That was a very useful contribution, Hazyjane, duly rewarded! :-)

Yes, if after three years I can come away with five stars my time here will not have been entirely wasted, even if I have the viva from hell and get sent to do endless resubmissions in a cave somewhere out of sight of more worthy PhDers!

The first 'helpful' vote of my bounty goes to starlight!

I've been stuck on two stars for ages and I'm really bored of it! I'd really like to get my third star! Getting one star was easy, and two wasn't very much harder, but that number three seems to be taking forever... I try to be helpful to people, so I hope people think I'm a helpful user.

If you're feeling the same as me, then tell me so on this thread, and I'll click the 'helpful user' button to help you on your way! And if I do that, can you do the same for me on your thread? Pretty please? 8-)

I can get Whimbey et al - PM me your email address and I'll send it to you. No luck with the other one though, I'm afraid.

Absolutely, it's always worth seeing what else is out there - if all it does is make you more sure that you've chosen the right place then that in itself is worthwhile. And an informal offer isn't binding so while it may well not fall through, there's no harm in having other options to consider.

I was in a very similar position myself - I had accepted an informal offer from one university when the university I was doing my Masters at invited me for a PhD interview. I went to the interview, told them that I was considering the offer from the other uni (not that I'd accepted it!) and was offered the second PhD as well. It was difficult choosing between them but in the end I chose the first university, but the people at the university where I did my Masters totally understood why I didn't choose them and I have even done some work with them since then so the contact was really useful. And now I'm also certain I made the right choice about where to go.

That's great Emmaki, really good news, sounds like you're doing really well - and it's so nice to hear about good things happening too! Congratulations!

Oooh, you all seem to be in really small offices!

Mine is a huge open plan office with seating for 90-odd PhD students in a hotdesking arrangement plus another 25-30 RAs/post-docs who have their own permanent desks. The hotdesking isn't usually too bad - the desks are mostly in clusters of 8 and most people generally stay in the same cluster each day even if not the exact same desk. People who are in every day complain about it though, because you have to pack everything away into a lockable drawer at the end of each day. But there's 90-odd desks and 120 PhD students, so people can't leave stuff out. It's very rare for people not to be able to find a seat at all, though it does happen occasionally.

I usually come into the office two days a week, plus any extra days when I have meetings or seminars or whatever. The rest of the time I work from home, as I don't live in the same town as my university (it's an hour door to door so not too bad, but may as well save time and money by staying at home!)

Hi star-shaped, hope it's going okay!

I went swimming again this morning (aching but happy now, I really recommend swimming as a good way to kick-start the day!) and then to a meeting, so have only just sat down to think about this afternoon's work.

Tasks for today:
1.) Look at state of play with interviews with one study group and move this on a bit
2.) Decide how relevant a newly identified area/method is to my study
3.) Think about agenda and preparation for tomorrow's supervision meeting

Hello everyone - I'm back after ten straight days off, and I feel so much better for it. I thought I'd struggle to fill the time and keep thinking about the PhD but actually I barely thought about it at all and would have loved another week off! Oh well. Refreshed and ready for a restart now.

Hope everyone else's work is going well!

First goals of today, to do before lunch:
1.) Go swimming - DONE!
2.) Go through all the emails I've received in the last 10 days and act on anything urgent
3.) Write up new to-do list and prioritise the work for the next couple of weeks

That's not so bad then, if you do have at least one bank holiday to look forward to.

I have finished my pilot questionnaire, launched the web version and emailed the pilot respondents. Woo! That's a major step forward, and it's still only lunch time! I may well be able to achieve all my goals today.

Thanks star-shaped. And can you arrange to get some time off? It's hard to keep going at the best of times and everyone needs a break occasionally just to recharge batteries, but I think the next few days in particular are going to be difficult to motivate through. But good luck with the work anyway, hopefully you'll make great progress!

Been for a swim this morning so feeling a bit more alert than I did first thing. Today's goals are pretty straightforward:
1.) Do final proofread of pilot questionnaire and launch on website
2.) Email the weblink to the pilot respondents
3.) Email academic at other university about information he's sending me
4.) Update Word version of questionnaire to match web version
5.) Draw up detailed to-do list for after Easter
6.) If there's any time left, work on poster for university competition (otherwise, just go home!)

Heh, that's great. I wonder what other first lines could be useful? 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness' seems to fit the bill, at least if it was one of those PhDs with a huge reflexive content!

Finished my questionnaire! Yay. Well, there's one section that I need to come back to when I get some info from an academic at another university, and it's still far too long, but those can be adjusted in the final version, so the pilot version is now complete! All I have to do is launch it on the website and send the link to the volunteers who have agreed to complete the pilot. But my eyes are so tired now that I think I'm going to leave that til the morning and do one last read-through for typos that I might have missed.

Phew, what a relief! I'm under orders from my supervisors to take the whole of next week off (they're so lovely), and my partner has organised to meet a big crowd of people in the beer garden of a nice pub on Friday afternoon, so I was desperate to get this all done. And finishing today means I can spend tomorrow getting other little bits and pieces sorted out before my week off. Happy happy happy!

Ooh, congrats to your hubs! Hope that inspires you into finishing.... difficult when it's so sunny and lovely-looking outside!

I've made good progress on the questionnaire. Just one section of editing left, and then adding the latest changes to the online version and proof reading. Unfortunately, the one section is one I've been putting off because I don't quite know how to reword the questions! Time to go back to my notes I think.

Ha, cats are great for that kind of confusion!

The seminar was great, actually - the keynote speaker was a retired professor from overseas who explained the major theory he developed in the 1970s and has revised continually since, in such a clear and straightforward and entertaining way that I saw new ways it could relate to my own work. And then I got some of the nice buffet lunch before clearing off and working on my questionnaire all afternoon! Made good progress too.

Not got much left to do on the questionnaire now - if I really push it I might be able to finish it today. I need to get it sent out to my next lot of pilot respondents before the bank holidays so tomorrow morning is really the very latest I can send it. (Yikes, that just panicked me - today would be better but might not be do-able.)

I'm supposed to be in a day-long seminar today, but am so far behind on reworking my questionnaire that I think I'll only go for this morning (so I can hear the keynote speaker who was my sole reason for signing up for the seminar!). So I have until 10 am to get as much done as I can, and then hopefully I'll be able to sneak away from the seminar at lunch time.