By diagrams do you mean graphs of various descriptions or something more pictorial and do you mean during the process of analysis or to illustrate the outcome of the analysis?

Nothing like answering a question with more questions is there;-).

You could take it from the point of view of the org you're presenting to - use 'I' if you are essentially the only person they will ever have contact with in a collaboration because then they will care specifically what work you have done (and possibly explain to sup why you're doing it that way to avoid the impression of ingratitude) but use 'we' if its the work of the research group as a whole that matters to them.

The university might well host it, it would be worth talking to IT support or your department IT coordinator. The university I'm at is keen to have postgrad's research represented online.

I also tend to panic or become defensive when my work is being criticised but often can think of a much clearer, calmer justification of my approach when the moment of stress is passed. If that's the case with you and you feel that you really haven't done yourself justice in answering a particular question you could try approaching the person who spoke to you in one of the breaks and saying that you've been thinking more about what they said and.... Then at least you could feel that you had done your best by your work and you might get an interesting and useful conversation from it - even if they still disagree they are likely to expand on their reasons more in a one-to-one situation.
Good luck with the conferences, its a success even to have a paper accepted.

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Full time students of any age can have a Young Person's railcard (I assume you are full-time since you say you cycle in every day). If so you can get the application form stamped by your department office to confirm that your are a student. Its also worth looking into local student/young person travel discounts which, round me give even better discounts than the national railcard.

I am no longer a chronologically young person but can brandish the card which says otherwise :p

Don't know about quotes but for acknowledgements it's worth checking your uni regs to see if they have specific requirements. Where I am the format regs say that acknowledgements come at the start immediately after the statement that the thesis is your own work and before abstract and contents.

Got it. PM your email and will send.

My former boss used to edit my reports as he went then delete large chunks unread at the end if he thought they duplicated what he had added in further up which got quite annoying. I resorted to only ever giving him printed copies for a first read through so at least he had to get to the end before rearranging it. Would your sup accept print outs or pdfs?

I have the J.Rheumatology Osborne and Giraudet le Quintrec papers if you can send me your email.

Sorry you're having such a bad time at the moment.

You seem to imply that its being in the university that causes you such stress. Since you're doing an arts subject I assume there's no lab you need to be in so could you work at home a few days a week? I know some departments have a minimum presence requirement but my supervisor doesn't care where I'm working so long as I can show that the work is getting done (and if your sup is friendly you can explain anyway). Even if there are more distractions at home, if you can be more relaxed there you're likely to get just as much work done. Since you don't smoke at home it might help a bit with that as well, though when both are stressful I think you could be justified in forgiving yourself for smoking for a few months while things settle down with the PhD.

Hope things get better for you soon.

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In relation to being pushed in directions you don't want to go, its probably easiest to pick your battles - do what your supervisor suggests unless you feel its really wrong for what you're aiming at. That way hopefully both end up doing some give and take.

My supervisor is not really in the field that's turned out to be the main element of my work. I'd suggest keeping a look out for relevant conferences to your field (in addition to your supervisors field) so you can get feedback from people there. If your first degree was social science might you approach any of your lecturers for advice? I'm considering this but am not sure if its the done thing to go back and nag past lecturers.

Good luck and I think it would be a shame to give up when you've got so far.

I got a Seagate drive which corrupted irretrievably the third time I ran the backup prog, though I have been told by others that they are reliable so maybe mine was an aberration.

I now double back up onto 2 16gb memory sticks (my files aren't large), given my experience with the hard drive I would suggest at least having your most critical files backed up elsewhere even if you can't do the whole lot.