Hope.for.the.best

If you are really into his project, I don't see why you shouldn't email him again this year. However, since he didn't reply you last year, chances are he thinks that you are not a suitable candidate for his project. In my opinion, you will need to emphasise in your application why you are interested in his project and why you are a suitable candidate for his project. It would be better if you have gained something more in your CV over the past year, e.g. conference presentations and publications. I would also suggest that you learn from last year's experience. What could you have done better? Maybe have someone to review your applications and do trial interviews with you. I am not sure whether there are policies in your schools of interest as to when you need to contact potential advisors, but it is often better to contact as early as possible. Your applications likely draw more attention to potential advisors when they don't have a lot of applications to review closer to the deadline. To my knowledge, some advisors take students on a "first-come, first-served" manner. Good luck!

Hi all, Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who responded to my previous posts. Your suggestions and support are invaluable and they are very important to me at this very stressful and lonely stage of thesis writing. I don't have big problems with grammar, paraphrasing and using academic language to write, but I am struggling to produce clear and concise sentences. I can write grammatically correct sentences, but they are often clumsy and difficult to read. Although I will go with my main supervisor's suggestion to hire a copy-editor for my thesis, I wish to hear some tips to improve academic writing. I have been trying the followings. (1) Grammarly: I installed this software when I saw it in YouTube. It is better than Word to pick up typos and grammatical mistakes. At least my co-supervisor has complained less about my writing. (2) PerfectIt: I found it from google and it is very helpful in ensuring consistencies in spelling (e.g. email vs e-mail) and the use of abbreviations etc. (3) I have tried reading out things aloud too, but this does not work quite well for me. I think it is down to I am a non-native English speaker and I am not good at picking up weird sentences from reading. What are your suggestions? I feel that I should do my best rather than relying on the copy-editor. Thanks. Hope.for.the.best

Work life balance is really important. Thanks for sharing MHarry. For my field, it is impossible to go into lab 2 or 3 times a week during active stage of data collection. I had times when I had to be in every day, especially when I was working on time-point experiments. It is good that I can stay at home more to write these days as I feel more comfortable and concentrate better. I am way more productive when I can focus on my writing without any distractions, so I was really upset when my co-supervisor needed me to do experiments again for a manuscript but not my thesis! I am very jealous of your 3 or 4 months holiday each year! I took a longer break (a month) last year when I presented in a conference but my co-supervisor was not happy with that. Since then I was flooded with experiments and I could only start writing full-time 3 months ago! No other PhD students in my centre worked on experiments a few months before submitting their theses and I feel that I should ask for the same, particularly I still need more work for my writing. Anyway, things are going well now and hopefully my main supervisor won't come up with some other methods to do that experiment until I submitted my thesis!

Thanks MHarry for your reply! You did not sound crude or inconsiderate at all as my thoughts go with you. I never intend to apply for disability as I wish to cope with it myself like you said. To me the biggest relief is my writing going well. I am glad that after months of hard work, my supervisors finally indicate great improvements in my writing. There are still more revisions to go, but at least I am no longer stuck like before. The other day I searched on the web that the reagent for that experiment is not available at all! So that is another relief to me as I have a good reason to not do the experiment now. My co-supervisor will accept that without anything. You know she insists on that experiment so much that even with my main supervisor, it is a lot of hard work to persuade her not to do the experiment. Yes, I can insist on my thesis too because she doesn't know how to do that experiment herself, but she will be unhappy. I don't wish to create tense between any supervisors at this critical stage of my PhD. I am reading a self-help book for anxiety and one big strategy is to avoid creating more stress if possible!

Thanks for your advice again! I am giving drafts of my writing to my primary supervisor and meet him weekly to discuss. He is the type who is willing to help with the process. He is more into ensuring that I write logically and justify why I did such and such experiments more than having no typos and grammatical mistakes. He always asks me to have the content properly set out and deal with the grammar later. My co-supervisor, on the other hand, requires writing to be completely perfect. She always fusses about typos, grammar etc. I am really stressed to make sure my writing has no typos (I installed grammarly as word sometimes does not pick up typos). The other day she was asking whether I read my writing aloud as she was doubting that I didn't do it. I said my English is not good so I cannot pick up all errors even after reading aloud. She finally accepted it. She always accuses me of not doing what she told me! I also have another supervisor (the one who went through the manuscript), he is more than happy to mark all my work electronically. He track-changes obvious grammatical mistakes like agreement, single/plurals etc. He gives very good advice too. So my strategies are to give drafts to my two male supervisors and then when they are both happy, I pass on to my co-supervisor. Since she is intolerant of any grammatical mistakes, she is kind of my copy-editor lol.

Hi Lily, Everyone has given you good responses. I stumbled across your post and would really like to add on my own experience of being younger than my peers. Most PhD students in my country start in their late 20s or early 30s, but I started when I was 23. My country allows students with a bachelor hon degree with class 2.1 or above to go straight into a PhD program, as long as their English levels meet the standard. I got a first class hon and was admitted to a PhD program. I am 26 and close to finishing now. I was thinking the same as you that whether I would be disadvantaged because of my young age. It seems like the PhD students older than me are learning new experiment skills way quicker than me and they handle stress way better than me. It turned out that although I appear to be a slow learner, I actually produced very good experimental data that might be published in Nature/Cell-like journals. According to my supervisors, many of their students produced good work too but were not chosen for an oral presentation in conferences, but I was chosen for one even if I did not ask for (I don't mean to show off here). That conference required presenters to put in date of birth and obviously age was not a matter when they selected oral presentations. I am yet to find out whether other older PhD students handle stress better than me (see my other posts). From what I know, one of the PhD students who is 10 years older than me appeared to be as stressful as me when she wrote her thesis. I don't feel that I am being treated differently because of my age. Of course, I feel a bit missed out because they are all talking about partners, family and kids when I am still single. Nevertheless, speaking from my own experience, I would highly recommend that you go ahead with a PhD if that is what you want. Doing a PhD requires a lot of time and effort. You are more likely to be distracted by family commitments (esp. kids) later on in your life, so it is actually good that you get out of it earlier in your life! I hope this helps you.

Thanks for shedding some light on me again, fuzzylogician! I searched on the web that mental health problems indeed are common in academia and there are published studies to support that. As you said, people are often hiding their problems due to the stigma and maybe that's why I didn't get much info from talking to other fellow PhD students. So I asked here and see. Probably people are more comfortable to open up if they can remain anonymous. One of my PhD friends who finished last year asked whether I slept well and caught a cold often. He said he's struggling with these but I am not. There is another PhD student who also finished last year - the one who got panic attack like symptoms when meeting supervisors because of inadequacy in writing. I also observed some other symptoms, like she jumped up whenever anyone called her (she is not like that normally) and she also caught a cold very often. I remember there were days when she was coughing like crazy. That's when MERS was around and I was suspecting that she caught it. She is a very nice and friendly person and I talk to her a lot, but very nosy! If I tell her that I am struggling with the stuff I wrote here, everyone in the office will know the next day. Insomnia and catching a cold often are very "normal" stress symptoms. Even if these go around in the office, nobody will think less of them. However, if I share with people that I struggle to come in on windy days etc., they probably react like the counsellor from the helpline. The last thing I wish is to have everyone giving me a strange look when I walk into the office/lab. Can you see my loneliness here? The rubrics to diagnose mental illnesses are based on how bad one's life and functioning are affected by stress. There are a lot of emphasis on sleep and diet etc. I don't have problems with sleep and diet, so I am not considered having a mental illness. But I don't think I am mentally healthy either. The two PhD students really got back to normal after finishing, so let's hope that I will be too.

My mum has called the centre where my psychologist works. The receptionist confirms that she does not do any other forms of counselling except face-to-face. Unfortunately she doesn't have her private clinic elsewhere, so there is no way I can contact her privately and request short-term sessions. She didn't do her PhD in my country, so she cannot recommend anyone for me, other than asking me to try the counselling at school. My family is asking around now, but still hasn't found anyone yet. I am from a culture where mental health problems are taboo, so it is difficult for me to ask my friends openly. Also, my friends are all living happily and I don't seem to find anyone having mental health problems (I might be wrong). It looks like I am the one who has the most encounter with a psychologist. The helpline is for teens up to 25. I am actually fooling them by saying that I am still 25. I don't mean to lie, but no other helplines in my country will offer a regular phone counselling like this one free of charge. I would not say the counsellor I got from the helpline is untrained, but obviously she is not as experienced as my regular psychologist. Nevertheless, I appreciate that she is very patient and willing to spend an hour to explore why I am scared of the wind, though it would be great if she could offer me some possible solutions. It is still better to have her handy, but she is currently on holiday! I think for my situation, it really makes a difference to have someone who has ever done a PhD. People who have never done it know it is hard and difficult, but have no idea how hard and difficult exactly. At least my psychologist could say things like, "Unavoidably you need to revise your thesis for many times, but remember that your final thesis will be a great one." I will try to see if Uber is happy to drive me to the lab if I am struggling next time. I really wish my life will resume to normal soon. In the past, I could walk up to my lab without a second thought. Thanks and get well soon.

Thanks rising_star for your reply. I think my posts are too long and my story becomes very confusing. I totally have the ability to do both experiments and writing, but my current state of mind is not going to be okay with both, because the stress of not finishing my thesis is just more than I can handle. My manuscript is a snapshot of my thesis and I will have no problems with it when I finish writing my thesis. My co-supervisor is the "what about X and Y type of person" as fuzzylogician pointed out. If I go ahead with experiments, she must ask me to do more and I have to further delay my thesis! She confirmed to the school that I would not need to do anymore experiments for my PhD and yet she still asks for more, so I don't believe she will only want me to do just one experiment! I should have submitted my thesis by the end of this month, but I need to postpone now because my writing is not going well. Although I am able to extend my financial support, I want to get my thesis out of the way! The stress is just too much and I don't wish to have a breakdown. I made the plans of writing with or without experiments and indeed focusing on thesis writing is more suitable for me. I hope that I will be able to persuade her that I need to write. Fingers crossed.

Thanks hats for your reply. I am glad that you did not find my symptom weird. To give you a bit of background, I am a domestic student for my country, but my family are all overseas, so I am like an international student fighting on my own. I see a clinical psychologist regularly overseas. She is a PhD graduate herself and she can totally understand and help with my stress. The bad thing is she only takes face-to-face appointments and she does not do any video counselling. Unfortunately I am in the middle of my writing and I cannot go overseas to follow up with her. I am having a difficult time to find a suitable counsellor in my country. I heard that the counselling centre in my uni is crappy and indeed it is! They offer a lot of help and support to undergraduate students but hardly any for postgraduate students. I have to walk in and book an appointment on spot to see a counsellor. There are so many students and I am not offered any appointments even after many trials, so I have to give up. It is impossible for me to spend that much time to wait for a counsellor to see me! I ended up talking to a counsellor from a national helpline and she had a hard time understanding why wind was scary to me. She figured out that it might be the PhD stress after hours of talking. Unfortunately my uni shuttle buses only operate afterhours, say after 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. to next day. I am not going to my lab/office during these hours obviously. I don't drive, but even if I get someone to drive me, there is still a reasonable distance from the carpark and my building. The carpark is not located at the basement of my building. So I still have to cope with the wind! I thought about catching a bus to replace that 10 min walk, but all bus stops around the campus have been relocated for the construction work. If I get a taxi or uber to drive me up to my building, it only takes a min or two and I don't think any drivers are happy to give me a lift for such a short distance. I don't mean to sound negative and turn down everything, but things are all working against me now I agree with the mental recharge thing, so I am scheduling reasonable breaks between writing. To me, the most helpful thing is to get my thesis out of the way!

Hi all, If you read my other posts, you would have known that I am in my final months of PhD and stressed about finishing. It is not great when I also need to convince my supervisors to just focus on writing and not to do more experiments for a manuscript along with writing. I know it is normal to stress out at this stage, but somehow I feel that I am abnormally stressed out. For some reason I feel that I will not be able to finish writing and my writing will never be good enough for submission (Imposter syndrome?). I always have a feeling that I am trapped and it gets to the point that everyday life situations can be triggers, e.g. (1) The city where I live in is breezy from time to time and I should be very used to that after living for 8 years. But since last year, I started to be scared of strong wind. My whole body tenses up and it feels like I cannot move. It is challenging for me to walk back to lab from my college. I can make it, but the 10 min walk becomes 20 min on windy days. I can relate this to something unpleasant last year. My dearest co-supervisor had me to help her out with the last bit of work for one of her projects. The collaborators were procrastinating until the last min and I had to rush through a big experiment within a week. I was panicking the whole time because of the large amount of work and those 7 days were very windy. My co-supervisor did apologise to me afterwards, but the whole experience was traumatic and I got into panic mode whenever the wind strikes I feel that the wind can trap me, even though untrue! (2) I am uneasy with using the bathroom in the office. The bathroom has been there since I started my PhD and I am very used to it. Nothing has changed but I have that being trapped feeling when using the bathroom. Thankfully I don't need to be in the office most of the times as I am writing now. (3) The traffic is crazy in my city due to construction work. It would not affect me shopping around in the past, but now I don't feel comfortable with spending time on traffic and I will only go to a grocery stall within walking distances to do my shopping. My progress of writing is not that bad actually, but I feel guilty if I leave my thesis for too long. According to other PhD students, during the write-up stage they were struggling with (1) sleeping, (2) reduced immunity (catch a cold very often) and (3) panic-attack like symptoms when meeting supervisors. I got (3) too when I need to meet my co-supervisor, but not other supervisors though. None of them experienced the feeling of being trapped. I consulted professionals and they reassure me that I am just too stressed out with PhD and I am okay. But somehow I am doubting because I have never got these symptoms when I was stressed out. If you don't mind, could you share what stress symptoms did you experience when you wrote your thesis? What would be your advice to get through this critical stage? I heard that life will get back to normal after PhD. Is that true? I am worried that I will still be like that after finishing. Mental illnesses somehow run in my family Thanks. Hope.for.the.best

Update: Yesterday I met my primary and co-supervisors separately because their timetables didn't match. It turned out that my primary supervisor did not do anything with my email. He was in a rush to a meeting in the morning but told me that he's happy with me finishing off my thesis before doing more experiments. Then I met my co-supervisor. She was very happy with my writing this time, which is a big relief to me. Then she got very excited that I could finish the manuscript in 3 weeks (while waiting for experiment orders) and then do experiments. She left a note to my primary supervisor and urged him to organise the experiment asap. She sounded very firm but I was cautious not to promise her anything. When she asked me whether I could get the manuscript rewritten in 3 weeks (and then do experiments), I only said maybe. Then I met my primary supervisor in the afternoon. He said he valued my decision and the last thing he wished would be to see me overly stressed out and not being able to do both experiments and thesis. He emphasised that he would be on my side. He asked me to justify the pros and cons for doing experiments before and after finishing thesis and he would take it on from there. He said I could consult friends for that. I know in my mind that both his and my co-supervisor's students spent their last months of PhD only on writing. One of the students needed to do some experiments to revise his manuscript and he requested an extension from the editor because he was writing up his thesis. These are legitimate justifications, but do I sound too rude? I am meaning I wish to be treated as fairly as other students (of course I won't write this sentence exactly). In my last post, I also mentioned another supervisor who went through my manuscript. He did recommend me in email that he wanted me to focus more on my thesis rather than the manuscript. Do I write him in? Saying that I am stressed out, even though it's true, sounds like a selfish excuse. I definitely need to back up with more objective justifications, but I don't wish to sound too rude. Thanks for any advice.

I don't know you and your advisor well, so it is difficult to give good advice. From your description, you briefly raised your concern over criticism to him and he was sympathetic, so perhaps you could continue on where you were when you get a chance. I would suggest that you do so when you both are in "personal" mode, e.g. having a cup of coffee at a cafe. I am not sure whether it works in your case; maybe limit all academic-related conversations in the office and personal conversations out of the office. It may help set a healthy boundary between academic and personal. I haven't done that to my advisors because I only meet them in the office for academic matters and I rarely meet them otherwise, but I do that to my colleagues. In the lab/office, I only talk to them about academic matters, like how experiments are done. I normally refuse casual conversations politely if they start them off in the wrong place. Once in the common room or out of office, I am more than happy to chit-chat with them. This works for me as I don't get so distracted with personal matters in an academic environment. One thing I also do is I never add any of my colleagues in social media. Not because I don't value them as good friends, but because I wish to maintain that healthy boundary between academic and personal. I don't mind telling them I had a great time on weekend in the common room, but I mind them discussing how my weekend went from stalking my Facebook! I guess your advisor has had a lot of students and chances are he has come across students struggling, so it is not of such a big deal to him that he has to sound very worried/upset etc. to say that you are not progressing well. It may be different for each person - to me, I would rather my advisor says I am not progressing well in an emotionless manner rather than feeling very hard for me. The latter would make me panic more because it seems like he is not able to do anything to help me and that is it for me. If I were you, I would focus on what I should do to get myself back on track rather than how he delivers criticism. It is good that you are making plan to improve, go for it. It is also great that you are talking to a counsellor so you don't get too stressed out.

Oh no! That's definitely bad and unacceptable! I can't understand why your supervisor will ask you to accept that! I would definitely raise it to the program head, but I agree that you don't do this alone. Maybe go to your student support centre and explain the situation. Chances are they have dealt with things like these before and they can help you out with this. If the student support centre takes on to this, then your program head will likely take things seriously.

I can totally relate to you, even though I don't develop that sort of personal relationships with my advisors. I am not very good at academic writing and even though I tried learning how papers in top journal are written, I still cannot get to that level. All my advisors encourage me to keep trying, but one of my advisors says she is not convinced that I used other papers as a guide in my writing. It is very hurtful that she dismisses my hard work at all! One thing my psychologist (a PhD graduate herself) advises is to think about the good things that your advisor has done to you, e.g. he not just cares about your academic life, but also other aspects in your life. It is natural that you hate your advisor at some point, but negative thoughts like "I'm not really excited about the thought of you being around for several more years" would not improve the situation. Once you try to be positive, then you are better at coping. When I appreciate my advisor her time to go through my manuscript, I feel much better, even though I don't like her comment! It is definitely very difficult to take his comment of "whether you will progress through the program". How about you sit down with him and work out what you should do to improve progress? Having a personal relationship with your advisor is good in this aspect because it is easier for you to raise concerns to him. I think if you work out how you can improve and you are working towards it, then he has less to criticise you in this aspect. Hope this helps.

Update: I am thankful for all your replies, particularly fuzzylogician who has given me very good advice on the forum and in PMs. The conference I was very stressed about a couple of months ago went very well. It was very surprising that I was chosen for a poster talk. Only a few posters out of ~100 were chosen for a short talk. I could well be chosen for oral if I asked for one! My supervisors were very pleased because they had students with very exciting data but not chosen for a talk. The conference organiser was very nice and she kindly put me in the afternoon session knowing that I would need a fair bit of travel. I was very anxious on the train but was perfectly okay once I was at the conference venue. Looking back, I really didn't know why I was as stressful as that, maybe I was worrying about finishing? The extra experiment my senior co-supervisor looked into was turned out not practically possible, so she was okay without that. I kept working on the manuscript and thesis but I am still not there yet. Then another similar crisis like this post happened a couple of weeks ago (so I write back here). Out of the blue my primary supervisor found a potential method to do that extra experiment and my co-supervisor was urging me to do that. My mind was blank and I was panicking, so I could only say "yes" when she asked me whether I would be happy to do the experiment. I can tell you that she is a very dominate person and her asking of happy or not is more like an order, i.e. she does not mean to discuss with me whether or not to do the experiment. So I was not supposed to say no. But she could tell from my look that something was not right and she said I could email her or my primary supervisor if I had concerns. The next day, I emailed my primary supervisor only and wrote exactly the same as my first post, but he did not respond to this email even up to now. However, he replied my other emails, so I am sure that he was not away. I have another supervisor, who is the expert of my manuscript topic, went through the whole thing. He says although my manuscript needs some work, it is great overall. I just need to package it properly and submit. He does not indicate extra experiments at this stage and says we can address whatever experiments the reviewers ask for. This supervisor discussed his suggestions with both my primary and co-supervisor. Then I received my co-supervisor's email that she would like to meet next week. She did not mention anything about the experiment. From the sound of it she does not seem to insist on that experiment, as she would have asked me to look up the methods etc. Even though it was good of me to express my concerns to my primary supervisor, I am not sure what he did with my email. If he paraphrased in his own words and talked to my co-supervisor, she would be fine with it. If he simply forwarded my email to her, she would be angry because I was basically rebutting all her suggestions to manage both experiments and writing. I did not mean to argue, but I am really struggling to write well and do experiments. Given that I already need to postpone my thesis submission till the end of the year, I feel that I should finish the write-up asap. I did not turn down further experiments completely. I just said in the email that I wish to finish my thesis before doing more experiments. I am very scared of next week's meeting. I hope she will just tell me what to do with the manuscript and submit and not to mention other things. What should I do if she brings up my email to primary supervisor? I have been talking to my family about this situation and they suggest that I say "Let me think about that and get back to you" if I wish to decline any immediate experiments on spot. Then email my primary supervisor my concerns after that. Is it a more polite way to do so? I appreciate any advice.

It really depends. Some people are into partying, but some are not. As you mentioned, catching up with fellow classmates on campus is totally possible. Perhaps have a coffee with them at a campus cafe? I am near the end of my PhD and I almost never attended any parties. There were some organised by my advisers during Christmas/special occasions, but we only chatted over casual things (like our pets) rather than our research. But my department sometimes has morning tea, which students and staff can interact with each other. We have dinning tables outside the lab, so sometimes I also chat with my classmates over lunch. Basically, that's how I interacted with my classmates throughout my PhD and I don't have any issues with fitting in. Hope my experience helps

Hi all, Firstly, I am thankful for the good support here when I was very upset last week. After discussing with my supervisors, we agreed not to do further experiments for technical issues. Now, I can devote 100% of my time writing my manuscript and thesis. Since they decided not to do more experiments, I didn't mention my stress and burnout issues. Now, the only big thing before submission is a one-day national conference in June. I presented a poster in an international conference last year, so I know how it will be like. I ticked "poster only" this time, so I will not get stressed out by any chances of an oral presentation. My anxiety/stress is not about public speaking, which is good. But the conference will start quite early in the morning (8:30 a.m.) and I need to travel at least one hour to get there. My last conference required participants to hang up their posters by 9 a.m. Ever since my supervisors overloaded me with experiments, I had bouts of intense anxiety in the mornings. Sometimes, it could be a struggle to arrive at the lab and complete my work. My muscles were basically tightened and I struggled to move. I only need 10 min to walk upstairs to the lab from my college, but the time doubled because my throat was tightened and I needed to catch my breaths. Well, I managed to finish all I needed to do, so my counselor said I was just stressed out and I am not having any disorders. I am much better in the mornings now, but my greatest worry is I will have anxiety again on the day of conference. (1) In the event I cannot attend the conference, what should I do to avoid leaving a bad mark to the organisation? Should I send them a medical certificate or call them? Or both? (2) I know my abstract will be accepted. Could I still write that I submitted an abstract to the conference under "publications during candidature" in my thesis? (3) Would my examiners grade my thesis differently because I only presented in one conference? In my country, the standard is one international and one national conferences. I cannot find any information relating to that on the web. It is not the right time to ask the organisation, because they would think I plan to no show on the day or ask me to withdraw my application. I can't ask my labmates/colleagues for similar reasons. Worst thing is they may tell my supervisors and I will have a hard time explaining. I am betting that I will be okay on the day, but I wish to be prepared in case I am not. Many thanks for your advice!

I am so glad to have your prompt replies! It makes me feel that I am not alone. It is hard to talk to other PhD students in my institute, because when I mention my supervisors, it can sound like I am spreading rumours. I observed a few previous students and they were writing at full speed (not doing any experiments) a few months before submission. I know, the sample size is too small to draw a conclusion The reason why I hesitate to tell my supervisors is I am not good at expressing myself. I worry that they will misunderstand that I don't want to get my work published, which is against them. One of my supervisors is very senior and she is the one who looks into this prospective project. Of course, given her age (sorry to say that) and experience, she is very dominating and she doesn't take things against her well. Although she is not officially my primary supervisor, she takes on the role of a primary supervisor given her expertise. I once emailed her that I struggled with an experiment and had a lot of stress. She was not happy to hear that, even though she accepted my emotions. She reminded me to email appropriately though. I admit I could have expressed myself better, but I am 100% sure that I didn't "attack" her with emotions. So, this incidence holds me back to tell them. I am relieved that it is appropriate to tell them my struggles and my previous words didn't sound like an emotional downpour! Of course I will find a good time and perhaps talk to my official primary supervisor, as he seems to be more understanding and she tends to listen to him! I am excited to work on the manuscript, but I wish to have my thesis done as well. I will try to strive a good balance and not have my health compromised. To fuzzylogician, my supervisors are native English speakers, so they can professionally fix my English. I am generally okay with grammar. My difficulty is to write like the articles in Nature etc. My supervisors asked me to look at some papers and used them as a guide; I did, but my output didn't sound like I have done so. My supervisors always think that I haven't done this part, which frustrates me. To TakeruK, most of my data (results) will be in the manuscript, but a lot other content, like the literature review, discussion etc. will only be in the thesis. In my country, unless I do a PhD by publications, a considerable part of my thesis is new/original. Thanks:)

Hi everyone, this is my very first post. I am in my final months of PhD. It typically takes ~4 years for a PhD program in my country. I have a very strong supervisor panel. They are experienced and helpful. It is reassuring that all students can graduate under their supervision. I have worked very hard these years and generated very promising and exciting data that can be published in Nature, Science etc. My supervisors are all very excited to strive for a top publication like this. They have been helping me to polish my manuscript. But now, I also have my thesis to finish. It doesn't sound too much of a problem, because my manuscript forms most parts of my thesis. However, I am not a native English speaker and struggled with academic writing. I really wish to focus on my thesis, as my financial support will run out in a few months. My supervisors don't have any funding to support me after that. But then in order to publish in a top journal, there are more experiments to finish. My supervisors keep asking me to do more and more, which I wish to say no very badly, given my weakness in writing. Of course I wish to publish in Nature/Science, who doesn't want to? But given my circumstances, I value my PhD thesis more than a top publication. I have been very stressed out and not taken any breaks since I presented in an international conference last year. To be honest, my heavy workload means I could only catch up writing last Christmas. I managed to keep my writing on track, at the cost of no Christmas break. I am close to burnout and yet more experiments are waiting for me! No other PhD students in my institute worked on experiments a few months before submission! The only possibility of taking a break is after submitting my thesis, while I am waiting 2 months for the outcomes. It is a crazy idea to go on holiday at this critical moment; my supervisors won't allow that anyway. I know my supervisors are preparing the best for me, as they help me publish in a top journal. If successful, I will have a bright career afterwards. If I say these words, they are most likely upset because I neglect their good hearts. Probably I have two options right now. Option 1: Talk to my supervisors about my stress anyway, but I risk disappointing them and destroy our good relationships. Option 2: Tune myself to be capable of dealing with this overwhelming stress, but I am struggling! Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks:)