Delta, your experience sounds bad, really sorry to hear that, I hope it's well behind you now.
Stuff, your post is heartening - nothing ventured, nothing gained I guess

Thanks a mil :-)

It opened and worked fine for me

Believe it! That's great news Slowmo, congrats :-)

Has anybody ever struck it lucky after sending a speculative job letter to a firm/organisation? Is there any point?

Gosh that was organised fast! But yes, you'll know it inside out and back to front immediately prior to and straight after submission so it's def a good thing.

No tv or nights out for you for another 7 weeks ;-)

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now it won't work for me! Use the quote button and type after the ']' bracket

Just click 'reply' button in the orange on the top right of your post. If you want to quote click the 'quote button'; I took a while to get the hang of that but eventually managed it. Then you need to click 'post' button in the orange strip of the reply section. You also haved to be signed in to post.

Hope that's the info you were looking for :-), but maybe I have just confused you more!

Def go for it(up) and it's a great vote of confidence in you from your supervisors both in terms of applying for the project and submitting your thesis :-)

Google translate is an option although it's not always 100% reliable. My daughter is doing french in university and though she says loads of them use it :$ when they are pressed for time [read when they have left their assignments 'til the last minute!] she says that often its translation is too literal.

From my extremely limited knowledge of your subject area Dunni, through sending you a couple of articles in the past, even google translate might struggle! Have you tried the author's university website bio? Maybe a french and english version might be available there. Or the journal publisher's website - maybe there are english and french options available there - worth a shot?

Hi Slowmo

I'd ask in your situation. Afterall it's not unreasonable for somebody to want to know where they stand once additional monies are involved. Are they quick repliers to email? If not, I think you will have to phone if only to see if you can arrange to talk to them before one of them goes off to that conference.

I get completely paronoid as well and constantly read between, above and below the lines of what my supv says! On his feedback to my draft he said "... the makings of a good thesis". Of course I read that as "... the makings of a so-so thesis" :-(. If they've been decent and fair up 'til now, they are hardly likely to suddenly try to thwart you.

ASK :-)

PhD-wise I think I'm at a similar stage to you KB. I'd like to get into student services but haven't succeeded in being shortlisted thus far due to having no direct experience in student services despite being a student, tutoring and lecturing students and being a mother of students :-(. I want to stay in academia but not academia-academia if you know what I mean ;-). Having said that I have applied for two postdocs (no joy) and a few other outside uni jobs, equally no joy!

Thanks guys, I'm going to add a bit to my intro but not another chapter and yes, I'll just see if he notices!

Agree also re: wordage but we have that conversation and he doesn't see a problem once I keep it under 100,000 :-( -in my uni the limit is 80-100 and he likes em long!