading especially if you want to do a good one. I dont know really anything of your specific situation but my advice would be to you that unless you really love the area of research your in get out now or else you will most likely end up depressed. If you do love the area of research for your PhD then its just a matter of giving it your best shot dedicate as much time as you can to reading about the things you dont understand, actively seek out people who "know" more than you and ask them questions, post specific questions on forums like biofourm where people usually reply quite quickly and are helpful. As regards specific interpretation of data your data in life sciences is only as good as the controls you use so really plan your experiments precisely this will require alot of planning time where you literally have to sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and draw everything out. So you really need to get organised if you keep up your disorganisation in my opinon you are doomed to really struggle. Out of curiosty how many hours a week do you work as in my opinon its almost impossible for a PhD student to do well in life sciences without putting in at least 60 hours as there is just so much stuff to cover and learn. At the end of the day in my opinon and that of some of my friends who are doing PhDs in life sciences if you really want your PhD in life sciences you just have to work your ass off and hope for the rewards later in your career.

Ya bewildered I think you make a very vaild point about teaching universites and science I also think that alot of it has to do with the management in place at such universites they just dont seem to understand the concept of research and especially they do not seem to understand the mentality of researchers who really want to dedicate themselves to their work because they love what they do. As regards our department it was entered into the rae and for the section that our research institute was placed in there was an increase in the rae score for mmu so there should be extra money for that which i believe should go towards providing better access for the researchers who helped improve this score but seeing as this is mmu that would be to smart of a thing for them to do :)

Miss spacey yes in my opinon any bad press you read about mmu is probably justified and true. I can only comment on my situation which is from my experience mmu is not a good university to go if you want to do a serious research PhD in science. As regards advocating better opening hours I have met personally with the head of research for mmu to air my grievances and have also emailed the dean of science who has not responded to any of my emails. My supervisor as well has been recieving very little if any feedback either from the dean of science regarding this issue. I also wrote in desperation to the vice chancellor as well regarding this issue and did not recieve any reply back. From speaking to other phd students and researchers there is unamious support for better access but university management just seem to ignore our requests.

Pamw yes you are right bank holidays dont really exist in the world of a molecular biologist phd student who has already been slowed down enormously by the building opening times already and is on a three year funded studentship who must complete within the three years as has no back up money to finance himself when funding runs out and just wants to get out of the negative support for research atmosphere at mmu as fast as possible.

Hi All

Appartently if you are a researcher at Manchester Metropolitan you are now lucky to get access to the John Dalton tower which is the science and engineering center as I recieved an email yesterday regarding access to the building on monday 4th which stated the following

"We have been lucky enough to get access to the building on Monday May 4th... from 9am to 4pm"

I wish somebody had told me before I did my PhD that I would need to be lucky just to get access to the building to do my experiments for my PhD :p Anybody out there who is thinking of pursuing a PhD at Manchester metropolitan better be a lucky person or else they might not get access to the building at all :-(

Hi Pamplemouse yes the building is open at those times. However if one is doing a research PhD which involves doing a time course study and examining gene expression every few hours then these hours make it virtually impossible to do this type of mechanistic research. For example if one wants to examine changes in gene expressin under varying treatments for various time points such as every 3, 6 etc over say a 72-96 hour period then it means that at the weekend very limited work can be done and it slows down the pace of the research enormously as one has to plan around the opening times of the building which is crazy. Its not that i need to be in the building all the time far from it but i need to be able to come in at the certain time points required as does another of my fellow phd colleague. I want to get into a top class lab in america so i need good publications within the three years so im willing to dedciate the 80 plus hours a week to achieve my goal its just so frustating that the university does not share the same desire to achieve research excellence. Are you doing a PhD in molecular biology as well pamplemouse?

At mancherster metropolitan there is an atrocity for research students especially those doing molecular biology research (like Me) in that the John dalton tower building is closed for more hours than it is open over a 7 day period its only open from 9-4 on sat and sun. Not to mention that they also closed the building for virtually four days over easter so no experiments could be done and the closure also delayed other experiments. I am funded for three years yet the building is only open for less than 1.5 years its an atrocity for any body who wants to do serious mechanistic research of gene expression. Do not go to manchester metropolitan if you want to do your PhD is all I would advise.

Thanks all for the replies. When i said social security number i did mean national insurance number mix up in lingo between countries! The bank account receipt is a good suggestion however my thinking on this would be that even if i had a bank account open three years ago that would not be able to confirm that i had been resident in the uk for the past three years. Admitedly I have not actaully been in the uk continuously for the past three years so the main reason I posted was out of curiosty to see what did people actually use so that in the future I could do the same as many of the projects that I have been intending to apply for are funded by bodies which have the three year residence requirement for full stiped and so it is very frustrating!! Does anyone know is such a scenario present in other EU countries? Im aware of various research grants from bodies such as the marie curie etc that dont have such requirements.

Hello All

I was wondering if any non uk nationals have succesfully got the full studentship from funding bodies such as the bbsrc and other such funding bodies which require you to prove you have been resident in the uk for three years in order to be awarded the full studentship. do you prove it by your social security number? or how did you do it. i emailed one of the fuding bodies and got a reply back suggesting that i would have a bill in my name from three years ago however I dont make a habit of keeping bills from three years previous! Suggestions would be most welcome. Just a side point to this as well im an EU citizen so how do funding bodies get away with putting in such requirments I thought being in the EU meant open access for all and no favourtism.