It will give you such a focused and defined shape to the research and PhD that I would have to bet your supervisors would be very impressed. At least try--get the book, write the two statements, do a new work plan that is based on what these reveal, and see what they say! At least they have to applaud your initiative and critical thinking and analysis of your situation and your work and help you build from there!

YIKES how devastating Jojo-sorry to hear it.

But fight back from this, don't accept it as the only option. Grab the Creswell book I mention in the other thread, shape up a purpose statement and a research question using his guide, that will show you where to shape up your own research and go BACK to the supervisors with a suggestion of how to do the work. A concise statement of purpose and research question is hard to arrive at, but once you have it, its so helpful--and it will immediately shine a light on where you need to be headed. Try it!

I don't have the book in front of me, so am vague on the particulars, but I think it talked about being able to have a short-ish statement for both the purpose of the research and the research question itself. That forces you to crystalise the ideas in your own head...and its NOT easy to make those short statements, but once you have them, its such a nice place to go back and sort of center yourself as you go, remembering the focus, and knowing when you have headed off in the weeds.

Even if you are doing quants, I think his insight on setting this up is so helpful. I HAD a research question and its not varied at all generally, but his book helped provide the focus on how to state the question and areas of inquiry--and why its so helpful and even necessary to do this.

I would recommend this book to ANYONE who is working on a PhD. Even if you have a well defined research question already, his book talks about how to frame a question in a way that is useful to guide the research--how to have a concise question, what it does, how to think about the research---he really puts all of these issues in a nice frame and shows how it really helps clarify research.

Excellent book on this is by Creswell, hang on let me hunt up the citation! Its J Creswell, Qualatative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches, Sage Publications, 2nd edition, 2007. He tells you EXACTLY how to go about setting up this thing with defining the research question--he talks about arriving at a purpose statement for the research and then from that, your research question. My Methods chapter starts with a Research Purpose Statement and a Research Question, that I worked on after reading his book.

As a mature student, I say my age and life experience gives ME a boost--I would have been a flake at this 20 years ago, and would probably have been PhD roadkill....because I was far more interested in pubs, my boyfriend, a suntan ( if that does not date me what does??!), marvelling at the new thing that music came out on that would replace 8-track tapes ( the CD)--no one owned a VCR machine, you rented them along with your film...but I digress...

Age and life experience can give you that perspective and determination to carry on. Not saying that younger students lack the drive and determination. I think at any stage of life that you do a PhD it has its own plusses and minuses...its up to YOU to tally them as to whether it works now for you. I say go for it.

Statistics are just that...I would not let someone's view of whether you are likely to complete or not shade your decision!!! YOU know better than anyone if you have what it takes to complete, as its said over and over on here, it comes down to sheer grit and determination and tenacity above all, so it would seem. If you are determined to make it, then, I would say the odds go up as to whether you will, all of the other factors playing in as well, of course.

DEFINE SOON!

"3. KFC (that's how bad it's getting)
4. Pistachio barfi
5. Old El Paso tacos (since I saw the advert for the new "Standable Stackable taco shell)."

KFC--its the greatest--well, not as good as Taco Bell, but...! What on earth is pistachio barfi? It cannot be what it sounds like...


Tacos are very good for you. Get shells that are made of anything but white flour, put healthy lean meats and fresh chopped veggies in, skip the sour cream, a dash of salsa ( I think you all Brits say chilli sauce!) and its a very healthy meal!

Its the same for a PhD--break it down until its manegeable, even if manageable is 15 minutes ( or 5!) of typing!!! !You did this so well. Just go and relax, forget the stuff for a day or so, easier said than done, and then come back with the eggtimer and KEEP ON GOING until you are Dr Lara.

You think that you would be feeling better when you are done, but you feel worse!

A wise old cowboy that once helped me with training a very difficult horse, a sort of Horse Whisperer type, said that horses became stubborn and fearful in training when you gave them a task that was too big and too hard for them to understand. Thus, you got nowhere--the horse was not being "bad"--it was simply stressed and had no idea how to comply with what was being asked.

So the trick ( as you have been doing so successfully) was to break the task down into manageable bites for the horse...as small as it took...until the horse understood and could do the one step, and the next, and the next, and then eventually the whole task was done.

Hang in there Lara, I suspect you are still feeling the stress of meeting the deadline, and you had to just bury all that stress, so you could focus on the deadline--which YOU MET!~ And now that you can relax from the pressure of the deadline, all of that pent up pressure is now coming out--it has to! I get post stress migraines---I can go like mad under stress, but when its done, I get knocked back for a day or more sometimes with a post stress migraine--they come on when the stress is done. Go figure.

Last box!
So my supervisor, understanding this process, was OK with what I was submitting, and I would sometimes just have to bring up the work of the carpenter, from time to time, and that of the Judge, as things I had not yet reached.

To me its an utter waste of time to get highly polish and edit when you KNOW all that work is going to come apart again in revisions. I thought it was important to have read for typos, including in footnotes, and to have good structure in so far as headings, topic sentences for each paragraph, etc. I would also indicate where I knew there were conceptual holes, or places I was researching but had not yet written, OR where I was planning revisions already ( and would try to give a little comment on what that might be).

Hope that helps.

Drafts I would turn in were in the stage of carpenter, or architecht to carpenter, and I let my supervisor know about this paradigm, so that he would understand the final edits and high polishing would be done, that they were not forgotten, but I was not at that stage yet. Thus, structural problems and "flow" were not all solved, as that is the job of the carpenter, and he did not always finish his job by the time I sent off drafts. But the madman and the architecht always did.

As for polished, no they were not highly polished. They were readable, with some polishing, editing, and proof reading, but I knew they were drafts, and thought that it would waste time to make them highly polished when I knew they would be revised multiple times.

Are you familiar with the Flowers Paradigm? Its a four stage writing and editing process, with a madman, architecht, carpenter and judge. I would say the Judge for me will show up in the writing up stage, I have kept him/her at bay to the best of my ability until then, although he/she makes an appearance for conference papers.