Keep at it. Everyone gets depressed and a little crazy during their PhD - if you don't then you are already on drugs or fooling yourself that you are actually doing a PhD.
If you quit you'll regret it.
Visulaise wat is funny about your paper and exploit it. This is often easier after a few drinks. Preparations before papers can shake confidence, but ideas you get from questions post paper often give your work a massive boost.
OK this post is starting to scare me - alot now.
I am due to start a PhD in Jan (also in neuroscience and dealing with vision).
I hope I have made the right decision!
Mate, all you need to know. Dr in your name = chicks .
My dad got a PHD in Chemistry from Oxford and he wanted me to follow in his footsteps. I went to hospitality collage instead . Do what makes you happy, if you want a PHD then do it, if you dont, then stop wasting your time and start your carreer already.
i can always trust you cut right to the most important points NK, nice one
anyway, update.
After much agonising and a couple of meetings with my supervisor I've called it a day. I didn't go into this phd for the right reasons. I got turned down for the one I originally applied for at the last minute and chucked a load of applications out just before the deadlines for entries last year (i was desperate to get out of my temping job).
It was still a fantastic opportunity, but it wasn't the right one for me. As my GF said (and she was dead right), it was turning me into a different person from the one she met. Also, I've hardly spent anytime with her and the little 'un for months because my head was mashed trying to keep on with something I didn't enjoy.
So, after a meeting last thursday I bit the bullet, thanked my supervisor for the opportunity and he offered me some good advice. Driving back home felt like a weight had come off the shoulders and I'm looking forward to whatever comes next.
not really, but things will be fine, they always are if you follow your heart
i'm taking some time off to do some work on the house, write some music and get stuck into training.
my GF has recently started a new job where she is also getting the opportunity to further her career with more academic training, so now i'm free for a while, she can work full-time instead of part-time (which she wanted to do in the short term anyway) because I can look after the little 'un when he's not at school/nursery or with his dad.
i'm also researching some companies where i can use the skills from my first degree in electronics engineering and i'm looking to start applying toward the end of the year, hoping to be in a new career by spring.
i'm also on the look-out for some freelance technical writing projects to top up the cash.
don't be scared, neuroscience is fascinating and i really enjoyed it. What drove me away was the nitty-gritty of the actual project i was working on, not the field itself. I thought i was to be developing my own code from scratch to model the MT/MST region of visual cortex and its interactions with the basal-ganglia and then porting the model into a hardware platform to guide the self-motion of robotic vehicles; but three months in, my supervisor hands me some 10 year old legacy code he had shelved when his research moved into other areas and tasked me with reverse engineering it, re-writing it and checking its validity against the last ten years research.
as the months rolled on, it became a real drag because i was looking forward to the creative aspects of developing my own model and there was very little creative scope in the work i was doing. Also, due to the difficulty I had getting any meaningful results, I hadn't started any of the robotics work, which i was hoping would have been what i spent my second year doing.
My best advice is to make sure you have a very clear understanding between you and your supervisor about exactly what you will doing and exactly what the boundaries of the research question are before you start. Thats where we went wrong. I chould have voiced my concerns sooner and he chould have been clearer in the early stages about just what i was supposed to be doing. No blame on either side, just another learning experience.
If you want me to pass on any resources or put you into contact with my old group, then drop me a PM, i'm sure the lads would be happy to give you some advice.
And how many waitresses, assistant managers, receptionists, housekeepers, cleaners and bar staff do you get through, if i remember rightly they were the best days of my life!!!
the phd might not be dead in the water, i'm meeting with my supervisor tomorrow to discuss his suggestion that i consider working on it part-time over a longer time-frame; if i'm given a bit more freedom to be creative it might be the perfect solution.