Thanks ToL! I've been reading other theses in my field and most discussions seem to be about 10 pages double spaced so that's what I was going to aim for. My findings are quite straight forward and the chapters link together easily it'll be the suggesting other work etc that will need a bit of thinking but I'm actually really excited to write the discussion so I'm saving it for when I have gotten through all the boring editing I have to do the next day or so as a kind of reward!

Hello everyone! I'm in the 'time running out' stage of my PhD, this week is the last week I can work full-time on it as I start my new job next week (EEK!) then I will have the odd weekend but basically need to get everything together for supervisors to check by the end of this week!

Anyone else in a similar position?

So far I have an intro which needs comments addressing still
Site description chapter which needs a quick read over
First data chapter - extensive comments still need addressed
Second data chapter - still finalising discussion
Third data chapter ready to go
Fourth data chapter - still have comments left to address
Discussion...not even started.

Then all the formatting/table of contents/splicing together to do

I can do all that in 5 days yeah....fun fun!

I guess I just need to know it's not impossible =)

Great news! So pleased for you! I would question the payment though (it was your supervisors causing the chaos not you surely!) but maybe pay it and then try to claim it back later?

I'm sure it will all work out Ellebelle, I've been following this thread and hoping you would get it in time but I guess things don't work out perfectly sometimes. At least you have that time until November to get it sorted and hopefully still have a month to relax before starting you new job. I'm in the complicated situation of having a main supervisor who isn't based at my university, who is generally happy with my work, and then a university supervisor who is very picky and doesn't like writing that isn't in his exact style. So I think my chapter is finished and then it comes back from the uni supervisor torn to shreds, I just hope my examiners aren't as picky as him as I don't have time to get it to his style in time with a couple of weeks to go! Supervisors eh...=)

Ah yeah, I'm in biological sciences, mine are paper format but not actually published yet. But it makes it easier to publish them later as you just need to modify the formatting for the journal rather than do it from scratch. I've never thought about it being less work, it certainly feels like a lot of work hah. With science PhD's usually having word limits of 40-50,000 rather than other fields having 100,000 you're forced to keep it short and sweet but that's a tough job in itself hah.

Hrm I think my thesis is somewhere in-between interrelated and separate hah, the first two chapters are similar methods but different time periods, the third is an experiment run in the same place and time periods as with the first two but different methods and very different data, the fourth is another experiment but very different methods/circumstances, but the theme of all of them is linked...I guess that means my intros needs to be somewhere in-between too. All the general stuff in the main intro and anything specific to each chapter in the smaller intros, but with enough general info to make each chapter make sense on it's own....ok lets do this =)

Good question Dunham, I use the terms interchangeably as I'm not doing it as separate things. I think lit review is where you discuss and critique the relevant literature and the intro is just a general introduction to the topic. I'm combining so I have general intro leading into more specific literature in my introduction chapter. It depends what structure you as using whether you put a long or short intro into your data chapters I believe, although I'm clearly no expert hah.

No worries Wowzers, in my field writing data chapters as papers is seen as the standard format, I know of one person who had a separate methods chapter but that is unusual, mine aren't strictly papers as they will have a lot of 'for methods see 2:x:x' etc, but the intro/lit review, methods, results and discussion sections will be in each data chapter =)

Hrm I've never been told not to put new literature in data chapters, the main references overlap but the more specific ones are only in the data chapters. Are you in sciences or humanities, I'm not sure if the structures differ there? Each of my data chapters is written as a paper so it needs to stand alone, and with my word count being quite tight at 50,000 words max my literature review can't really be more than 10,000 for me to fit in 4 data chapters (which are roughly 8-11,000 words) and a discussion chapter too. I've also been told 6 pages double spaced should be the minimum for an intro to a data chapter although my second supervisor told me this and my first supervisor disagrees hah, currently mine vary from 5-8 double spaced pages. I've heard you either need to choose a long into/lit review and short individual intros or vice versa, at the moment both of mine are quite long so just need to shuffle things about I think =)

Thanks Anon, good to know it's not just me being silly and that other people have this problem. I also have a lot of overlap between data chapter intros (similar topics and they are meant to stand alone so very difficult not to repeat yourself!). Again my supervisor told me I had to explain everything in detail when I wrote each chapter, but then said I had major problems with repetition...I wonder why hah. So I think I'm going to have to sit down with them all and work out what goes where and try not to sound too repetitive. Oh and ToL I meant to ask if your pages were double spaced when you counted pages? My lit review is 23 pages single spaced...

Thanks ToL, that's what I was aiming for with earlier drafts of my Intro/lit review but my supervisor basically wrote 'expand this' in every paragraph until it ended up a lot longer than I had wanted (about 14000 words when my max word limit for my thesis is 50,000). I guess he was just wanting me to cover everything he wanted to see in the whole thesis and that I could move things around later but it's just ended up confusing me. Oh well! I'll just have to spend some time working out what is general and what is chapter specific.

Hello! I am in the process of putting together my thesis and was wondering about literature. I wrote my lit review 6 months ago and now have done most of my data chapters. But reading over my lit review most of the literature there is now in the data chapters...how do you deal with this? If I took out the parts of the lit review that are in the data chapters there wouldn't be much left. Is it ok to repeat this stuff? This was always my worst part, I really struggle to see the point of a separate lit review so hoping once I figure this out it all might make sense!

Hello everyone! My final deadline is also late Sept...but I start my new full-time school teaching job on the 1st of Sept and want to finish by then. I still have 1 data chapter to analyse/write, a crap intro that my supervisor has had since Jan but refuses to look at as he thinks it's terrible and wants me to finish everything else first and I need to revise the other chapters and write a discussion. I have three weeks and I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed! I'm a very slow writer but I'm hoping I will somehow miraculously become good at it in these final weeks. I have to say I didn't hate most of my PhD as I liked the topic, but data analysis and writing have been awful and I can't wait to say goodbye to this stupid thesis! Although I feel like I'll be stuck with it for another year as major corrections are pretty likely...yay! Sorry about the rant, I'm just glad to find others in a similar situation, lets get these theses finished!

Maybe try to word it like you are taking the pressure off of her. Something like 'I know you are going through a tough time not being well, so I thought that if I got a second supervisor it would take some stress away from you so that you have the time to get better'. Then it doesn't seem like you're not happy with her, but are concerned for her. I hope you get it all sorted soon! =)

Ah yeah I did mean to say to ask him. But I thought it was only your main supervisor's permission you needed to submit but it might be different for all universities. Talk to your main supervisor about it and ask the other one - although it may be that he can't reply at the moment.

Thanks for the kind words, I'm working my way through comments on one of my chapters at the moment - I'm worried as this is the 3rd draft of this chapter and my second supervisor is yet to see it, and I still have one chapter to write from scratch where i will not have the luxury of time to produce 4 drafts of it! Oh well! I'm hoping to finish comments on this chapter today and send it to a friend to check my grammar and tenses (somehow I float between tenses in my discussion without noticing and I really can't pick it up when I read over it myself!). Then tomorrow I'll crack on with data analysis for my final data chapter. I go home for a 'holiday' on Wednesday for a week which will no doubt stop my productivity. It's the first time I'll have been home since Xmas and my mum has had an op and I want to spend some time with her, it's several of my friends birthdays and my sis has just bought a new house so it'll be a busy time! Hoping to squeeze in a few hours of writing each day fingers crossed!

Hello everyone, I'm back from my 6 weeks of training for my teaching job which starts in September, I now have 4 weeks to write half a PhD...eek! I'm so, so behind and my computer is playing up which isn't helping. Well done to those who have made progress/submitted :)

Ellebelle, that sounds awful, but do you really need your co-supervisors comments? Maybe you can just go with your main supervisors advice and submit if you are happy with your work? I think I am going to have to do this as I have 3 supervisors and their track records are that they take 3 months to give any feedback, and I only have 1 month left so I'm going to have to submit with very little feedback and just hope for the best! Just a little stressful... Good luck to everyone!