Hi Satchi,

Transport for London's 'Journey planner' facility lets you search your destination by post code, put in your starting location too (by post code or by station name) and they'll give you instructions for your whole journey - i.e which station to head to, and then the walking or bus route to the specific place you're looking for.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/

I don't recognise NM9 as a place in London though, do you mean NW9? In that case it looks like Kingsbury (Jubilee line) or Colindale (Northern line) would be your best options.

Good luck!

Maccle

Hi Jampie,

I’ll try and offer my thoughts on what you’ve said, though I’m sure there’s other people on here who can be more directly useful to you. Having read many of the ‘I want to quit’ threads myself, the most immediately important advice people give is that if you are going to quit, you should stay with what you’re doing - while you’ve got funding – until you find yourself something else you want to do, and another source of income.

I’m coming to the end of my second year now, and had some similar feelings twelve months ago: for a long time I’d wanted to do a PhD (admittedly unlike in your case) because I actively wanted to be an academic, but then after starting doctoral study came to have a better understanding of what the academic job entails and no longer think it’s really for me. At times I find it hard to be motivated for my project as while on the one hand I enjoy my subject and find it quite fun, on the other hand I don’t really ‘believe’ in it having any value as a project other than that it will lead to a PhD, something which is no longer as important to me. However, the reason I’ve decided not to quit is because I’m seeing this time instead as a useful period for really getting to know myself and what I want out of life. In my case I’ve made the decision that I really want to be a secondary teacher – out of the different parts of the academic job which my PhD is allowing me to practice, teaching is what I really enjoy, and I think I would prefer the more structured career path, and I love working with young people. I’m just telling you my example because I’d suggest that, when you’re in a situation of not knowing what you want from the future, the security of being mid-PhD could actually be quite productive?

My decision to change direction means that I can, to a small extent, alter my work commitments to improve my chances of the career change: occasional and part time work with young people, and taking on more teaching and teacher-training type activities within my department. As you said you’d chosen your own project, would there be any scope for you to - within your research - start exploring other related non-academic options, or arrange some experiences that might help you decide what you want to do? You say for example that most people go into clinical psych but you don’t have the experience for it, sorry I don’t know anything about the field, but would you be able to do anything within your research to get you more exposed to that area, so that you could then decide whether you wanted to bother getting experience to open that route for you or whether that still doesn’t inspire you either?

I agree with you that the pros you list as reasons to continue don’t really seem valid enough to keep you doing something you don’t enjoy – and I really believe you shouldn’t stay in anything that makes you miserable – but with your uncertainty on the other hand as to what you’d rather do, could there be a way of making this PhD work for you in other ways than just the academic? If so, maybe staying on for six or twelve months more would give you a clearer idea, after which point you could just quit anyway or, if after all you’d changed your mind about the value of the qualification, maybe even stay on and see it out?

Anyway, hope those thoughts have some logic to them, even if the idea doesn’t work for you. All the best with whatever you decide
(up)

Cheers,

Maccle

I agree with Larrydavid. By 'hard-up students' do they not just mean that students in general are hard-up, as we don't have the full-time salary or things like set department allowances for conference travel which senior colleagues benefit from? Especially as you're presenting, and you've already applied for what funding you can from you're dept., I'd say you might be exactly the sort of person the waiver is designed for? Surely no harm in applying anyway, good luck!

Hi Rahbar,

I can access that, do you want to PM me your email address?

Maccle

Oh right great, thanks guys! :-)

Hi guys,

I've been a lurker on the forum for a while, but having woken up today full of good resolutions, have decided to introduce myself and try to start a thread :-) Partly I'm full of good resolutions today as I've just bought a new computer over the bank holiday weekend, and I'm determined this is going to help me organise myself and get down to beginning to write my thesis. So to that end, would anybody care to share any computer programs/ software they've found particularly useful as a PhD student? I know you may have discussed this before but couldn't find a similar thread in the recent past, and sorry too to any computer scientists if I'm using the wrong terms! I'm in the humanities, so am really thinking about software for large amounts of word processing, and general organisational/ time management programs. I don't consider myself very technologically advanced personally, but I'll go first with a few extra things I use, in case anybody doesn't know about them...

- Sticky notes: downloadable for free from many different places, to pile up on my desktop and remind me later of anything that pops into my mind while I'm busy with something else...

- Dropbox: one of many programs which backs up/ stores your work for free in 'the cloud'. I used iDrive on my previous machine, but have heard good things about Dropbox, seems particularly useful for synching stuff between my home + work computers, as well as having it all available on the Dropbox website.

- mytomatoes.com: not something to download, but a website for trying to discipline yourself to write according to the 'Pomodoro' technique.

Right, I think that's me out. Does anybody have any programs they use for producing a weekly planner/ timetable, or any advances on Microsoft word for non-linear writers?

Thanks all! (up)
Maccle

Hi EvaG,
Are all of your modules equally weighted? Or might your research project count for more than a quarter of your overall grade? You don't seem to be in too bad a position at the moment, I make the average of your marks to be 66%, so it sounds possible to me that you could make a 70% average with a very good dissertation. You're obviously frustrated about your past two marks, but try not to think about them at this stage and just focus all your attention on the final project, then you'll give yourself as good a chance as possible. I imagine from what you've written that all of your modules are equally weighted, but for example when I did a masters the dissertation was worth 50%, and only the best two marks out of my three options counted alongside that at 25% each. It may be worth clarifying your situation if you're unsure, but either way I think you still have a chance, focus on making your final piece of work as good as it can be, and try not to worry about what's all ready done.
Good luck! (up)