Oh Wally!! How that made me laugh!! I've been fending these off myself, and ready to kill at times....

My personal favourite, was the night I flew home for a meeting with my supervisors a few weeks ago. I had stopped off to visit my cousin who I hadn't seen in ages, and was telling her about how stressed I've been, how worried about my writing, and I was literally terrified about the meeting the following day. Her fiance walked in and asked "Writing up, is it hard like?" in a tone that implied, you're just writing, how hard can it be?!

I had to restrain myself from screaming at him. BUT!! we're nearly there eh?!

======= Date Modified 02 Sep 2010 11:31:48 =======
....eh what Teek said....that's pretty much exactly what I was thinking of saying, verbatim....

Except to add, please don't use Refworks, it's horrific. When you have a Refworks Support Office in your uni you know there is something not quite right about the package...I use Mendeley, available as a free download. It's relatively new so they are frequently adding updates which are automatically updated on your system, and it's more of an academic community reference base, than just a referencing software. It's the easiest user interface I've ever come across and works great for sciences.

Budget to avoid debt, make use of the free lunches available, usually if there is a postgrad committee they will organise all sorts of cheap activities to do, including food events, and you can meet people this way. Be brave, remember you are not as crap as you will start to feel, and enjoy it!

ah What a nightmare!! After having a massive flip out when I went to make tea at 1am this morning and saw the bloody b*****ds ('scuse my language) crawling all over the sink I had enough! There were loads of the wee ones, and one mah-hoosive bad ass roach, which we managed to trap and kill. But I couldn't take anymore and went to bed! I shall prob be back on tonight though, lost some work time last night which is desperately needed. And Teek, we are living in an apartment block here and apparently they are all over the place so we have to wait for the 'residence committee' to make some room in the budget to pay for someone to fumigate the place! and the french boyf refuses to pay for someone himself when the cockroaches will just come back anyway, so we are just getting traps or something until the proper person comes with chemicals. And this morning I turned on my laptop to be greeted with this strange crunching/clicking sound - turns out a cockroach had taken up residence on my laptop cooling tray and got caught up in the fan when I started it up, so I had to take tweezers and pluck out all the bits and pieces of his body and legs. Wonderful. I hate France...

:-)

Ah... the almost 30 freaks! love it!!

Good work guys!! don't forget, these don't go in the thesis (but how wonderful if they did!)

Eagerly awaiting This PhD is Shady now.. :)

God Slizor you were fairly burning the midnight oil last night! Hope you got sorted though and had a good rest!

I'm signing on for a little while tonight, although I'm not sure how long I can last - just discovered we have a proper cockroach family here and now I'm totally paranoid they are crawling over me, haven't been able to concentrate for the past 20 mins. I keep freaking out at the slightest shadow and brushing non-existent insects off myself!!

Ah hoo, must crack on with this chapter though, the viva waits for no insect...

Oh yay!! Something fun on the forum, feels like it's been ages!!

I'm utter chuff at this kind of thing though, so I shall sit back patiently and wait for the song-off to get into the swing of things!! How fun! :-) (yes, my life truly is this sad...)

like others have siad, it's not really possible to answer this one...I was accepted for a PhD in my undergrad department, with a project and 2 supervisors sorted, but the department was only awarded funding for 4 places that year which went to uber-qualified people so I couldn't do it with self funding (Science phd). The following year I was told that I could have received funding that year as there was loads available for the department, but I had already started my phd in a different department. So it;s horses for courses I'm afraid...I'd apply everywhere you can though, no point restricting yourself, although don't plan things too much for one place if you are secretly holding out for another place...

Oh well done Charls!! Oh gosh I'm so jealous!! I hope you enjoy your downtime now, you've earned it!!! (up)

Ok I'm done for tonight!! See you all in the morning!

Ohh I hope it's all ok AL...overactive thyroid could be it with the weight loss and all, but hopefully it's "just" stress - at least once you get the phd over you can relax and hopefully things will get back to normal. Good luck (up)

I'm here Al!! Sorry I meant to log on earlier but got sidetracked by an email from my sup looking for the chapter I'm finishing tonight! I'm almost there, one last read through the discussion and I can send it. Getting extremely nervous about meeting my deadline though, I can't see it happening!! Doesn't help that I fell out with the boyf last night and haven't spoken today much and he's being a total idiot.... Ah well!!

Hope you're getting on ok, and not up too late tonight!!

Sorry Emmaki, I can't get it either...is there any way you can get via Inter Library Loan?

ok, I'm done for this evening!! I have changed this chapter to one that is 33 pages instead, although the font is only size 11 and I've still got to add the abstract.. :) But the main body is done, I will be picking it over with a fine tooth comb in the the morning and no doubt changing things before sending it off to be annihilated by by sups.

So it's almost 1 am here, and I'm signing off folks, good luck everyone!

don't be silly, it's all par for the course when you're presenting to be nervous!! I remember taking about 3 outfits to my first conference as I was so nervous about wearing the wrong thing!! :) needen't have worried, it was all socks-with-sandals type ecologists! :D

Oh AL!! At least come this weekend, you will be able to relax and forget about it all for a while, I can't believe you are so close to finishing! I'm so pleased for you!! Except for the insane tiredness and stress though, you really do have my sympathies!

It's nice to know I'm not alone on here though! I'm working on a chapter too Wally, doing the first draft of a new combined chapter - almost worse than having to start form scratch, finding a way to merge two chapters! An Ev, don't stress too much about your talk, get some decent sleep tonight so you're on the ball tomorrow and good luck!!

Now, the next section to go....