Hi Fricklesnarp,

It might be an idea if you just went in to see her when you think she will be around, not to get feedback there and then, but just so you can communicate with eachother more effectively. Take her a cup of tea or coffee - she'll probably love you forever and give you brilliant references - it beats twiddling your thumbs all day!

Many universities are in terrible turmoil right now, and any number of crises could have come her way - this can be a very difficult time of year for academics, it's when many of the budgets are announced, yes, she sits at her desk for some of her day, but that doesn't mean she has time to reply to you within two days. She probably has at least one manager breathing down her neck at the moment.

I also suggest reading some books on writing style ahead of your redraft, in the meantime - you could tell her you're doing that when you see her - you'll seem pro-active, something all lecturers like to see in their students.

Hey Magictime, I'm self funded, and I really don't expect employers to judge me on that - I expect to be judged on my potential to publish at a high level; on my ability to gain academic fiunding (the application process for which is entirely different ball game at the relevant level); on my teaching experience and abilities, and on my personality.

I understand you are nervous and want to gen up as much as possible before the PhD starts - I took almost a year out between supervisors and the waiting game can be so frustrating - but there really is very little you can do right now. I'd say the best use of your time would be to relax as much as possible, sleep, take a holiday, do all the things you won't be able to do much of during the three years of your PhD, rather like expectant parents do! Because believe me, you will long for the chance to do those things in two year's time! And you will benefit from the break when the PhD starts, I really regret not relaxing etc more during my year off.

Hi Bug, this is my family's recipe for scouse, (my mum wrote this recipe) it sounds to me as if it's just what you need! It lasts for days and days, is cheap, really easy and DELICIOUS. There's me going on with the cliches too...

We love to eat Maeve's mum's scouse

Ingredients (to feed 5-6, all quantities approximate)

1½ lb of lamb neck fillets or of stewing beef

1 large onion

4-5 carrots, cut in large chunks

1 small swede, cut in smaller chunks

2-3 lbs potatoes, peeled and cut into walnut-sized pieces

Small tin of tomatoes

Salt & pepper

Dollop of HP Sauce

Scouse is the deliciously gloopy mush from which Liverpudlians take their nickname. Its origins lie in lobskaus, a Norwegian seamen's dish made of whatever was left in ship's stores at the end of the voyage.

Before the advent of pre-prepared baby foods, most of us were weaned on teaspoonsful of "juice off the scouse". A cup of the same ambrosial liquid was a treat when we came in shivering from school on a winter's afternoon.

Almost every family in our street on Merseyside had its own version of the wonderful stuff. I learned this one from my mum over 50 years ago, and I still make it regularly.

Place all ingredients in a large, heavy-bottomed pan, adding water to cover. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for at least two hours while you go shopping, watch the telly, or get on with writing your novel. Long cooking improves scouse as the potatoes collapse into the liquid and thicken it.

If unexpected visitors turn up, you can add extra potatoes and veg up to half an hour before serving, but don't forget to adjust the seasoning.

Serve with pickled cabbage, beetroot or more HP sauce and the best white bread you can find. Any leftovers - a rare event in our house - can be topped with short pastry and baked at gas mark 6 for 30 minutes to make that other great Liverpool classic, scouse pie.

P.s. I cook mine for about 4 hours - it's good to get a pan on after lunch if working at home, then dinner is ready with no prep - for a good few days.

I also like home made humous with various crudites and bread - it's really easy if you have a hand blender, but you must make sure you use dried chick peas (canned don't work so well), that they've been soaked over night and have been boiled for the recommended time - usually about an hour. You can use sesame oil instead of tahini, which makes the whole thing much easier.

Enjoy the scouse, it's wonderful! Love Eska

Days like today when I feel like a child exhausted by over excitement, because the paper I'm about to finish is streets ahead of my last written work; and is something which I think could do me justice; and because of the electricity which has been running through my brain these last couple of days. The feeling of getting closer and closer to where I want to be.

Well! So much for light hearted banter: this has to be one of the most dense and intellectual discussions I've read on here. Try again Adam.

Yes, I agree with Bug, people should stop deleting their original posts - they are there for a very good reason: so others can benefit from a shared experience. Maybe we should start a thread on this, or a campaign or something.

Hi Mighty Mouse: I would disagree with Super Genius in that I really don't think you should attempt to justify your choices of supervisor and topic to these people, it's none of their business, and I think doing so would be playing into their hands.

Just let them know that your it's none of their business and that IF you ever want or need their advice on that topic, you will ask for it - also point out to them that THEIR time might be better spent focussing on their own work, rather than on coming up with such detailed analysis your project and supervisor: don't they have their own work to get on with?

Good luck and I'm sure you will do the right thing, don't worry about coming back on here if you need more advice, or just to talk it through more.

Quote from ecofin

I don't mean giving me your own titles or subjects.
It's just a discussion about new problems not treated yet and not your own subjects.

Anyway sorry, for the misunderstood and for the question.

Any new problems which are not treated yet will only have been discovered by us because we have worked hard at our subjects, and they will be the seeds of our future research, after our PhDs are completed. I was not refering to our existing PhD topics.

RE: It is miraculous to me that you think we would have this kind of expertise outside of our own subjects... I mean, even you who has knowledge of a subject, surely???? don't know of any suitable research topics...

Usually PhDs research something which they have discovered and which they feel passionately about - that's what keeps them at it (that or the money they get from research projects which are already set up), so you'll have to start reading and thinking, the way we all did.

Do you realise that the information you are asking for is our hard earned intellectual property and the foundation of our future careers, which we have worked damned hard for?

If you need to ask this, then you probably don't have the umph to complete. There are no short cuts with a PhD.

Sleepy, you ARE funny!

Hi Ruby, Thank you for the advice. Yeah, now you mention it, I've never seen a supervisor's credit on a conference paper, so maybe it's enough that he is listed as my supervisor. Have a good eve.

Hi everybody,

I'd like to know if it is usual for a supervisor's name to appear on a PhD student's conference paper when they have helped with it.

I'm not sure what the procedure is when your supervisor has helped because, although I've already delivered two papers, I didn't get any help from my (ex) supervisor for those.

Any ideas? - I'm humanities.

Thank you Ruby, that's very encouraging!

wehhayyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS Smilodon. Well done... multiplied by a million. Brilliant news.

Hi BHC, hmmmmmm, sexist/classist attacks eh! Well there's a bit of drama for you. Nothing on the telly?

I was discussing my own personal experience in a department whose PhD students are largely private or grammar school educated young men, who come across as extremely confident.

I said that my feelings of insecurity relate to two things: firstly, confidence levels, privately educated young people are, on the whole super confident about their abilities, much more so than comprehensive school kids. This is my experience of attending 3 universities where I have been one of the rare ex comp students (and one who failed everything there to boot).

My second insecurity is about grammar, punctuation and writing style - elements which were all largely absent from my school education, and which were only addressed with the greatest brevity during the 3 part time years I spent at a community college. I hardly think that counts as classist!!! I mean really!!My friend is an English teacher at a very well respected private school and I know the teaching of grammar, writing etc is of an on infinitely higher standard than at you local comp. That's just a fact - why else do you think parents pay fortunes to send their kids to these places. Are we not allowed to talk about that for fearing offending people who went to these schools?

A professor who victimises a student because they have a working class accent and poor grammar skills (without actually tellng them that grammar is a problem for them), as happened to me, really is - so please get some perspective.

Are you suggesting that we can no longer discuss subtle sexism? In the way that you have, re: your comment about young women being hired only for their looks?

Sue, you are so right about that! (I'm also sorry to men for the generalisation!). I was refering to a group of young men who have progressed straight from BA to MA to PhD and they are sooo confident in my previous post. I am woman (you may have cottoned on to that!) and I'm 40 - although I forget that quite often and think I am 28, so, I think your observations have something. My supervisor has told me I am under confident about my work, but I find the levels of seemingly unshakable confidence among some of the young men students pretty alien, and I don't know if I will ever be able to be like that. It's partly because I feel that their confidence comes, partly, from having been sheltered, but I've trodden an often rocky path to get where I am and have not been sheltered. This situation is all made even stranger by the fact that have high level practical experience in the industry we are all studying, and they don't have a clue - part of me feels they don't have the right to be that confident yet - I dunno, maybe I'm being a fuddy duddy about that.

There are a couple of other women in the department, but they are very timid - I think I can come across as confident socially and in seminar discussions though.