Thanks! Might be that my poor hubby is forced to comment on it despite being a 'lay' person. Sometimes I think 'PhD widow/ers' should get a qualification at the end too...

Hi Eds,
Thanks a lot for the offer/suggestion! I'm a bit reluctant to send my work to someone or post it online because my subject is extremely niche. At the end of the day, I don't know who I'm sending my work to, and I'm quite paranoid about preserving my online anonymity. This is the only space I have to vent/ask questions/be indiscreet without feeling anxious. Sorry if that sounds a bit silly...it's just how I prefer it. But thanks again for the offer. I've just found that my uni runs writing workshops so that might be a good place to start.

Hello all,

I've re-drafted my masters dissertation (which had an excellent grade) into a cogent 8000-word article and tailored it towards a specific and respected journal. I wrote the dissertation 6 years ago and have half-heartedly tried to get it published in less well-known journals a couple of times with no luck. This time, I've taken the re-draft seriously and think I have a good shot.

However, I'd like to get some feedback from experienced academics but getting time from them, unsurprisingly, is like getting a trickle of blood from an extremely large and intimidating stone. I've sent it to one member of my department who is not my supervisor, because the subject is quite different from my thesis topic and it's in his wheelhouse. He hasn't yet replied (it's been a couple of weeks) and I'm nervous to email him asking what's happening because he's under no obligation to help me.

I don't know who else to send the draft to. I don't know anyone else who has the time/inclination to help me. I'm too embarrassed to send it to other PhD students I know. Should I just send it off to the journal and hope for the best?

A 3rd-year support thread is a great idea! Late to the party as usual...but since term hasn't started, I'll consider myself early still :)

Feeling relatively upbeat but I'm sure that feeling will crash and burn once I get feedback. It seems masochistic to spend so much time and effort on producing writing that you're (hopefully) proud of, only to get back pages after pages of red critique. A necessary evil...sigh. That's assuming I ever actually get a reply from my sups who have managed to successfully ignore me for the past three months.

Have (stupidly?) booked a two-week vacation for next April, both as something to be excited about and to work towards, and as a last hurrah before we try to start a family. I keep trying to remember that there is a life outside the write-up!

Hi all,

Just started my third year and I'm wondering whether it's worth spending one day a week doing an internship. I think I could manage it with my current workload, and could always stop after a few months if it's too much. I've done a couple of similar internships before I started the PhD but not directly related to my current academic field. It's a small field so relevant internship opportunities are few.

My supervisor has made it clear in the past that she thinks it's better to stay in academia and I would tend to agree (for various reasons I won't go into right now) but I'm keeping my options open because of the depressing state of the academic job market. Also, the institution I'd send my internship application to has informal links with my academic department so I don't think my volunteering there would seem too weird to the academics. I've heard anecdotal stories of entry-level positions going to longer-term interns so I'd be keen to be in the right place at the right time.

Is it worth it though? Or would it seem strange for a doctoral student to be doing fairly basic work? I don't mind doing stuff like that (it might even be a nice break from my research). I'm also a little worried that they might turn me down and I'll be embarrassed if people found out I applied and got rejected.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Hi Annabelle,

As someone who's not a mum, but is constantly thinking about the PhD/baby conundrum, I wanted to share with you how I feel. I contributed to this same thread before and have done some thinking since then.

I'm turning 30 next year and am hoping to finish my PhD at the end of next year. For me, the bottom line is that if you really feel the urge to have a baby, just go for it. As another poster said, only you know when you and your partner are ready.

For me personally, my husband and I really want children but neither of us have the strong urge to have them in the next year or so. We talk about babies A LOT but we do like it being just the two of us for a bit longer. I worry about it getting more difficult to conceive with every passing year but I'm not about to rush into having a baby for the sake of my potentially elderly ovaries. At the end of the day, it's your choice. I feel like women in academia are already under so much pressure, it's a shame that we're made to feel so neurotic about a natural process! (not calling you neurotic, more calling myself that)

You can't know what's going to happen in the future, either with conception, pregnancy, the baby, or your career. Whatever you decide, you made that decision in good faith with the knowledge you had available at the time. Don't have any regrets, or become 'Captain Hindsight'! (what I call my friends who say "oh you should have done this...")

Best of luck, and keep us updated!

Okay, thanks a lot, Clupea! I figured it was a sensible thing to do but sometimes there are weird unspoken rules of etiquette in academia that I'm unaware of...

Hi all,

I'd like to submit an article for peer-review but the paper needs a lot of editing and re-formatting to tailor it for a specific journal (it's based on an essay I wrote several years ago). Before I do all of this, is it normal/desirable to email the journal editor with a very short (2-3 sentences max) description of the article and ask whether they'd be interested in the topic? I haven't had any prior contact with the editor. This is for a humanities subject.

Thanks!

Yes, it's all fun and games until you find mouse poop on your hostel bed! Then you start wondering why you ever left home :P

That's probably less likely to happen in America though - have fun, Ceruse!

Bilbo - Thanks for your comment. Yes it is 30 mins. They specified this to allow for more depth than the usual conference paper.
Chickpea - Thanks for your suggestion, I'll try to do that. Hope they'll reply to my email!

It should be fine as long you're not asking the uni to pay for extra accommodation/food/domestic travel. I've found my uni/dept to be pretty relaxed about these sorts of things. After all, the plane ticket will cost pretty much the same. I often take a few days sightseeing when I go abroad for uni business. I just pay for the extra days out of my own pocket. My supervisor even said it's one of the few perks of being an academic!

Hi everyone,

I'm presenting at my first conference in just under a month. I've submitted an abstract which basically covers my whole thesis topic - my aim was originally to present a brief overview of my thesis material and discuss some preliminary thoughts as I'm in the pre-writing up stage.

I've done a very very rough draft and I think trying to present all my key material in 30 minutes is technically possible but I won't be able to go into very much depth...or at least, people will maybe start to switch off if I'm forced to cover a lot of stuff quite superficially...it's hard to gauge because I'm inexperienced and it's a somewhat interdisciplinary conference. I don't know how familiar the audience will be - there will be some stuff they know way more than I do, like historical details and theory but I know my material more than anyone else (hopefully!)

So, can I just talk about the first half of my material, i.e. the earlier period? I think I can get into the topic a bit more and present it as a coherent narrative. Do I need to check with the conference organiser first? My focus isn't changing, just the scope.

Thanks for your help!

It's unlikely seeing as it was quite a few years ago now, and she strongly implied in emails exchanged after I finished the course that she wasn't that keen on maintaining correspondence with me...her specific field of study is very different from what I was doing in the thesis but there was a little overlap. To be honest, I wrote the whole thing without any feedback from her whatsoever. I know a couple of academics who will hopefully be willing to give feedback.

Thanks Doc. I've also decided in the meantime to give publishing my MA thesis one more go. I did it 5 years ago now and it's not really related to my current work (same field but it's a wide field) but it got a really good grade. I've had it rejected a few times from journals so I guess I just need to be persistent and tailor it more towards a specific journal.