Good luck Fluffy, you'll be great! We'll be thinking of you

sorry, bursary!

As a full-time student, you'll be taxed as normal on earnings i.e. wages, but you won't pay tax on a busary.

Chance would be a fine thing! No, sorry, you don't get paid for publishing journal articles - in fact, you sometimes have to pay the journal for publishing your work! Definitely something to be said for sending your work to open access journals, at least everyone gets to read it for free then...but of course when other subscription only journals have higher impact factors, you gotta try them first. Publish or perish and all that jazz

Anything goes at a fancy dress party Pea, don't give up on the short shorts cos of age! (And 31 is young enough anyway!!! Kylie was 32 when she did the 'Spinning Around' video with the famous gold hotpants!)

Not sure even humanities students get to relax for 6 weeks...do they? If do, I certainly chose the wrong field I think I averaged about 10 days leave a year as a PhD student (and most of those were half days for hair cuts and the like!). As other have said, you might be entitled to 25 plus days but a lot of people don't use it all. That said, you do only get one life so if you can somehow get the summer off (and you're not worried by deadlines), go for it!

"Foreign science students could be deterred from studying in the UK by new checks aimed at stopping the spread of weapons technology, it is feared..."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6441263.stm

Hi 404

1) Yes it's fine to cite somebody's thesis. If you are using Endnote or similar, you'll find you can put in a ref as a thesis (IIRC, not done this for a while. It's usually something like

Author AB. The name of the thesis. Date. Type of thesis (PhD/MD/other). Name of Uni, city, country.

2) If you cannot source the original reference then you can cite in the following way:

The stuff you need to cite (Jones et al 2000, cited by Smith et al, 2003)

Or

The stuff you need to cite (1 cited by 2)

Jones (or 1) is the original stuff in the book you cannot get hold of and Smith (or 2) is the paragraph you've read. If you cite in this way, rather than just putting down the paragraph ref, you are putting the onus on the 'Smith' to have cited the info correctly in the first place i.e. any error in the interpretation of the original material is Smiths, not yours!

It has an excellent reputation, well done!

Career in counselling? Hmm, whilst that is probably something I would find quite fulfilling it would mean further study, argghhh!! I'm getting my first PhD student soon though so I guess my one-on-one PhD counselling service will start then (although I do hope my student isn't going to be feeling full of angst all the time or I won't be doing a very good job as a supervisor, lol!).

I did find though, Goods, that there was a point near to my submission deadline where (even though I knew I there was no way I was going to give up) I thought 'is this REALLY worth it?'. I was at a real low point. I couldn't have worked any harder (in truth, I was likely overworking and was a bit burnt out) and yet I still felt like my work was inadequate. From that point on though, the only way was up. Once I'd accepted that I could only do my best, I relaxed a bit and things got better (more productive).

You WILL get there! We can all try to rationalise that, in the grand scheme of things, a PhD isn't worth the stress but we know in our hearts how much we've worked for it and it's a pretty emotional time. In short, be kind to yourself, do take time out for some fun and look to the future, this stage is tough but you're almost at the finish line. NB The disclaimer; I’m certainly no expert on depression/mental health issues so take my ‘stages of PhD stress’ as being very much anecdotal and based on personal experience! It might not be a bad idea to consult your GP, they are usually v sympathetic (having done higher degrees themselves) and can prescribe you (short-term) something to help if sleeping is becoming a problem or if you have physical symptoms of stress (palpitations, tremor etc).

Sounds normal (if at upper end of scale ) last stages of PhD to me. However, you'll probably find that this is as bad as it gets, the next stage is a sort of resigned calm where you accept that actually, you've worked as hard as you could and done everything to the best of your ability and what will be, will be. I don't mean that this is a 'stuff it, I don't care anymore' stage but that the level of stress you are currently experiencing is simply not sustainable. You will either literally breakdown or move on to the stage I've described above. If you feel that it's heading for the former (starting to fail to cope with everyday life), then take time out and get to your GP pronto. You will know from reading this forum that crises of confidence are the norm at this stage. Believe in your supervisors when they say your work is good enough and also, if they are sympathetic, do talk to them about your feelings.

Oh pooooooooor Wickid!!! Get well soon! Have you got a plastercast that we can 'virtually' sign?

I'm alarmed by your story, have been getting into cycling lately and was debating starting to cycle to work...not sounding like such a good idea now!

Hope you are being spoiled with lots of vegan choc cheesecake! Take care!!

Well, I had 3 years of postgrad research lab experience before embarking on my PhD and it still took me 4 yrs. I worked like a dog throughout and had fantastic supervision - sometimes delays are unavoidable!

Get the album, it's great! (I wasn't much of a fan first time around but I'm glad the boys are back!)