All going horribly wrong......

[SpiritualKnot]

Hi y'all.

Haven't posted on this topic before...would be grateful for any advice.
I'm doing a PhD, due for completion in December 2008, my full-time funding from work for research finishes in April 2008, but I hope to get one day a week after that for writing.

Last week I went and saw a colleague who's just completed hers and she was shocked at the amount of data I was trying to cover. I've got 65 variables and she said I should be looking at 2 or 3 in detail, not all of them.

My academic supervisor from the college has now gone off sick, for at least 3 months,don't know why, but someone says he's thrown his dummy out and fallen out with people etc. He's slagged off every piece of work I've given him anyway.

My clinical supervisor at work says...ok..yes, cut some of them out...but you must do more than 2 or 3 basically. Ofcourse I will only look at 2 or 3 but I'm not going to get any support from that area.

My clinical manager at work is concerned for me and wishes she'd put me in touch with this colleague who's done her PhD, a year ago.

Another colleague, who I've worked with on this for the last 5 years, who's a doctor has just gone to Detroit for a year. He passes tubes into patients so I can make measurements. His previous boss says he can't let me have another doctor to do this, even though I just need someone for one afternoon in December and 1 afternoon in 10 months time. I can't pass tubes as I'd be struck off if anything went wrong.

I've contacted 3 people at the college earlier this week re getting supervision and none of them have got back to me.

Has anyone else had similar experience, what should I do? Feel like running away at the moment.

Sorry this is garbled, there's basically things gone wrong, left, right and centre.

SK

Hi there. I'm also due to submit late 2008. I have had problems with supervision (or lack thereof) and know of others with alsorts of problems.

65 variables is a lot but 2-3 might be a bit light unless they are highly informative. Do you have a good way of selecting a few ? I have 11 measures and my preliminary analysis will assist me in focussing on probably 5 of them (but I will go back and cover the rest later if there is publishable stuff in there).

Is there anyone higher up you can go to who could use some authority/leverage to get you supervision? Could you still make contact with the colleague who finished a year ago?

I think we all need some supervision at this point - that's what makes a PhD different to a postdoc. If nothing else, we need feedback to know we are on the right track. I do think you must persist and document your attempts to get supervision (if you can't get this from our clinical supervisor) in case you need to account for this situation later. You need someone (not necessarily the same person) to verify the scope of your analysis (not too narrow, not too broad) and to read and feedbackdraft chapters, helping you keep focussed and to a deadline.

Fortunately my own supervisor seems to have come out of hibernation now that we are both eager for me to wrap this up. Otherwise I was casting around for other sources of support - but as you are finding - people are not eager to take on this responsibility especially without officially taking over your studentship.

At the very worst - it is possible to get through if you keep your confidence up and remain focussed. Try looking up a couple of thesese on similar projects to see how they were put together. Jill

Hi Jill and thank you for the reply. Glad you feel yours is coming together!

Well I'm thinking to look at 3 variables and the 40 volunteers are seen at 3 time intervals and some have one treament and others have another treatment, so initially they're all the same prior to the treatment and then they're split into 2 halves, and I see how they've reacted to the treatment or non treatment at 2 months and 1 year post treatment. I think I've got enough with the 3 variables, but will bring in more if they're needed. Thought I'd start off with that and only add more if it made sense to.

I've spent so much time being sidetracked into looking at everything else that I now feel kind of in limbo about everything. I had today for writing and I've felt too out of sorts to get on with anything.

How would I go about finding other theses on a similar subject? A colleague suggested I ask the PhD colleague for her PhD to look at, she lives miles away, but it may be on disc or available through a library loan maybe? I fell as if it would be a bit cheeky to look at it. The research isn't the same, but the background it is so it's a similar literaure search.

I plan to keep in touch the colleague but she's supervising 2 others and is head of her service so I know she's very busy, so don't want to put too much onto her.

SK

Our university library will kep a copy of every thesis and it is available to anyone who wants to look at it - I think this is common practice. It's not cheeky at all - after all - it's a rare treat to find anyone who actually wants to read it! It's common practice so I would ask - ask if there is a copy avalable through a lirary loan. Surely she must have it on disc somewhere - you could always send her a couple of blank CDs/DVDs & some chocolates for copies by post. I borrowed a couple when I was starting out - just to see the general scope and layout (extent of bibliography and so on). Could you ask someone in the dept to recommend recent PhDs that might be similarish to yours (or there should be a list of all PhD students and their projects in the admin office - I went through ours for MPhils when I was doing one) - otherwise ask the library if they have a list.

Yes - if you have repeated measures then you have quite a lot going on, statistically already. As you suggest - perhaps only add in more if you feel you could strengthen the significance (one way or another) of your results.

It is very easy to get lost down rabbit holes - I have a lot of rabbit holes in my dataset too (which is large because I built in alternatives in case my original plan totally fell apart). I gather that this is a very common problem - much more so than not having enough stuff. Perhaps we should print a banner 'Less Is More' and hang it over our desks.

Sounds like you have plenty of data so I'm sure you can wrap this up. My data is somewhat thin in parts but I am hoping it will squeak through.

I'm not feeling to bad about it just now (which might well change!) but I have been extremely demoralised over the last 3 years, plugging away in the dark without supervision and having a terrible time getting data, so I am a very sympathetic ear!

The end is in sight - we can do it! Jill

Hi again Jill.

I've emailed my colleague about getting her PhD out on inter-library loan..I don't know which Uni it was so can't approach them directly yet.Maybe she'll offer to send me a copy by email. There's not many in my line that do PhD's so not a lot to look at unfortunately.

I'm back at the Uni I'm registered with so will look in the libary there too. I'm going to the Uni as some kind person has said they'll supervise me...phew. Got a lot of writing to do between now and then as I cut things down, do new literaure searches and try and appear decisive and knowledgable.

Anyway, I will let you know how I get on! Thanks for the support. Hope yours is still going ok, sounds like you had some hard times with it all as well.

SK

Sorry I meant "I'm going back to the Uni I'm registered with next week". I don't actually go there unless I'm meeting with someone as it's actuall miles away.