I took a year off between my BA and my MPhil, and another year between that and my PhD, in both cases because I needed to earn the money to pay my tuition fees. If you can do something in your time off that is relevant and/or beneficial to your proposed research, that's great, but it won't count against you if you don't.

So long as you can demonstrate to a potential supervisor that you have a good research proposal, and the ability to do the research, you should be fine.

If you want to do an online/distance course with a reputable institution, why not try Birkbeck or the Open University? You might not get funding, but their fees should be much more reasonable, and you will get a real degree at the end of the course!

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/
www.open.ac.uk

I occasionally back-up onto a USB drive, but mainly I use Dropbox. My last USB stick failed completely, so I am rather wary of them now!

https://www.dropbox.com/

History of Art FTW! :D

I try to impose a loose structure, although it has been knocked about a bit recently. I find that going to the library, instead of working from home, is quite motivating, because there are fewer distractions and you are there for the specific purpose of working. It is quite possible to put in 4 productive hours a day, rather than doing a 9-5 schedule for the sake of it.

I *heart* my supervisor. He isn't the type to gush with praise, so a little means a lot from him, if you know what I mean. Having been going through some difficult personal circumstances recently, I sent him an email basically saying 'I'm behind with my writing, can I please come and talk to you, my progress is becoming slow and rubbish'. Not only did he reply almost as soon as I sent the email (at about 2am!) with 'Come and see me as soon as possible, and don't worry, your progress has been more than satisfactory'. He also listened to me ranting and wailing about a completely non-academic issue for the best part of two hours, gave wise advice, and was generally a Good Egg about the whole thing. Awesome.

This is a tough one. I have just finished the first year of my PhD in London, self-funded (thankfully I'm on the AHRC bandwagon from October). I worked p/t for 12 hours per week in a bookshop, but my maintenance costs were minimal as I lived with my parents (in Outer London) for the year - is this an option for you? If you work in central London, you should be guaranteed a London weighting on top of your wages, meaning that your minimum hourly wage for shop or office work should be about £7.20 p/h.

You may also be able to apply for subject-specific funds, and/or funds linked to your hometown (e.g. when I did my Masters outside London, a London guild gave me a grant of £2500, based on my residency in a specific borough of London). The Postgraduate Studentships website is a good place to look, or ask the Finance Office of your prospective university. You may also be able to get some Teaching Assistant work at your university. Don't rule out the possibility of being able to secure AHRC or ESRC funds from your second year onwards - this is what happened for me. Good luck.

It's never too early to present at a conference! My first paper was delivered during my Masters, and I gave another paper 3 months after enrolling on my PhD. Your supervisor should ideally support you in this; it never hurts to submit a proposal. If it's strongly within your research area, consider the conference paper as preparation for a chapter or theme of your PhD. Good luck!

I confess I am tempted to submit work in a really silly font, like Curlz or Delta, just to see the comments my sup. would make.

I've just found a font called "Hobbit", and another called "Super Fly" (presumably the latter is exclusively for the use of guys from 1970s Harlem, who wear pimp-hats with a feather)

I am using Calibri for my chapter at the moment, although I have a soft spot for Georgia.

Comic Sans should die.

And yes, this is a serious and profound question - you have to stare at the damn thing every day! :-)

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I think that fee rise applies mainly to taught Masters courses, all of which seem to start in the region of 5000-7000 per annum. As far as I'm aware, fees for non-lab based PhDs (so, arts, humanities etc) rise only in line with inflation, by about 50-80 pounds per year. They're about 3400 now, and I wouldn't think that they will be much above that next year, or the year after.

About 3-4 hourse per day of "proper" writing, plus time spent on emails, conference abstracts, journal work and tea. I find that my work gets done in reasonable time, as long as I'm consistently putting in a few productive hours every afternoon.

If the AHRC receives more than one funding nomination on your behalf (e.g. from 2 different universities), they reserve the right to exclude you from the competition, I think. Technically you are only supposed to apply for AHRC funding at one institution, but I believe quite a few institutions are tacitly ignoring this.

The best way to proceed, if you insist on applying for funding at 2 institutions, is to wait for the outcomes of your applications (normally they will interview you before nominating you), then, if one is successful, inform the other institution that you are withdrawing from their competition... if that makes sense. Basically, make sure that you don't have 2 different institutions submitting you to the AHRC at once, or you're in trouble!

Emmab, I'm sorry that your nomination didn't go through - best of luck with the scholarship.

Do you mean that your department interviewed you and nominated you for an award, but you were then turned down by a central committee, or do you mean that you applied but were not interviewed?

Sorry to pursue the point, I'm just trying to work out if I can safely spend money yet! :$

I checked this out before my interview, and was explicitly told that no visual presentation was necessary or expected. Good luck!