oooh Eska I LOVE Come Dine With Me!!!!! It's the perfect way to switch off the brain after a hard day's work (turkey)


Your menu sounds yummy - extra points for the vegetarian options (up) Still, I'll have to subtract you a couple of points for depriving your vegetarian guests of you famous dauphanoise potatoes (down)

I think I'll award you an 8/10 over all to reflect your exceptional hosting skills!!

Here, I brought you a snowman (snowman)

Hey guys, is anyone else having trouble getting back into the swing of things after the break??

I swore that I'd return to work in mid-Jan, when the teaching term begins, with a clear plan for my research (I'm just about in the middle of 1st year pHD) but I've only managed to read about 8 paper in the last 4 days. My plan was to read 6 per day and spend a couple of hours trying to figure out the nitty gritty of experiment design in the evenings. Now although I have another 2.5 weeks til holidays are officially over, I have a 6 day family holiday booked, during which I doubt I'll get much work done.

I had the perfect opportunity to get woeking today - empty house and no other plans or distractions but it's already 3 o'clock and all I,ve managed to do all day is eat and watch daytime tv :-( Plus may other half will be home in 2 hours and I need to cook dinner, the dog still needs to be walked and it's New Years Eve.


I seem to have no motivation to work at all but I'm contantly worrying because I'm making no progress. :-s

I think it would be really interesting if we set up some kind of poll - listing a bunch of universities - in UK, Ireland etc and see what % of us are studying where - so nobody's anonymity is compromised but we may get an idea of the number of people in our Uni on PGF?

ps. I voted you all as helpful users -my (gift) to you all :p

Decision made then - no Christmas cards for my sups this year! Or anyone else for that matter - I'm pretty hopeless really - the only person who gets a card from me is my mother who insists that a card means much more to her than any present could. On the other hand, may father and boyfriend both insist that I spare the trees (tree)

I've noticed a couple of guys in my office are giving Christmas cards to their supervisors (they are in a rather large group so the card was signed by 10 or so students). I'm not in a group an so if I were to send Christmas cards to my supervisors (I have 2) they would be just from me. The whole idea seems a bit odd to me and I think I would feel a bit awkward about it. I was just wondering what everybody else does?
EV. x

Cobweb I think I know how you are feeling - I've been with my partner for 6+ years now and in that space of time he has told many lies, some bigger than the others but all hurtful and distressing. For a while he did everything he could to try reassure me and show me he had changed but that phase seems to have passed and I feel just as vulnerable and susceptible to hurt as before. Similarly, I am not in the position to finance myself at the moment, even worse, I feel totally indebted to him as he has supported me through my undergraduate degree when my parents didn't. I don't know what I'm going to do as things seem to be in a steep downward spiral - so whilst I can comiserate, unfortunately I can't offer you a solution.

Poor Lilbopeep - Iknow that feeling - having tried many times to fix my schedule :$

Today I really wanted to get an early start (9am is early for me!) but Ididn't get to sleep until about 4am so it was 11 before I got going. And I can't work past 5pm today as I promised my family I would go home and stay with them tonight and spend the day with them tomorrow as I have been neglecting them alot lately. Poor boyfriend gets to stay home and mind the dog :-( Hopefully I'll get to see him at some point on Sunday but also have lots of catch-up work planned :-s

Thanks Sneaks

I do intend to do some run throughs before I start the practical stuff for real but I am in science so even before I can do that, I need to buy equipment, chemicals etc. So the pilots will be more for adjusting test parameters rather than helping with their overall design. I'm just nervous about making the wrong decisions because of my inexperience in the area.

You're right though 3 weeks probably won't make too much difference, I'm just anxious to get it sorted so I can get started before Christmas and hopefully move on with the main part of my project hopefully by the middle of next year!!

Hi All!! Having a wee bit of a panicky moment. I've just realised that I really haven't made any progress with my PhD work for at least three weeks now and I really need to be making some decisions, narrowing down my options alot and getting the practical work up and running :-( And I think there are a number of reasons why,

1. The areas that I'm studying are quite diverse and I have little experience in them but for my PhD they will both be important.

2. It seems like there is a huge number of considerations to look into before I should make any decisions about the practical work but it is impossible for me consider everything given my experience in the subject and time considerations. I'm really afraid of over looking something/ making the wrong decision and wasting loads of time and money.
3. Any decision I make regarding practical work will have majorimplications of the accuracy and relevance of the main partof my PhD which I won't be able to get going on for a while.

So basically, I sit at my desk everyday and write lists of things to do - the problem is that the same things keep coming up that I just haven't been able to do. Sorry all, I just needed to get that out. I am going to try to make myself concentrate hard for the next 5 hours and keep that squirmy feeling in my stomach at bay.

EV x

Lilbopeep I sympathise - I too have an inconvenient sleep schedule - I would most happily sleep from 3am til about 11am and have allowed myself to do so for the last few months - I'm 4 months into my pHD and so have been mostly reading and working alone til this point. Now, I actually have to interact with normal diurnal beings, lab tecnhicians, other pHDers etc. Today was the 1st day of my new schedule - I managed to drag myself out of bed by 8.45am and although I got to my various meetings, the rest of the day was a complete write off - I managed to read a total of three papers and remember very little from them. I think it's time to pack up and go home. I'm hoping a normal schedule will become more normal for me with time :$
Anyway, just to say you're not alone!
EV

Definitely the most unproductive day so far. Although I've been at my desk since 12pm, I've had a terrible headache all day so haven't been able to do anything. The only reason I haven't gone home yet is because it hurts too much to move :-(

well done sneaks (up)

I've almost finished supplementing the docs with references although I seem to keep come across more relevant - I'll just have to come back to them another time as I don't have time to get through everything by tomorow

plan is now for a quick break - then,

1. make sure my arguments make some basic sense (At least worthy of a first draft!)
2. try to make a quick, easy-to-read sumary doc

Sneaks I'm going to be working late tonight to try get some stuff sent off to my supervisors in the morning;

by 9pm I want to have filled in all the extra references I have left blank
by 10.30 pm - long doc should make complete sense
and by 12 am the summary doc shoud be complete

I'll also et up early (7am for me!!) and into campus to hopefully access some papers and standards that are unavaelable to me at home but which I really, really need!!

Good luck with the rest of your work today (up)

HaHa Jimkin -that had to be the best costume at the party (up)

My boyfriend is really into Flight of the Concords now, although I can only stand it in small doses!!