yep, very familiar, unfortunately.I am currently the only first-year student in my department (my department is part of a bigger school,there's more people in other areas,but they're in languages and I'm in social sciences).There's one guy who's writing up and I never see him, so it basically feels like I am the only one.Still figuring out how to deal with this,trying to go to meetings,conferences,workshops etc as much a spossible to meet other people and network.

Use the links on this forum and google, to start with.

chech out these links, too - the topic does recur on the forum:
http://www.postgraduateforum.com/showmessage.asp?thread=4863&cat=3&keyword=part%20time%20job&newview=1&stype=TM&category=0
http://www.postgraduateforum.com/showmessage.asp?thread=4094&cat=3&keyword=part%20time%20job&newview=1&stype=TM&category=0

Look this link up - there is a section on funding for final year/writing up PhD students:
http://www.gjss.org/documents/Sources%20of%20Funding%20for%20Doctoral%20Students.doc

hope you find what you were looking for:
http://www.conferencealerts.com/advance.mv?startday=01&startmonth=03&startyear=2007&cities=&countries=United+States&Keywords=management

still working...need to finish writing an abstract before leaving for a week on an intensive course to Hungary:)

juno, could you maybe post some info from the e-mail on Postgrad UK on the forum?I'm afraid I didn't get anything;(

no, Harvard should be what you mention - I ended up formatting Endnote's style, you can add your own style preferences.

I'm six months into mine - and enjoy it tremendously. I love the fact that I have a job (I do treat my Ph.D. as a job) that is interesting, stimulating and satisfying. Love the fact that I can finally devote my time to doing research and reading; plus have a very OK supervisor. So there must be one or two people out there who are happy with their Ph.Ds. On the other hand, I can see how this forum can serve as a place to vent all possible frustrations, maybe this is why there's less positive stuff.

Asia, contact me on aniakg[at]elear.pl - I'm a Polish student on a Ph.D. bursary in England, might be able to answer a couple of your questions.

what area are you in? some professional organizations (I'm a member of British Sociological Association, for instance) have some small grants that you can apply for, BSA has small grants of up to 150 pounds. maybe you can look up other organizations?

as for using Internet at home- as long as you have the Internet, you can use the web-based version, Endnote Web http://www.endnoteweb.com/

I didn't use any reference managing software for my masters - and regretted it deeply;(but-if you have all your references in Word, you could easily export them to Endnote format.

I am slowly getting ready to work on the methodology part of my literature review and I was wondering if anybody knows of deced methodology courses/centres they could recommend.I looked up the courses at the National Centre of Research Methods,also University of Surrey (not so far away from where I live) seems to have quite a few good ones, but as I am shopping around, I was wondering if a/people could recommend something else,b/do you use them,or just stick to the research training seminars provided by your unis?

One brief comment - there are gay people on this forum, too, and reading someone admitting freely that "he can't stand them" doesn't do a lot of good to me.