STIR

This is a tough one really.. I have a yorkshire accent so the way I say vowels will be different than someone from say the home counties or the west country.

For example i would pronouce the words bath, glass and grass with a harder short 'a' .. but then someone with an RP accent would have a softer long 'a' sounding a bit like 'ahh'.

the best way to get round this is to use the phonetic alphabet so say A for alpha, E for echo, I for igloo etc. that way you can save the confusion.
http://www.dynamoo.com/technical/phonetic.htm

I've not been through my viva yet so i can't say that I know how you are feeling. However, at the end of the day you have passed so congrats for that, if you weren't worthy of a pass then i'm sure you wouldn't have passed. I know people who have had a lorry load of corrections to do and from what I have heard it is common to have corrections to do. Have you talked to your supervisor about how you are feeling? It might be worth having a chat with him/her to air your worries and then work with them to come up with a plan of action for sorting out your corrections.

Also some externals are just very harsh in a viva. There is a group leader here who did a viva for a friend of one of the phd students I work with and apparently he totally ripped him to shreds, found fault and questioned everything he did. This group leader is known for going off on an ego trip and the whole viva was basically a case of him arguing black is white for the sake of it. So don't beat yourself up cos at the end of the day you did pass 8-)

I understand where you are coming from. There is one other PhD student in our lab who ignores the needs of other people and uses what she wants when she wants, for example all the PCR machines or all the benchtop centrifuges in one go. Or she uses up stock reagents then never reorders them so when you come to use them they are all gone. It gets a bit annoying but she is one of these girls who is totally selfish and doesn't take note when it's pointed out that other people need to use machines.

But on the whole we have a booking system for equiptment in our lab and pretty much everyone sticks to it. Basically if you have booked the machine then you should be the one to use it.

Is it a case of a post doc saying that their work is more important cos you're just a phd student? Have you taked to your supervisor about it? If funding is at stake then surely that should make your work a priority.

BOWLS

Many banks offer Career Development Loans take a look at this site http://inourhands.lsc.gov.uk/ it might offer some information on funding available to you.

Otherwise go to your bank and talk to one of the student account managers to see how they can help you.

Good luck!

SPUN

TOILS

I bought an Acer for around £400 when I started my PhD (Sept 06) and it worked well for a while but then after about 12 months the a/c power cable broke so I had to pay £40 for a new one only then for the battery to pack in.. so now I need to constantly have it plugged in. Also I have found that Acer put so much cr*p on the machines that it really slows the machine down and eats up RAM and CPU power. Unfortunately 6 months after buying it I was pleased with it and my other half bought one too and he has had problems with the power supply so much that we ended up selotaping the a/c power to the machine to stop it from cutting out. Also his runs with vista and there were lots of teething problems with WiFi and it runs very slow. So I would advise you to steer clear of acer laptops!

I think I will be buying a new computer for when I start writing up, don't want it to totally break down on me and lose my work!

D'oh you beat me there... erm...

RANTS

PANTS

FLAN

minty

CLAP

MONTH