Hi guys.

CAWK facebook group now set up, for those of you who didn't see the other thread about this.

It is a secret group, which means that if you would like to join you will need to CAT me or email mumsnetcawk@yahoo.com with your FB id or email address so I can send you an invite - it won't be visible in FB searches, or on your FB profile.

Agingoth
I am sure you know this already - but they absolutely cannot refuse you promotion because you are p-t.
When I did my promotion (from L to SL) I had taken 7 months mat leave (not the same as p-t I know) and I decided not to mention it in the statement (I think there is stuff about this way back on this thread) - although it is on my CV. I had actually done as much as someone who hadn't taken any leave. Do you think this might be the case for you? In whcih case you could play down the p-t aspect? On the other hand, of course, why should we have to do this? And are you 'letting the side down' by doing this? I am still not sure what the answer is.
I wonder aswell if there is a lot of senior managers being negative about being p-t becuase it makes things harder to manage - without actually giving people a positive opporunity to try and make it work for them?
Sorry - bit rambling - off work with ill child.

ah, R&R...still smarting over mine , tried my damnedest to get the darned thing done over my reading week but the article is quite 'old' stuff (PhD days! ah long since gone, I actually look back to them with fondness since I started work) and just couldn't get into it.

Not helped by having to flap about stuff like lack of institutional headed paper for flaming academic references and uploading stuff onto the student electronic web (ffs why can't thye just use libraries like we did?!)

Had a talk with my Head of School at my appraisal about whether if I stay p/t I will ever, ever get promoted. He was very supportive and said as I've published more than could be expected for a 0.6 fte he would put me forward but rather darkly hinted that 'other constituencies' in the university are not as supportive of p/t applications for promotion....

Hi Kathy, thanks for the sympathy! I was never going to be a leader in my field but I did get quite upset that my PhD student years were made into a battle or a test rather than an apprenticeship. The viva is the test, surely up to that point the student and supervisor are on the same side!!

There were processes, but they were weak and easy to just pay lip service to. For example in the sciences there was a rule that the student and supervisor must meet at least 15 times a year, in the arts 10 times, for at least half an hour one on one. That's it. No requirement for PhD students to be involved in lab meetings or treated as part of the research group. (Some groups did of course, under their own steam. I tried to start a regular journal-reviewing group but my supervisor was too busy and thought that it would end up with him telling us what we should be understanding from the papers we'd precis for each other. Yeah, exactly. Like a supervisor. Guidance.)

And there was a first and second year progress board, where the student should write about a chapter's worth of their work. Some would do a short presentation to the whole department, and the report would go through the research group and the senior department board and eventually land back with the student carrying comments. My first year was crap so I really tried hard in second year (unfortunately coincided with Foot And Mouth crisis so I couldn't get access to much land for fieldwork, so had to invent stuff to do in the lab). That's the "won't even get..." comment I mentioned - you'd think it would have come up in one of those 15 half hours of one-to-ones wouldn't you? or in comments on drafts of the report? or as a gentle aside after the research group had met and the report had passed up to the next level? But no.

The daft thing is that I was doing all this student representation stuff and I knew there were procedures, complaints and review mechanisms, and I knew how damaging it could be to a career to have poor supervision. I even did the independent observer role for a couple of other people in dispute with their depts. I just could not see it happening to myself.

Another link for you all: PHD Comics - dangerously compelling!

lol Kathy - your fantasy reminds me - myself, 2 female + 1 male colleague went to a talk once on "women in academia". Very pg speaker gave horrifying stats and tried to get us to consider how badly we get shafted for breeding, and possible strategies for getting round it. Of course none of us baby phd's were remotely interested in dc's at that stage - except the bloke, who was a father of 3.

Lexilicious - what a horrifying story. <<shudders>>

Lexilicious, thanks for that link - Eurodoc does look good, if only so we can advise PhD students about it in the future.
(I have a vague fantasy that at some point in the future if I ever get my research career up and running successfully, the best way for me to contribute to the university's training programme on developing research skills would be to lead a session on combining research with children.... Looking back, this is the one bit of training I could really have done with myself over the last few years but am only getting it now, from you lovely CAWKers!)

Shocking story about your supervisor. Question - did your university have formal structures in place at that time which meant you got explicit feedback and input from a number of academics, not just your supervisors? We are quite good now at doing annual reviews by a panel of other academics, and hopefully this should make it harder for individual supervisors to cause problems for students as you experienced - or perhaps the structures were there but didn't work?

Vulpus - I always get loads of comments and always one reviewer who is rather blunt shall we say and just makes me want to cry.

Usually I copy and paste into a word document and then just go through it responding to each comment either with a 'done' / 'altered' / 'added' etc or a very polite (crossing my fingers) 'ooh what a wonderful point you make but I thought differently' and then just ignore it.

I will never ever ever ever get over having 5 A4 pages of comments from two reviewers on my first ever manuscript. Sob

Lexilicious - what a tale! Sounds horribly familiar, I can think of a few colleagues here with a similar supervisory 'style'. What a bastard.

Eurodoc sounds terrific. If only I was a few years younger (cough).

I don't really feel qualified to contribute to this thread substantively but I do have another possibly interesting diversion to mention.

[I have read the first and last third of this thread btw, and felt a cold chill go over me at the mention of the words R&R... I started PhD in 1999 at a very well known (literally) redbrick university with a big clock tower, had a second year progress report in which my supervisor wrote "at this rate Licious will not even get an MPhil in three years" having never said similar face to face, handed it in Nov 2003 after writing up while working full time, had to ask the uni to remind him to assign some examiners in May 2004, viva took 8 hours, 7.5 of which I was in tears, scraped an R&R result, handed in a second thesis a year later under some guidance from the external examiner, second viva resulted in major corrections dressed down as minors (can't have majors on a R&R'd thesis) then a few more edits and eventually graduated in summer 2006. Supervisor had washed hands of me even before I submitted the very first time.]

Anyway... I am no longer in academia. But while a PhD student I was the postgrad rep on the students' union, then the chair of the national version (not the NUS), then the president of the European committee, Eurodoc, which is still going very strong. They run a conference each year and have working groups on international/inter-sectoral mobility, family/women specific issues, supervisory relationships/structures etc etc. Due to the different paths to PhD across Europe (mainly the non-existence of Masters as a postgrad qualification elsewhere), the organisation sort of represents anything within a few years either side of 'doctoral'.

And it does really represent issues, not just a talking shop. While I was La Presidenta de la Junta (the constitution was written in Spanish because that's where we legally founded Eurodoc) I attended academic mobility committees in the Education/employment department of the European Commission, which had real money to throw at solutions to cliches like the transatlantic Brain Drain, the Mommy Track (leaky pipeline) etc.

So glad I left research. It was misogynistic even to a single female with no child-bearing likelihood in sight.

Will do Phdlife, scan's in about three weeks time so I'm keeping everything crossed until then that all is OK. If so, I might need some additional hand-holding from this lovely group before I go to my mentor and tell her the news! For some reason (Haribo related I wonder?) I seem to be developing a bit of a belly already, which threatens to give the game away rather earlier if I'm not careful.

Well done Kathy re: research app.

I've just finished a first draft of my revise and resubmit. Apart from methodology, which I have now just remembered was the major problem with the first one. Hmmm, why do I hate writing about methodologies so much ...