[quote]Quote From Cakeman:

Totally agree with the giving up chocolate, I found during my writing up I became incredibly unfit. Luckily I don't have the type of metabolism that puts on weight, but you should definitely think about trying to eat a bit less if you are less active. I only really noticed how bad it had got after i resumed exercise again, post submission.
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I took the opposite approach- I carried on eating my beloved chocolate but also made sure I went to the gym every day- not just to burn the choccies off but because it really helps me with anxiety/stress/concentration etc, which all helped me get on with the thesis. We're all different lol!

Good luck :) KB

Hey Dunni, that's really frustrating. I am hoping to have little ones in a few years and have already been worrying about how difficult it might be to get back into work after being off for a while. But you must be amazing at multi-tasking, you will definitely have that on your side. I really hope something comes along soon for you. Are you looking at research jobs too? Or are you definitely wanting to go back into practice?

Slowmo- brilliant news about the viva date :) Good luck with the prep and try not to stress too much. There is only so much you can do!

Best, KB

Hey Dunni, fab news about the corrections :) Congrats- you truly are finished now!

I bet the house move was exhausting- I'm due to move to a different part of the UK in 2-3 weeks and am shattered already just from trying to arrange it all. Also nervous about leaving my pals behind- I've been here for 8 years now so it's a bit of an upheaval. Am quite excited as well though, about the new location and also the post-doc, which is a bit of a change in direction for me.

So sorry to hear about the job not working out. Did you get any feedback? It's so hard right now and just when you get to an interview you can still be faced with someone who just has more experience, an extra degree, or 3 post-docs or whatever. I had two interviews for post-docs/fellowships which went well but where I was simply out-experienced by another candidate. It's not much consolation right now but at least you have the knowledge that your CV must be really strong to get you an interview. You never know what jobs are just around the corner, so fingers crossed there's one in the pipeline for you.

Best wishes, KB

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Hey Ender!

Because the PhD is such a large piece of work, there is the potential to publish a number of papers from it. Journals usually have word limits, so you'd never be able to publish a whole PhD as one journal article, although of course you could select results from different chapters and put them together as one paper. Journals I have published in have typically had word limits of 4,000-10,000 words, although there is variation across disciplines and according to type of paper, e.g. results paper, review article, etc. I sent off each chapter separately for publication in different journals (two systematic literature reviews, one theoretical paper, and four results papers), so my thesis consists of these 7 papers, with an introduction chapter at the beginning and a discussion chapter at the end. Because I wanted to publish as I went along, I wrote each chapter as a journal article, so I could send it off for peer-review and also put it directly into my PhD. There will be a few differences between the journal papers and the PhD chapters, as I had to respond to reviewers' comments/examiners' comments on one version and not the other etc, but basically they will be very similar.

With respect to the poster/paper thing, presenting a poster can be a good way to start, perhaps for your first conference or if you are nervous with oral presentations. But it's also good to build up a bit of experience at giving oral presentations at conferences if you can- they tend to hold more weight than poster presentations on your CV, and it gives you a good opportunity to learn how to talk about and defend your research etc.

The authorship thing can be tricky. Usually if you write the paper and it is based on your PhD work then you will be first author. I am first author on all of my publications, and my supervisor is second. However, other factors come into play, such as who designed the project, who collected and analysed the data, who contributed to the writing of the paper, and how fair your supervisor is with giving credit to their PhD students. Normally that's more of a problem where quite a few people are involved with the project. My project was my own, with only me working on it and writing the papers, so it was quite straightforward. However, if my supervisor wrote a paper based on my data (as we have discussed recently), then she would be first author and I would be second. Perhaps others who have been middle author can explain how that works better than I can!

Also, my experience is specific to clinical psychology- I can't comment on the physics side of things!
Best, KB

Hey Cindrella! You know, I wouldn't give yourself a hard time whilst you're writing up. It's a difficult process and sometimes you might just need a short distraction or a choccie :) We all have our vices lol. Good luck with it- when is your deadline? Best, KB

Mmmm, the viva thing is interesting. By submission and viva I had 5 chapters accepted for publication and 2 under review. Most of the questions in my viva were on the work that had already been published- as they went through the chapters they asked where each had been published, and scanned over the non-published stuff only very briefly. They did actually pick holes in some of the published stuff, but the points they made were not things that they then asked me to correct. In fact, both examiners completely disagreed with my analysis in one of the published chapters, but again did not ask me to change anything, presumably because it had already been peer-reviewed and published. I have to admit, I went into the viva expecting the questions to focus more on the unpublished work than the published stuff, but that wasn't the case. I suppose on the plus side if stuff has been published you can have some confidence that your work is of PhD standard overall, or at least some bits of it! Best, KB

Hey Alleycat! Yeah, review papers are just as worthy as results papers, and there are some quite high-impact journals devoted to review papers! And the other great thing is, you can write them as you go along rather than having to wait until the end of your PhD when you have some publishable data. That way, you get early publications and have a good idea of how the peer review system works by the time you come to publishing results. My first three papers were two systematic reviews and a theoretical paper, which I wrote and had published whilst I was collecting my data, and then I moved onto results papers afterwards. Good luck with it :) KB

Hey SevenfoldGirl! Welcome to the forum! I just finished my PhD but was on here the whole time, and it's a great place to get some support and of course to support others as well. I'm actually just starting a post-doc at a uni very close to yours (probably not very difficult to work out which one lol!), and am due to move there in a couple of weeks. From what I can see it looks like a really nice area, I'm quite excited about it :) Good luck with starting your PhD! KB

Hey Emmaki! I think we all go through phases of worrying about this. It's difficult with a PhD because it's not like undergrad/masters degrees, where we have exams and hand in work and get grades back, so we knew exactly where we stood. It's a whole different board game, just one huge long piece of work which isn't examined until the end. So I think it's normal to wonder how good your work actually is, and also to have doubts. I was quite confident about my work until quite near the end of my PhD, when the dreaded fear set in. And the writing up period is especially gruelling, because you'll be thinking about handing in and assessment etc. If you've got this far, I'm sure you're doing a good job, but why not speak to your sup just for a bit of reassurance if it would help? Best, KB

Hey Ellain- I think it's best to just do as much as you can within the time-frame you have. In some disciplines publications are very important for getting a post-doc, and of course first-author papers look good, although middle-author ones will still be valuable. Are your first authorship papers submitted? If so, you can list them as 'submitted'/'under review' papers on your CV too. Personally I would try to get a first-author paper under your belt as well if you have time, but many PhD students will finish with no publications, so your three middle-author ones will go in your favour in the post-doc job market! I've had two interviews for post-docs/fellowships (I got the second job I was interviewed for) and both told me I'd been offered the interview on the basis of my PhD publication record. Of course the whole publication review procedure etc is very slow, so always good to start early! Good luck with it! KB

I feel for you guys too having to hang on for so long. Much as I disliked my internal examiner she was very quick to deal with the corrections. I have just had a revise and resubmit verdict on a journal paper I submitted though so I have a nice big list of complicated corrections to get on with for that....I get the feeling corrections of one sort or another are life-long in this career!

I will also have to wait until next July now to graduate as my uni only has one graduation per year. My uni said that you are officially 'Dr' once the corrections have been accepted though so am not too bothered about the graduation thing. Hoping to hear some good news from you guys soon- we should have a 'corrections accepted' thread on here as well as 'I passed my viva' threads :)

Best, KB

Ah, okay, think that rules out the content analysis thing then! KB

Hey Sneaks, I don't know what you've coded or how, but to the best of my knowledge 'content analysis' is one type of analysis that refers to qualitative interviews that have been coded numerically and then reported in a quantitative fashion. But it depends on what you are coding and the type of stats you are doing- I think content analysis is more reporting how often something occurs in the interviews etc, rather than doing any complex stats or anything. Possibly irrelevant but thought I'd throw it in your direction in case it was of any use! Best, KB

Hey Memo! I can't comment specifically on engineering, but my supervisor did her PhD at the Open University (after doing undergrad and masters degrees at UCL and Cambridge) and she is one of the world leaders at what she does (clinical psychology), so it certainly hasn't held her back! I think the main thing for the PhD is to get the topic right and work with supervisors who have similar interests and will be able to support you well- the institution is less important for the PhD than for undergrad/masters degrees. Best, KB

Hey Bbird! For some subjects doing an MSc first is compulsory to get onto a PhD, even with a first class degree, but for others it is not a requirement (especially in the pure sciences). You're obviously doing a subject where it isn't a requirement, so you should be fine. An MSc was compulsory for my PhD but I know many people doing different subjects who went straight from BSc and who are not having difficulties with the transition, so you should be just fine, especially since you did such a good job with your undergrad degree! Good luck with starting! KB