How is everyone doing today at the end of the week?

Hope it has been a good week for you guys. Mine has not been productive as I had hoped but been poorly with a sickness bug :/ so I will let myself off ;)

Started a separate thread on this before realising this 'moans' thread is here...

Supervisors who just no longer acknowledge your existence in the third year!

Hi all,

Not so much looking for advice, more just a venting space!

Does/did anyone elses supervisor just seemingly abandon them in their final year? I have never 'depended' on my supervisor as I work very independently. Even for my first couple of years I would only see them once every few months. Now I am writing up, I send chapters when I complete them which either does not get acknowledged or takes months for them to read anything. They now just ignore any emails about my thesis, but recently have just begun emailing me with favors not related to my PhD or publishing or anything that is relevant to my progress.

I just think it's a bit rude when they are ignoring any correspondence about my work, but then only contact me when they want a favor doing and do not even acknowledge my other emails. I am working very hard to complete before my funding runs out...every day, weekends, late into the night, and I have begun to find this quite anger inducing really!

Did anyone else have a similar experience? Sharing your grumbles too may help! Also, do not get me wrong, I am a very patient person but I think we all get a tad frustrated when writing up.

I agree with the above posts.

Publishing is not an essential part of the PhD process. If you can get them, great, if not, it is ok as it is not a requirement. As others have said above, you can certainly send publications out once the PhD process is over. I would imagine that would be an easier approach as it will be a case of converting chapters into papers.

I think it is a good idea to broadly state key findings in the introduction as they are normally part of the abstract, yet I would write them in a broad overarching way rather than a list of very particular findings in the introduction. But that is just my opinion!

Oh my goodness, 73% is awesome. I am not sure how to calculate this, I would say I am 80% there. I have 1/4 of my final findings chapter to go, then a conclusion. BUT I have to do some major editing on my introduction and literature review. I have also kept discovering things that are relevant to a findings chapter I submitted to my sup one month ago that I would like to weave into it when editing the final draft.

Where did the PhD go guys? I remember my induction day like it was yesterday!

Could you put it in the conclusion? I think this would be the best place to include a summary, even if just a bullet pointed list, of your key findings, otherwise you may find the conclusion chapter repeats this additional 'key findings' chapter? The key findings will be in your discussion, but it sounds as though you want to summarise them after discussing to make it clearer (have I interpreted this correctly?) If so, I think the best place would be your conclusion.

Yes, wishing you both (Chickpea and Hugh) a productive day tomorrow!

I blame the unhealthy sleeping pattern I developed last year when I was drowning in teaching work. I'm most productive early in the morning yet I really should learn that rising early won't happen if I stay up until midnight!

I think moving the recommendations to the end sounds good :) I think sometimes the hardest part is planning how you are going to structure a chapter/collection of chapters. It took me a couple of months last year of just thinking, note-making and mind-map constructing to work out how to structure my findings chapters. I even have a mini introductory chapter just for my findings to justify why I have structured them in the way that I have- maybe you could do something like this once you have completed your findings and discussion to set the reader up for how you have organised it and why?

Also, I am glad I am not the only one who gave in to an afternoon nap!

I am not sure about that- I am dreading the LR as I feel that will be much tougher :/

I think that there will always be new findings emerging and it may be that you need to put a 'cap' on integrating new things (unless they are huge and groundbreaking) into your discussion at some point. I doubt the odd paper between now and submission will result in a huge shake up of your findings. If you feel really strongly about integrating something that you find during the writing of your LR, just go to your findings/discussion and leave yourself a note to refer to that particular paper etc. All it takes sometimes is a couple of sentences to integrate a newer piece of literature into a chapter. I am planning on finishing my discussion/conclusions then integrating some of the literature I have cited there in my LR (but not every single piece mentioned as that would not be possible). There are some broader 'themes' in my findings that would be good to include a section on in my LR for instance. I am planning to do one final 'sweep' of journals when writing my LR and only include new things if I think it is undoubtedly necessary; I will be very selective of which new literatures will be included.

On another note, I have had a wildly unproductive day and time is just tick tick ticking away. I had a nap earlier even though I got a lot of sleep last night, and I am just sitting here panicking and eating birthday cake...oh dear!

Thank you for the birthday wishes Chickpea!

Hugh- I feel it is best to complete the conclusion first. I am going to be writing my conclusion over May-June before returning to do some heavy editing (or a complete rewrite) of my Literature Review. The only reason I have for doing it in this order is that I feel on a psychological level that it will separate 'finishing' a full (rough) draft and 'editing' the thesis. I feel this may make me more motivated in tackling the Literature Review, edits on my Methods/Methodology and completing the introduction (which I gave up on last year and is just pages of bullet points and quotes!) Not sure if this helps, but I suppose my best advice would be do whatever you feel more motivated to do yourself; if you follow a pattern that you feel unsure about your motivation levels may drop.