Tapa, At this stage I would find someone else who could show me the plasmid sequence etc. If there was nobody else, I'd stand at her desk and tell her to show me the procedure right now. You can be assertive about it rather than aggressive but I wouldn't leave her desk until she told me. "I'm sorry but this really needs done now. It won't take long, let's get it out of the way".

As for using my glassware, I'd tell her forcefully not to touch my stuff again without cleaning it unless she wanted to suffer the consequences of pissing me off.
I'd also try to get everyone together to sort out the running of the lab with the aim of getting agreement on rotas etc.
I'm a bit too old now to be putting up with all that shit. Sometimes you just need to confront people directly rather than let people get into a disruptive routine.
In my PhD, my pet peeve was people wearing headphones with blaring music. I always immediately asked them to turn it down a little. If you do it properly you'll find almost everyone will be fine about it.

TQ, I think you need to pursue the path which feels more meaningful to you.
I don't think it is obvious at all that you would take a permanent teaching role over a postdoc.
I personally don't believe in getting all this way and then taking the safe option for fear of not getting another opportunity.
What would be the point?
You want to do pure research? Postdoc or fellowship are your options right now. Anything else will leave you with almost no time for research.

It's clear this is what you'd prefer to do.

What isn't clear is why you are even cobsidering a permanent lectureship when it isn't your plan A.

Are you struggling to find research posts or are you tempted by a bit more security?

No. If you do that your supervisor will get to know and that has to be avoided at all costs.

Ideally you want to chat privately with any member of academic staff that you have built up some kind of relationship with from your time there, that you can trust and who will actually be prepared to do it and keep it low key so your supervisor isn't alerted. To improve your chances you should tell them that you only want them to skim the thesis and give you a feel as to whether it is of the correct standard.

TQ, yes that really happened. I can laugh about it now but that might have caused me serious problems had I been a bit younger and less experienced in handling unreasonable people. Just glad I no longer have to work amongst them.

I know things seem tough right now but honestly having a mindset of "this news has literally wrecked my life" is not helping you at all.

Things have happened which you can't control. You need to be focussing on getting back through that thesis with a fine tooth comb and covering it with post-it changes before the viva. You also need to find someone who can read your thesis and give you some feedback. The rest of the stuff, you need to let go because you can't control it.

Oh and BTW, my internal examiner sat quietly until the very end of my VIVA and then accused me of fabricating some results because he wrongly assumed that a tool I was using didn't report some material properties that I had included. I pretty much exploded on the spot and told him that the fact he didn't know how the tool worked was no excuse for making thinly veiled attacks on my integrity. I remember leaning in and saying "I didn't sit down and make these numbers up out of fresh air". Then the external stepped in to calm things down and tell the internal that the tool did in fact give these numbers. Things got wrapped up pretty quickly after that and I passed with minors. The external told my supervisor that the viva went extremely well and that he couldn't understand why I was so quiet afterwards. Honestly, these people........ :-D

So, my internal tried to sabotage me right at the end of the viva because he couldn't think of what else to ask to justify his presence. That's probably not what you wanted to hear.

TQ, it sounds like it's fully integrated so the OP is still an undergraduate until the Masters year ends. There is no undergraduate award to protect yet.

It's not a postgrad Masters.

Check with your uni but we had someone do exactly that. He failed 5th year.
He was awarded an Ordinary Degree which he could have got after 3 years and not an Honours Degree.
I spoke to an academic about that and he saw it as something which needed fixing.

This is entirely on your supervisor.
Why is he unaware of what is happening in his own lab?
Why is he not setting and enforcing good hygiene and safety?

It's laziness. Pure and simple. If he had ultimate responsibility for any accidents I am sure he would be more professional.
He needs to set out expectations of his lab members.

If he is approachable, I would be talking to him about these problems. Messiness is not a minor thing. It is a fundamental lab safety issue and he needs to take that seriously.

She is a toxic person.
I would be moving out ASAP given the tie with your supervisors.
You certainly do NOT want to talk to your supervisors about this. That would be disastrous. Your flatmate could be bullshitting.
In the meantime, I would keep things civil with her but would cut her off socially with immediate effect.

You should not be having to support your mum unless she has some special needs.
Given the background you have described, you should be looking to move out.
Your mum needs to be taking responsibility for herself and not leaning on you.
She certainly has no right to be telling you when and where to do your PhD.

Isn't it odd that you feel guilty about hurting her feelings but she seems to feel no obligation towards how you feel? It seems to be all about her doesn't it?

Sounds a bit like my mum. Sadly they don't change with time. Is she really worth messing with your own future over? I had to put distance between me and my mum too. The alternative is just not worth it.

TQ, the problem is that every university seems to treat this differently.
That's a risk you really don't want at this stage of the process.

There's not much anyone can force me to do when my mind is set but on this issue I was prepared to trust my supervisor's judgment.

I've seen at least one RG uni which has a published guidance about avoiding self plagiarism in this exact scenario.

I guess it's up to rewt whether it's worth pushing this or not.
Personally, the last thing I wanted after 3 years was to do anything which risked clogging my thesis up in academic red tape just as I was crossing the finishing line.
As annoying as it was to do this, the alternative seemed as sensible as running across a minefield wearing a full clown outfit :-D

Dr Crabby, if your report is due on Friday then you can't afford to waste time fretting over anything you can't control. Somehow you need to focus on the report. Personally, I would have taken holiday time off work to get this done. It's not too late for that.

Worrying about anything else right now jeopardises your chances of finishing on time.

Yep, welcome to the ludicrous world of academia.
I had to rephrase the text from 5 of my published papers when I wrote my thesis.
I just essentially summarised in my own words paragraph by paragraph, one chapter per paper.

As for pictures, I asked for permission from the publishers and wrote "reproduced by kind permission...." and gave a reference to each.

Absolute waste of a month or so of my time but couldn't be avoided.

You can and should run your thesis through TURNITIN after doing so to make sure you've used enough of your own words.

nutria, if you don't ask you definitely won't get.
It is very common for PhD with an industrial partner to attract a much higher stipend than a normal EPSRC stipend. Some of them are around £20k tax free.

You should certainly ask assertively about this. I definitely would.
You'll be limited to what you can publish and that comes at a price.

Honestly Smiths, a PhD is hard enough on the spirit without trying to crush yourself in the way you are doing.
You risk breaking yourself completely if you're not careful.
Apart from anything else, getting a PhD is not necessarily about being smart.
It sounds like you need a short holiday to recalibrate your thinking.