The whole networking thing can be totally weird though, and hideous when it's done badly. There's someone in another department at my uni doing a PhD in a tangentially related area to mine. A mutual acquaintance put us in touch and this person suddenly included me in a big round-robin email to lots of other people he'd picked up in similar ways, and introduced me with a flurry as 'a new contact' that he'd 'found'. Which was totally bemusing, as he'd just introduced me to the people based in my own office, who I already knew very well! This person pops up all over the place, always intently focused on networking and building their reputation, and it just feels like they're off collecting people with no genuine interest in the people they're talking to. Huge name-dropper too. I've reached the point where my heart sinks when I see this person at an event I'm attending. But the way these things work, they'll probably be a professor in a few years time, and I'll probably be desperately hoping they remember me!

Supervision meeting this morning, to discuss the nightmare paper I didn't finish writing. Not feeling good about this, although I know my supervisors will be fine about it because I've been ill. Still got a thumping headache. And I just read through the results of my pilot questionnaire and it's really not good - the feedback suggests I need to do a major rewrite. Gah. Not happy at all!

Oh well. I think I need to take it reasonably steady today and give myself the weekend off. First goal is to prepare for supervision meeting, I'll think what to do next after talking to them.

No such luck :-( I went to bed at 2.15 and got up again at 5.45 - my eyes were closing and I'd started typing nonsense. Been back at it for a while now and I have no chance of getting it finished by 9, but I'm going to send what I've done at that point with a promise to send an updated version later this morning when it's a bit more finished. hopefully they'll be okay with that! This is the first time in my whole life that I've actually missed a deadline!!

Anyway - good luck with the work today, star-shaped, and have a great weekend and happy birthday and all of that!

Yaaaaaawn. Still writing. Hours to go. Sob sob. :p

I've not done it myself so don't know how it works or what the general view by academics/supervisors is, but I do know somebody who did something very similar - they had a chance to go abroad for three months and took a break from the PhD to do it. As far as I know they were on a funded PhD and were able to just take a break from that and pick up when they came back. So I'd think it can be possible, but it might well depend on the nature of your funding, the nature of the thing you're going to do, and what your supervisors' reaction is. It's certainly worth exploring though! Good luck.

Well I've finished cutting and pasting and started writing. So far up to almost 5000 words, mostly cut and pasted, so a lot of revision to do but it's looking a bit more possible that I'll get this done by the morning (final thing will be about 7-8000 words I think). Phew. Another hour of work then I'll take a break for some food, I think.

Agree with both of those suggestions. I'd also say read a lot, but in a structured way (think about all the things that might touch on your research area, and revisit your thoughts about what those areas are pretty regularly), and keep really really good notes of all your reading.

Thanks for the best wishes everyone, and good luck with yours too!

First two goals achieved and third one almost done. MrBatfink came over with sandwiches for lunch and made me go for a walk (in the rain!) but I think the break did me good - he's such a sweetie. Now settling back to it. Goals for early afternoon:

1.) Finish cutting and pasting from first year report/lit review
2.) Start at beginning of paper and keep writing....

Morning all! I now have 25 hours to get my paper written and sent to my supervisors, so it's going to be a tough and long day. May have to stop for a doze this evening then work through the night. But I'll see how it goes (and how my headache interferes....)

First tasks for the day:
1.) Type up new structure
2.) Cut and paste bits already written
3.) Cut and paste relevant sections from lit review/first year transfer report

My lovely second supervisor stopped off for a chat when he was walking through the research office earlier, and he realised I was struggling so talked my paper through with me. Very helpful. He's such a sweet guy - I think also he felt sympathy for my bad head because he got hit in the face by a door last week (ouch!!!) and now has stitches in his eyebrow and says he spent the weekend headachey and dazed. Poor guy!

Anyway, he made me feel better about the paper and I've gone back to rework the structure of it following our discussion. Not entirely sure how I'm going to write an 8000 word paper by first thing Thursday morning, especially with a head pounding so hard that I've got no chance of pulling any kind of all-nighter, but hey, I'll give it a go!

Morning everyone. Thanks for the get well wishes. Still have a bad headache but am trying to work through it. I need a few days off really to get rid of this thing but I have far too much to do and a deadline in three weeks that just can't be moved. Maybe I'll get some time off at the weekend. :-(

Done a couple of bits already today but scared by how quickly the day is passing! Takss for today:
1.) Get poster submitted to print services for printing for university event next week (DONE)
2.) Finish reading the article I started last night (DONE)
3.) Fit recent reading into structure of journal article I'm writing
4.) Identify any other articles that I hav eto read before continuing to write
5.) Make a very very large dent in the writing of the journal article!

Thanks star-shaped. My headache is killing me, but I have to keep pressing on. Supervisors have given me until first-thing Thursday to get this paper written so I'm trying to ignore the head and keep going. It's not working very well though - I'm either doped up on painkillers so can't think straight, or have a headache so can't think straight! Gah.

I've managed to make notes on one journal article so far. I'd like to get another three or four read today, and also to summarise some sections from my lit review into my draft journal paper. We'll see soon enough if that's over-ambitious I guess!

My system's different to that. I don't have access to a printer at home and hate printing off reams and reams when I'm on campus, so I mostly read PDFs on the screen. I have ring-bound A4 notebooks that I make all my handwritten notes in for my PhD (that way everything I've done is available to me chronologically, I find this helps me keep track of the overall shape of my research). In the front of each notebook I keep a list of all the journal articles/books etc that I have notes for in that notebook to make them easier to find.

When I've got handwritten notes on about half a dozen or so journal articles, I (intend to) write the notes up into a one-page summary for each article which I save on a word document which is my annotated bibliography - admittedly I've fallen a bit behind on the writing up process so probably have about thirty or so articles to write up in this way, but I already have about 140 written up. I find this really helpful for keeping track of which articles I've read and the key points in each - I wrote my first draft lit review from these notes, and have referred to them a lot since then for other papers. But it's quite time-consuming so I'm sure there are more efficient methods out there!

I also use RefWorks as a database of all the journal articles I've come across, whether I've read them or not, sorted into folders according to subject, and can search this by keywords or by author.

Still not feeling well so going to see the doctor this morning. My paper's due in today but there's no chance it'll be done, so I emailed my supervisors to explain. One of them has already got back to me saying I can have til Thursday, hopefully the other will say the same thing!

I have an hour and a half til I have to leave for the doctors, so before then I want to have made notes on some papers I need to reference in my article.

That sounds similar to my uni as well, though I haven't looked into it in any detail as I'm only in my second year! Good luck, anyway!

I've achieved about as much as I'm going to today I think. Written a couple of sections on my paper and made some good notes about what will go in some other sections. Still ridiculous amounts of work to do and it'll never be done by Monday, but I've never missed a deadline before so it won't be the end of the world if I tell my supervisors I've been ill and have to ask for extra time. I have a splitting headache so I'm giving up for the day.