go3187

It's a little different for me, since PhDs in Europe don't normally last 5 or more years. You can see in my profile info what I study. I normally work from 9 until around 7ish though, and work most weekends as well (but only ~5 hours). However, before a proposal deadline, it can happen that I work from 7am to 2-3am. Then there are some days on which I don't do any work at all; this weekend I went on a bike tour with my boyfriend, for example, and we were gone from Saturday morning until (very early) Monday morning. So things vary a bit, depending on the work load.

I talk to my advisor in person, when he's around, or by email. If he's abroad for a long time (for e.g., he was on sabbatical two semesters ago) or if he's abroad and we urgently need to discuss a manuscript/some results, then we skype. The same applies to the interactions I have with all my collaborators. If my advisor is here, we normally talk daily. He has an open door policy, so when I take a break I just stop by his office to tell him how things are going. If I don't do it, he comes by my office, or often if he has to leave early, he sends me an email.

Yep! And the emails with a background image annoy me even more. Got a couple of those...

Congrats for getting in! There are older threads on the topic of declining schools after initially accepting their offer, so you might want to do a search on it. Here's the first one I found:

99.9% of the emails I send from my university email are signed just with my first name. My full name can be read in my email address. Of the remaining 0.1%, 99.9% are signed with my first name initial. If my department or position matter in what I have to say in the email, I usually just include them in the text of the email. G

I don't see either. I was confused since you wrote in your profile that you are in London. I wrote my replies assuming that you're doing a PhD in London (others thought the same, as you can see on the previous page of this thread). Had I known that you're doing your PhD in Cyprus, I probably would not have replied at all, since I don't know how PhD programs work in Cyprus, or what's expected of the students.

I thought you were in London...

You might want to read these two blog articles: http://science-professor.blogspot.de/2009/09/moving-grads.html http://science-professor.blogspot.de/2010/03/drawing-line.html Even if the tuition fees are waved for PhD students, who pays for housing, food, health insurance, etc.?

Isn't this the kind of "easy" you wanted? For what it's worth, I'm not "obliged" to be at the university at all, but I still go there daily and work, and I give my advisor weekly (at least) updates on my work. There've been students working with the my advisor who "got away" with not showing up and doing essentially no PhD work for years, and they ended up quitting. So, what you really want is an advisor who is okay with you doing nothing? If you do nothing for a whole year because you "do not have the time", then perhaps this is not the best time for you to do a PhD. Your advisor has to provide an annual evaluation for you, so what is he supposed to write in it if you "have done nothing"? Would you expect him to lie for you? Even if he didn't have to write an evaluation, you can't possibly expect him to be okay with you doing nothing for a whole year. You also can't expect to be one of his favorites if you do nothing.

You don't like your main advisor, think he "bashes" only you, consider that he doesn't care about your project, call him "lazy", feel ignored... yet your main concern is that you quitting is going to "hurt or embarrass him"?? What are you studying? It's important as a PhD student to be able to take some initiative and work independently, and that includes compiling your own bibliography. Your advisor can add to it, but the fact that he didn't hand you a bibliography is not a good reason to write nothing. You say you don't have a bibliography, but what do you have after your first year of PhD? I personally find it strange that even though you have three advisors, and there are several more advanced grad students in your department, you still have no clue how to proceed with writing a draft of the first part of your thesis (the layout of the draft should be your least concern). I think he's quite demanding of you for someone who doesn't care about your PhD and your project. To avoid alienating the people in your department, and potentially turning some professors against you, my suggestion would to sweep the "poor me" attitude under the rug. Your concerns about your work and your needs from an advisor (not those of your peers), would be best discussed face-to-face, calmly and respectfully, either with your main advisor, with that one advisor that you do like, or with another professor in the department with whom you feel more comfortable discussing your issues; I would avoid whining to the other PhD students if I were the only one having a strained relationship with my advisor. Out of curiosity, among the two PhD programs that accepted you, is the one you're currently enrolled in the one that best matched your research interests?

If you haven't read this yet, it's worth taking a look at: http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7245-468a

When I started my grad studies, 90% of the papers I read seemed like Chinese to me (the 10% were papers discussing EXACTLY the kind of research I did as an undergrad). There's the temptation to try to understand everything; but what helps me is to try to get the idea of the paper first, without trying to understand every detail. Then I can re-read it and focus more on the details, and I can discuss the details with my advisor or with other students/postdocs. As I've been reading more papers and done more research, things made sense more often. It also helped me at the beginning to read some review papers. There still are times when a paper is too difficult to understand right away; that happens to professors too, not only to students. Also, some papers are written so poorly, that it's not always your "fault" for having difficulties with them. Conferences are kind of similar. The first ones I went to, I barely understood ~20% of what was being said (usually just the first few introduction slides...). Now it's much better. I was actually at a conference ten days ago, and 90% of what was said was NOT Chinese.

I think it depends from school to school, and even from program to program. I usually come to the university in jeans, corduroy pants, or linen pants, with a tee, blouse, or sweater... depending on the weather. I wear (flat) boots, sneakers, or (flat) sandals. There are some occasions on which you might want to wear fancier clothes, like when you go to a conference dinner, give a presentation, etc. Here are some threads on that:

If you read my post more carefully, you will see that what you wrote above is not "exactly" what I did. I didn't give them zero points on the homework, and certainly didn't write that they can send me their "sober writing" if they wanted a higher grade. I try to be polite and professional with the students, and not act like a smartass. My intention isn't to give students a hard time, but a fair grade; that's why I need to understand their writing.

Haven't done it, and don't know anyone who has... I don't think it's common in my field, especially for a Master's thesis. What are you studying?