Regarding dazednconfused.

Yes I agree with everything there.

I failed my A-levels, therefore I thought I didn't have it in me to do A-Levels, let alone a degree. A PhD at that time would have been laughable.

As my degree tutor used to say, 'You can't eat a cow, but you can eat a lot of burgers.'

Have you produced a literature review now? If so you should have some idea of where your research is going.

A PhD is hard, it really is. If you found it easy I would be more worried than if you found it hard because that could be a sign that you underestimate the work involved. As it happens I don't think this is the case.

Are there any technical problems you don't understand?

Did you do a Masters? How did you find your first degree?

Writing is a skill that has to be learnt, therefore the more you do the better you will be.

Treat criticism as gold dust! Unless it is just downright wrong (and sometimes it will be), then even if they don't intend to, someone criticising your work is doing you a favour. Learn from it and do it better.

You are describing is pretty much how 90% of PhD students feel at some point. Don't worry about other students too much. You don't need your supervisor in order to write a paper. Write one, get it looked at, send it off. A PhD requires you to be self-motivating and self-productive.

I wouldn't expect you to have done much by now if you are part-time.

You can give up if you like, but I can't see how it would make things any better. You are only at the start of your PhD, even if you were behind you could easily catch up. If you complete your PhD, worry about getting a job then, but you aren't going to be any less qualified than you are now. What are you doing your PhD in? There are lots of jobs that don't require a PhD but one is advantageous - mathemetics or programming for example. The cleverest people I have worked with have not had a relevant degree (computer science), one had a PhD in biology, one had a degree in Economics and another Physics.

... And it was.

My paper was accepted.

I think patience is the key...

No concern really. I am just (impatiently!) waiting for my notification. There is a three day period of notification, either it takes them a long time to send some emails out, or they send them in some sort of order, day by day.

Primarily I am just impatient and want to know what the result is!

I meant to say 'odd' not 'add'.

This may seem an add question but is there any order in which conference send out acceptance / rejection emails?

Do they send out acceptance ones first, and then rejections - or is it in the order of submission? Is it just random - depending on the organiser?

Hi, perhaps one for the marine biologists out there!

I'm looking for historical Sea Temperature Data in the Med, preferably at a high resolution (hours, or days) for a period of one year (any year, any place).

Any idea where I might find this, say in excel format?

Thanks!