Hi!

Context -

I'm working on a project not directly related to my PhD. I'm being paid.

When starting this project, it was agreed that me and another of my supervisor's PhD student would share the work, but for various admin/PhD funding related reasons, I would drop out earlier than the other PhD student, leaving him to finish the project. He was paid 50% more than me to reflect this.

What actually happened - his main supervisor wanted him to finish working on the project to get back to his PhD. He also went AWOL for 2 weeks, leaving me in the lurch as he said he would help me with a certain aspect of the project, which he didn't really. Apparently he is known for going AWOL.

So this guy leaves the project. Still keeps his 50% extra pay and I don't get any extra.

From my supervisor - no apology, no sympathy, no real communication about how this isn't what was planned.

So I'm left to write the final report.

I've really struggled with my PhD. One of these reasons is that I've just found out I've been suffering with severe b12 deficiency. One of the main symptoms of this is cognitive issues - severe fatigue, lack of focus, brain fog, memory issues. As you can imagine this has created problems, and judging by my symptoms has been going on for about 2 years (I'm in my 3rd year). I'm getting treatment but it can take months or even years for the damage to be healed. It's actually a really nasty and dangerous deficiency to have.

I've produced a first draft of the report. It's fair to say my supervisor is not happy. One issue was the formatting. The formatting on my version was fine, but when I turned it into a shared Word file, the formatting went all wrong. As my supervisor has since pointed out, it was in part due to the images not being 'in line with text'. Ok my bad, I didn't know that that would do that. But Word is also terrible at formatting. But knowing that the formatting had gone crazy, I also sent her a PDF, showing how it should look.

Instead of reading all the writing, she apparently spent hours correcting the formatting. I mean, surely she could have just told me the issue and let me fix it? And instead just focused on the writing. I sent her the PDF so it wasn't as if she didn't have a very readable copy. So anyway, she didn't even get a chance to read the whole report with her unnecessary formatting correcting.

She's always been forthright with her views - she doesn't mince her words. But now she's bordering on rude and mean. For instance, there was one phrase that after much discussion, we decided to change to something better. Apparently, the original phrase crept in ONCE in the report. Her response - 'it's like you weren't in those meetings. Do you even take notes?'. It was clearly just an error, as the correct phrase was used in the rest of the report, about 50 times!

There are other criticisms of my work - some fairer.

But honestly I just feel like my work is shit. I have very little motivation as it is. This project has gone on far longer, for me, than it should have. I'm in my final year of a PhD I have really struggled with and that I need to really catch up with, without this project making it worse.

Just need to vent!!