I often go through patches were I'm doing nothing, I feel its sometimes useful to just do little things that are work related but don't take too much effort, last time I had one of these patches I just started drawing diagrams that would be useful in my thesis. Alternatively I find that just taking a day or two off and doing nothing work related helps me when I come back

I agree with hillyg just concentrate on the background material and possible directions and what they could lead to etc and say that at this point you're seeing which option is the most suitable

I guess if you want to be a lecturer then it's probably worth it as long as you don't let it completely take over

SixKitten I think most lecturers are appointed mainly on their research abilities, so paper publications etc are probably the most important. (As I found that the people that were bad lecturers were really good researchers)

I'm not sure if I'm understanding you right or not, If you weren't to do this course would you have to do something else instead? If it's entirely optional how much time would it take up in classes and assessed work etc?

DanB yeah tell me about it, they made it compulsary for all PhD students to do it if they wanted to teach, 2 whole afternoon sessions to tell us nothing we didn't know already!

I'm still bitter about it

I'm guessing that if your university is running these kind of courses then they would look on such experience favourably if you were to apply for an academic post, however I doubt they would dismiss your application if you didn't do it.

I guess it depends on you and the alternatives you have, if you've already decided you would like to be a lecturer and you aren't missing out anything that would be important to your research it would probably be worth doing

The nearest I've had to that is being sent on University teaching/tutoring/demonstrating courses before we were allowed to demonstrate or tutor, which they claim will help if anyone wants to teach but it's not a formal course

H - Yeah I though it strange that they didn't have cable put in when it was built seeing it's only 2 years old, but it doesn't. And the rules of the complex state no one is allowed satelite dishes

HangSeng thanks for that I'll cxheck out the website and rules of the flat complex as regards it

I live in a new built flat and can't get either

Like you guys said I never took a conscious decision about it, Just doing my PhD somewhere different to my undergrad degree I had to make new friends both in the department and out of it, trouble is that alot of these have now left and those that haven't are busy in their final year, the time I would have spent with them has just been taken over by work.

As an undergrad I used to got out all the time but now all the rushing about of societies and clubs I don't have time for anymore

Just wondering how much spare time everyone has outside of their PhD? I'm about 18 months in and my social life seems to have died - except I don't know when!

I know that the writing up will take me ages, just to sit down and write a small report or paper takes me ages, so something the size of a thesis I feel if I could get bits of it done early then it would be so much better

I'm now about 18 months into my PhD and I currently looking around at mates that are at/coming to the end of their PhD's who are frantically writing up.

I feel that at this point I have enough of the background and enough results to think about starting to write up a couple of chapters. But friends in the department are saying that I shouldn't even think about writing up for another 6 months. I was just wondering when you guys first started to think about writing up and if you have any advice? The thought of spending a solid 5-6months just writing up will kill me

Anyone any ideas?

Although I'm only half way though my PhD at the moment the fact that a couple of people in my research group have just had their external examiners appointed has got me thinking.

As the research field I'm in is small there are a limited number of people that would be suitable externals, the thing is as I have done a Masters in this field at one University and am doing a PhD at another, and have collaborated with a number of other people, that covers a significant proportion of the researchers in the field.

So I'm quite curious to know what the general restrictions on external examiners are. For example can your external be soeone you've published with?, or someone who has written you a reference? or someone that has supervised you at masters/undergrad level?