Hi Chococake, thanks for your reply.

Actually I was dealing very good with the stress during my research assistant period and the first 7 months of my PhD. But everything started a 3 months ago, when I started to be blocked mentally and I failed the first QE. I was in the counseling Service centre from my uni, and the psychologist suggested me to take a break. Many traumas from illness can appear after some years and I believe this postdoc switched something in my head and I felt again totally excluded from everything.

About quit the PhD... well... that´s NOT the plan. I want to do the PhD and I´ll do the PhD because a) I love research, b) I don´t want to be in academia, but hey, I want to do it. This will be my "legacy". I don´t think I´ll be here in the next 15 years (or maybe yes... there are many medical advances...who knows) but I want to be proud of something I did and that´s my way to do it.

Of course I can choose better paid jobs or less stressful, but that´s not what I want to do with my life and actually that´s the bigger picture: make my last (or penultimate) research task.

Hi all,

I did my BSc and although was tough and I did it part-time, I got it with honors. Then, I got an important scholarship to do a 2 full years MSc. abroad. Everything was to be perfect but before I finished my MSc. I got diagnosed with leukemia and everything went worse (it happened 3 years ago).

My illness showed me how useless I am. I felt totally excluded from this world. But I got over it and I started to look for a PhD.

However, was not easy... I had many rejections (Europe was in crysis and everybody wanted to do a PhD) and my selfsteem was very low. But I got an offer to be research assistant with possibilities to end up as a PhD and I took the offer.

Things were good. I took some modules and I passed them with A´s. I enjoyed work at lab and I even spent weekends because I really liked the topic and work... however, I started to work with a postdoc and problems started. Again, I felt exclude for the meetings, I felt exclude for the experiment, I felt exclude for him. Then I did my qualifying exam and I failed. I was totally blocked, unable to speak or to think. I had other chance after christmas holidays and I also failed the exam. On the middle of the oral exam I ask the committee to stop. I couldn't think properly and my supervisor asked me what happened.

Well... he was very supportive and advice me to ask for a "leave of absence" and work to fix this problem: my depression.

But I´m feel a total failure. I´m feel as a defective PhD. I don´t know if this is going to affect to my PhD. Tomorrow the PhD committee will have a meeting to discuss my case.

Any of you had the same problem? Any advice?

Thanks!

P.S. Sorry for the spelling mistakes. I wrote it from my mobile O:)