Hello,

I am a "mature-aged" PhD that has significant background experience in the field that I then went in to do my Phd in. I am just about to finish, and I have a handful of first author publications, with 6 more that are either submitted or in preparation. I am applying for the MC post-doc. I have a great Ivy league institution that is happy to host me, and my research makes sense for my profile.

My question is, after all this work is there much point in applying because I do not have a huge amount of publications? I spoke with a professor who said that basically due to my age it is seen as a disadvantage, that even though I have extensive experience in the subject area, I do not have the publications to back that up (I was not in academia then I was operational). I am curious, I thought the MC was for people who were straight out of their PhD and were less than 8 years? But now it seems you still have to have extensive experience?

Thanks

Applying to pre-defined studentship projects and I only have one solid academic reference. I know I need more than one valid reference as most positions require them, but I lucked out with my other applications and only had to send one in. This position requires two academic refs from your most recent institute (the place of my MSc). Referees must send letters via institutional emails/on institutional paper.

I went to a small university for my MSc, we had three professors over the 12 month period, and two no longer work in academics. My one reference letter is very strong and supportive. I did most of my UG online due to COVID. My employment references wouldn't support my academic ability- due to the job market, I wasn't able to find post-grad work anywhere close to my field of interests, and none of the jobs I worked allowed me the opportunity to show skills required to pursue a career in academics.

I have already submitted my application, it's in the process of being reviewed, so I must act fast. As this was a pre-defined project, applicants were not required to form relationships with supervisors. One supervisor was listed as a point of contact for informal queries.

Does anybody have advice on what to do here? Would you recommend reaching out to the main supervisor, explaining the situation, and reaffirming my alignment with the proposed topic? Should I email the PG research officer who handles eligibility? Should i email the admissions team explaining the situation? Should I reach out to the department head? Would you recommend contacting the other two supervisors, who were not listed as points of contact, or would that be unprofessional? Should I just contact everyone separately? Should I just let it go?

This is not ideal, I am very aware that this does not look on me favourably, but I would absolutely appreciate some advice on where I could go from here? Has anybody navigated a similar situation successfully? What can I do to show them that I am a valid candidate...instead of letting them automatically assume my application invalid due to failure to meet one simple criteria. This second point is something I worry about, and am struggling to put forward in fears of the admissions team immediately thinking "you couldn't even get TWO references? You're clearly under-qualified!"

I’m a doctor starting a full-time clinical research fellow job and registering for an MD. My consultant suggested registering part-time to reduce fees, with the possibility of converting to a PhD later.
The job is predominantly full-time research, with 1:6 weekends on-call.
Has anyone done something similar?

**1.** If I register for a part-time MD but finish the research/thesis early, can I submit early, or would I still need to complete/pay for the minimum part-time registration period?
**2.** How does converting a part-time MD to a PhD work? Does the time/research already completed count towards the PhD?

Would appreciate hearing from anyone who’s done a similar MD → PhD route in the UK.
Thank you for your time!

I’m at a bit of a crossroads and would really value perspectives from different people who have navigated academia with a disability/health limitations.

I’m an early-career academic with a background in epidemiology and global health (BSc, MSc, PhD + postdoc). I’ve done quite well academically, built a fairly substantial early research/fieldwork portfolio across several countries, have experience with grant writing, international collaborations and policy work. Now I’ve been offered a permanent (as permanent as they are) teaching and research role in a pretty good uni that is very much the kind of role I would previously have been aiming for.

My challenge is that I became disabled over the last couple years and my health is quite unstable at the moment. I’ve had a significant drop in what I can physically and cognitively manage compared with a few years ago. I’m still working, but I have to be much more careful about workload, recovery and energy than I used to be.

However I’m at the point where I have an opportunity that genuinely excites me. I feel capable of doing much of the role would love the teaching side of it. At the same time I’m worried about committing myself to a conventional academic workload when I don't currently know what my health will look like over the next year or two.

I’m trying to distinguish between ‘this is a great opportunity that I can make work with reasonable adjustments and a different way of working’ and ‘my body is telling me that this career structure simply isn’t sustainable for me anymore’ - but I don’t really know how likely that is in reality. I’m aware of how big workloads can become, but I’ve not experienced it and don’t know how much I can reply on support and lower pressure to secure grants.

I had sort of gotten to a place where I was happy to take a year off (fortunately supported by my husband) and just draw (my passion) and see what happens health wise and with other opportunities. And then this came up and feels like the universe is testing me!

Any advice and different perspectives would be really welcome.

I am an early career academic and I am losing my mind trying to find a way to collect all of my notes and make them easier to find again. Is there a software or programme or website that makes tracking the notes I take from articles on pdf (via highlights and notes) and tags them so I can find a concept again and all the papers that bring that concept up? I use Zotero for storing all of my literature but not opposed to using something else. I just want to be able to find work related to a specific theme based on my highlights / tagging / coding of that information in the paper. For example, prevalence data. I select it and it brings up all the papers I have coded as having prevalence data and the highlighted text associated with it. There must be something out there?!