Walminski! Soliciting stars is unethical: they should be freely given, otherwise they mean nothing. If you get your stars by persuasion and without putting the work in it will be as empty as gaining an honorary PhD; your self esteeme will suffer due to the guilt of knowing the source of you ill-gotten gains; while those lower down the star leader board will know that you stars do not have the weighting of theirs, and resent you for your higher placing.

Besides, you're pretty high up the board anyway.

However, for all of you who would like to reward stars, you can do so by clicking on the helpful user button on the helpful person's posting; you need to be logged on to do this, and you can go back to old postings to do so.

======= Date Modified 29 Oct 2009 13:14:34 =======
Lara that's brilliant, well done good luck sending that one... last... email! You know you can do it...



Although I will miss you on this thread :( Thanks for the support you've given me and here's to your future, hopefully that will include a holiday soon.



8-)

You have a cleaner, and you want sympathy! send them tound here...

Hi Sleepyhead, yeah, that's a very good question, my dad has been helpng me a lot lately, and I live off brown rice and beans and walk everywhere- no joke, probably very healthy though! I used to teach at a uni in my home town too, but the work dried up. I just don't want to give uo the PhD, and yes, you're right, I have to move closer to my department, and to my work. I've been looking at a small town which is in between the two and living there would cut my expenses right down. I am absolutely determined to keep going with the Phd, so I think the time has come to leave my pad and do the right thing. When I first started at my new department I wanted to be sure moving would be worth it, that things would work out, and now I feel more certain about that. Thanks folks.

Hi Tasha, yeah, I see what you are saying. One of the things stopping me going to see my supervisor more often in the expense, money is s tight for me at the moment and it costs me about £20.00 to get there and back., if I book in advance I just feel that if I were able to drop in every couple of weeks I'd be more a part of things, and my career would progress more quickly. Like at the moment I'm due to arrange a meeting with him, but don't have the emoney for the fare: I've been looking for part-time work in my home town too.

Hi everyone,

As some of you will know I am a part-time student living a 2 hour train journey (plus buses either side) away from my department. I'm very ambitious, and keen to get involved, and get things like funding applications and conference organising under my belt, but I feel so out of it here in my home town. I haven't seen my supervisor since mid-August, mostly because our next scheduled meeting is to discuss something I am still working on - I'd love to be able to just drop in and see him and the other staff. My department is excellent, it's new and full of academics I really admire, there's a drop in culture there whereby PhD students are around members of staff much of the time. I know if I were living near by I would see my sup at least once every two weeks. I know how luck I am to be part of a department like that, but I don't feel I can truly be part of it, living where I am, and I feel much of this opportunity is wasted.

I work at a university which is half way between my home town and my university, but the money is so low(about 170.00 pweek before tax , I'm afraid to up sticks on that income: I have a beautiful housing association flat here, which costs £80.00 per week, a bargain for what it is, but very expensive in terms of student living - I know I could find a beautiful room for that price and not have to pay bills or council tax, or internet charges. I've been looking for work in York - where my department is - for about a year with no luck. I'm loath to up sticks for a bar job or similar incase it falls through. I have thought about living in the city in which I work, but I really don't like the place, and again, I think having to give up this beautiful flat, and all my lovely friends here haults me. I'm not sure I'd be able to support myself entirely there either,and I woudl still bea 1 hours and 20 minute jouney away from my department (getting to and from the station included), my dad flashes cash at me now and again to help with bills (that's another thing I'm not happy about as otherwise he's a nightmare), but I'm not sure how easy that would be if I were living in my uni town, and not here.

I'd really appreciate your thoughts as I feel I'm in a rut and I just want to get to my uni town and be part of things. Thanks in advance.

Well, I've finished the first draft of my last case study chapter and I'm happy with the content - it's 1,450 words in total - but my printer is out of ink so re-drafting is not possible today. I may start writing my new methods chapter tonight, but now I am having dinner and watching X factor.

Hi everyone, I didn't get my first draft finished, it's about 800 words long at the minute so it needs about another 400 words. That sounds like nothing, but, in it, I'm working out how much of a chapter will go, and I'm not confident about this one; I'm going to just write it out today and then thrash it out with the sup until it works.

So! Today I will:

1. Finish up the content part of my chapter outline and then conclude it.
2. Work on on of my introductory chapetrs, making it more of a methods chapter, rather than the historcal context piece it had been before.
3. Re-draft my third chapter outline, so the whole thesis outline is in at least second draft.

I know this is optimistic, but I wil try; the first aim is a must, however.

Good luck with the finalising Lara!

Hi Phoebe,

This sounds alright to me: it's very early days, so what you produce is bound not to be of PhD standard. It's really good that your supervisors are being direct with you and telling you where you are going wrong; the real horror stories happen when students go on for months, or years, with nods and smiles from their sup and no clear direction or feedback (as I did with my first supervisor). I've found PhD supervision far more intense than MA or BA teaching, and that there is a greater speed of progression in the quality of my work; there is a sense of urgency and intensity to the one on one nature of PhD supervision which can take some getting used to, but it is absolutely not personal, they're doing you a big favour, so long as what they say is constructive. I wish I'd had this kind of direct criticism straight away, it would have saved me a lot of time. My new supervisor shreds my work mercilessly when I see him and my work (thankfully) comes back covered in corrections, questions and guidance! The criticism is getting lighter as I progress, but I know he will pull me up if I'm going wrong, and that gives me a sense of confidence about the PhD that I didn't have before. I'm afraid, in my experience, much of being a PhD student involves accepting feeling a bit stupid for the majority of the time. Good luck, you'll get into it, they must think you are good to give you a funded place, and to make the effort to give you the feedback. (up)

Here are a few tips gained from personal experience:

1. If you are short sighted don't wear you glasses, that way you won't be aware of anyone looking at you.
2. Feel from you stomach/heart what you are expressing and speak from that place.
3. Pitch your voice loud enugh for people at the back to hear you.
4. Make eye contact, even if you are reading from notes, look up now and again and 'speak to the people'. If you've followed tip 1, then just look into the crowd and pretend you are looking into their eyes.
5. If it's a public presentation or lecture start by saying hello/good morning/afternoon/evening and smile at them; end by saying thank you.
6. Remember how wonderful you are, and how much pleasure they'll get from listening to the sound of you voice.

What about starting an ex-pats group at your uni, or in your local area - or joining an existing one?

Keep trying, it must be hard, but I think it about luck, so the more you try the more chances you will have of finding people.

I feel lonely doing my PhD, and I live in my home town! So I think you are very strong to keep going. Good luck.

Ha, ha Sneaks, yeah, I've thought that too, but it would be a hard, hard life! Especially, as Walin says, when the next lot get in.

I can remember my solicitor friend having similar fears to ours; he often mentioned that there weren't enough posts for trainee solicitors before he made it - he meant the really low paid ones with salaries of aprox 11,000 pa for full-time (back in 2000ish).

You do realise that you've come to the centre of the universe for procrastinating PhD students here on this forum, so we' may not be the best people to advise you. In fact, I'm procrastinating right now.

The accountability thread is good, try that.

Sneaks - Yes, I love watching films. Going to the movies is my faourite way of relaxing and switching off, but it's totally different when I watch them for work. I have 3 ways of watching them:

1. Work: concentrate on every tiny detail, re-watch repeatedly (I've seen one film about 25 times for my research). These films are usually very dense intellectually and emotionally, very heavy going, and/or I will be considering them in light of heavy historical or theoretical issues.

2. Leisure #1 Go to the cinema on my own: I love this! It's a very mild version of the above, I'll enjoy almost any film, but when a gem comes up its like every Christmas rolled intoo one.

3. Leisure #2 Got to the cinema with other people: this is social life, I enjoy yhe films, but not as intensley, this is as much about popcorn, a glass of wine afterwards and catching up than about seeing the movie.

All life enhancing in their own way.


Yeah, maybe we should set up our own uni. I so hope we get our posts, but I guess the reality is that it will be a struggle, even in we do. Film is an expanding area so I hope I'll be ok, I'm going to ask some acquaintences in academia how they think it's going.

The (fictional) lecturer in the film I'm looking at has just been lamenting the future demise of public services in the UK and how they probably all collapse in the future - including unis - this film was made in 1994 by an artist who also teaches at the RCA, so this prospect has been with us for a while. I can rmember warnings back in 2002/3 from people telling me about all the PhDs they knew who were unemployed. I've always done risky things though, I guess we all just need to be positive, but realistic.

We should defo keep the idea of our own uni as a back up. I'll head of film studies! I think I'm the only reg that does this.