I can send them all if you let me have your email address

If I were you I'd try to act completely normal as if the bra strap incident never happened or was nothing out of the ordinary. I guess you just overstepped the boundary in a moment of absent mindedness and hopefully she'll realise that. If one of my students did it to me it wouldn't bother me that much as long it was a one off incident.

Could practical application of qualitative research mean experience of taking findings from qualitative research and applying them in a practical situation?

Here are some thoughts - nothing very coherent, I'm afraid.

I have always thought it is better to pursue a dream even if I don't ultimately succeed than to spend my life wondering 'what if...'

I really wish someone had told me before I started my PhD that it is nothing like doing a taught masters degree. I too really enjoyed my masters and was encouraged to do a PhD. I haven't enjoyed the PhD in the same way. It has often felt like a very long and lonely struggle although I have now established some support networks with colleagues and fellow PhD students. I know that not everyone has such a negative experience but I've spoken to a lot of students who feel that their confidence really took a nose dive at some point during the PhD.

Can you ask your supervisor about the possibility of some part-time lecturing work while you're doing your PhD? If you're an established visiting lecturer when a vacancy comes up, you'll stand a much better chance of getting the job than if you're applying to a university where you've never worked. Also, if you decide to go ahead, make sure you get some publications out during the PhD because it's quite hard to get an academic job without them - another piece of advice I wish I'd been given at the start!"

Do you have a mentor at work or just a colleague that you could ask whether there's any kind of support system for early career academics. Where I work, everyone is assigned a research mentor and I think (though I'm not sure because I'm not quite at the publication stage yet) that we are supposed to get some internal feedback on our articles before we submit them to a journal - such is the obsession with the REF these days.

I feel that my writing is rubbish about 90% of the time. I put off sending drafts to my supervisor till the last minute because I'm too embarrassed for her to see it. Luckily she is a very supportive, positive person so she manages to make me feel better about it whilst making plenty of suggestions for improvement. For a few days after our meetings I think yes I can do this and then gradually I slip back into a pit of despair.

Lemonjuice, you're probably being too hard on yourself. You improved your discussion chapter yesterday even if you ended up with fewer words, so that's progress. I doubt that your thesis is rubbish compared with others (I feel the same about mine) but can you learn from what you liked about those theses and try to use it to improve your own work?

I hope your supervisors are supportive like mine, but if not, is there anyone else you could discuss your work with to get some moral support?

Hi Satchi,

I can get it for you. I have your email address so I'll send it a bit later today.

Hi everyone. I'd like to join too. I'm in a very similar situation to Tulip - I need a full draft by June for submission in September. I have a lit review in reasonable shape, about half a methodology chapter and a lot of my data analysis is written up but I'm not quite sure what form my chapters will take yet. At the moment it looks as if one of my themes will take about 20,000 words - is that too long for a chapter? Good luck everyone!

Hi NooBear,

Sorry you've had such a horrible time. I'm not sure what's best to advise. Can your student union help? It's shocking that your supervisor is claiming not to have seen your work. Do you have any evidence that he did see it - copies of emails with attachments that you sent, notes from your meetings with him, any email feedback from him? Your university should have a complaints procedure which you could go through and if it doesn't resolve the matter, there is the Office of the Independent Adjudicator which deals with students' complaints about their universities. It might be very stressful to go through the whole process though. On the other hand, if the university sees that you are serious about pursuing a complaint they might try to come to some arrangement with you to resolve your situation.

If you could finish an MPhil it might make it easier to apply for a PhD elsewhere.

Good luck.

Hi Swetha,

If you pass a module you will get the full credit for it - it doesn't matter if you pass with 50% or 85%. The fact that you're an international student shouldn't make any difference. You need to produce work of the same quality as everyone else in order to pass. Some lecturers are more tolerant than others of grammatical errors by non-native speakers of English. If you resit modules and pass them, you will get your MSc. You will need to check your university's regulations to see whether there is any limit on the number of modules you can resit. At the university where I work, students can resit every module once. If they fail the resit, then they may be kicked out or if they are lucky allowed to try for a post-graduate diploma rather than a masters. Your university probably has some kind of writing support service for international students. You should go and talk to them if you're worried about failing.

Sorry, stupid phone cut off the end of my last post. I meant to say I don't know any websites but there are lots of introductory books on qualitative data collection and analysis.

I use the same software as kelpie. I don't have a foot pedal but I find it okay using the f keys to pause and rewind - much better than having to keep reaching for the mouse.

Satchi, I don't know of any websites on qualitative methods and analysis.

Hi Satchi,

I think whether you transcribe your own questions in full and all the ers umms and pauses depends on what kind of analysis you're doing. I'm doing discourse analysis so unfortunately everything needs to be in the transcript but if you're doing thematic analysis with coding then you probably don't need quite such a detailed transcript.

For my masters degree I recorded several pairs students working together on a task. Then when I realised how long the transcription was going to take me, I just identified sections which were relevant to my research questions and transcribed those. Nobody criticised me for it so I guess it's okay sometimes.

You have transcription software, don't you? It makes the job a bit easier.

At the uni where I work, I know a couple of students who were accepted onto masters programmes without a degree. It might be worth contacting some unis and asking. It will probably have to be a 'new' university though, not Russell group.

Does the university have any kind of writing centre or study skills support? I think the quality of advice that you get from these kinds of centres varies quite a lot but some of them can be very good, so it might be worth a try. Or if there's an English language unit or centre, someone there might be able to help or put your friend in contact with someone who can. If they run in-sessional writing courses for international post-grads they will be familiar with the requirements for masters dissertations.

Alternatively, can you friend have a look at some examples of successful dissertations? It might help them to see what theirs is lacking.