======= Date Modified 08 Dec 2009 12:54:42 =======
oooh!! a work advent calendar! i kind of like that idea!! you can open a window each morning and along with ur little piece of chocolate (to numb the impending pain..) you can find out just what exactly you have to do that day! Sounds like a sterling idea sneaks!

I'm already getting behind today myself, shouty-type supervisor hasn't even appeared today when he told me to come up this morning and i said yessir, i'll be there first thing...maybe it's silent revenge for all my stupidness yesterday...so now I'm floundering around his department waiting for him to show up and getting behind in the report I wanted to do today...joy oh joy!

and yet again i have to come and remind you who the rightful winner is... :p

ahhh the benefits of hindsight! I'm currently facing into a deep hole of silly mistakes i have made in the past and which are coming abck to haunt me, but i refuse to let them win! no point beating urself up about it Phd_Saga, truth is these things happen throughout the course of your phd and with the best will in the world sometimes you just cant help it. Whatever your reasons (subconscious or otherwise) for not using the room, you can;t do anything about it now. Just do what you can with the data, see if it possible to re-run the study, you never know it might be an interesting aside to your thesis to include a bit on the influence of distractions on the experiment, although it's not really my field so I'm not sure how plausible that may be.
For the future, you now know one of the things to think about when designing you experiments and it's another lesson learned. Onwards and upwards! Now if only I can stop making silly mistakes myself....it's something that has plagued me from primary school, I've lost count of the amount of maths questions I got wrong cos the working out was right but I wrote a wrong number or something somewhere....

lol just checked out a clip of malcom tucker on you tube there! my sup's maybe not that bad, but then again, ive never seen him really mad! he fairly gets my cursing juices going sometimes though!! :D thanks for that sneaks, that show looks really, good, il have a look for the episodes online, yet more ways to procrastinate! :D

no no chocolate is soo much easier to wean urself off!! and much more socially acceptable, ul have to stand outside all through winter in the rain, and be all cold and smelly and just no! save urself!

======= Date Modified 07 Dec 2009 18:02:31 =======
not to make you go running off a cliff wally, but another phd student told me yesterday that her supervisor had told her that if she was doing a phd in order to get a better paid job it was the wrong way to go....:-( but then again, who knows?! I was at a presentation today about working on documentaries for the BBC and phd's are helpful there, and it looked like an amazing job!!



mission for the week...meet with supervisor, tail between my legs and accept the inevitable abuse (he cursed at me last week, nice..), get reading and report done for new experiments next year, start cell counts properly, and hopefully get this paper submitted...think that's me!

You're totally right keenbean, although, take a day or two off to chill out if u feel like it, I broke my wrist back in May and it's not fun working on those painkillers! I had to redo a good bit of work when I was actually thinking properly!! :-) I know how frustrating it can be when you have to put off your sampling work, I wasn't covered by insurance for a few weeks so I couldnt do my fieldwork which put me back a bit, but when you're feeling up to it definitely use your time for writing and getting stuck into your lit review etc, you'll be glad of it when it comes to writing!!
But yea that it's not more serious! I hope everyone else is ok too :-)

oh i totally know that feeling!! SOmetimes I think I'd like to run away and do a non-thinking, minor responsibility type of job forever...like in a coffee shop or something...but then i remember I've done every sort of public service/customer service/food service/cleaning/office type job imaginable since i was 13 and I know I wouldn't be happy unless I was causing myself academic agony...ah hooo!!!

no bug nooooooooo!!!

no phd is ever worth that, there are better ways to deal with it!!

Ok calm sneaks! first things first, 'christmas' is a broad term, as far as im concerned u have until christmas eve with a christmas deadline, do you think the extra few days will help at all? Do the paper you told ur sup you'd have in first, or at least get a basic first draft to him by then, and you have after christmas to do your lecture plans for the new term, it doesnt usually start until near the end of jan anyway, with exams etc, at least that's how it is in my uni...
But I totally feel your pain! I was hoping to have cell counts for all my samples done by christmas and I'll be lucky if i get even half way through them, not to mention work on another set of exeriments I have to set up asap after christmas....good god....

Pffff!! today's plan was to sort out crappy admin stuff for the uni, get all my new results put into excel and begin to do stuff with it....Got admin stuff done but spent quite a while hunting through my computer for old data to add the new data to, after freaking out that I think I may have lost some....Regained composure, began inputting new data, supervisor emailed about a paper i sent him (8th draft, it's not even funny anymore...) and realised in my sleepyness last night while I was doing it I made loads of silly mistakes, which he tends to get extremely p***ed off about...boooo....so now I'm replying to his emails, trying to fix the mistakes, and making more in the process....and i was doing so well!

Hi folks!! I was just sent this by a friend and nearly wet myself laughing, thought it would be a sin not to share!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPY :-)

usually the uni has ownership of all the work u do, the whole intellectual property thing, so they might not take too kindly to you putting things in such an accessible format, while it's a great idea maybe check with ur uni first!

sorry folks, i win again! it just too good at this... 8-)

ooohh poor you leanne! Seriously feeling for you here, I've had a bit of a week like that myself. Try tyoing with fingerless mittens, it won't be great but at least ur hands won't suffer frostbite as quickly...and u should get those thermacare heat patch things, sitting all day at a computer when it's cold is not nice for your back, getting a bit of heat there will really help.
As for the other half..pfff! Yesterday morning while taking a well earned break I told him I was tired and the response? Go to sleep. I say, I can't because I'm at work, and in the middle of experiments...the response....Well don't complain then...Nice! Deep breaths, you never know he might return with his tail between his legs! and in the meantime, hot choc and actual chocolate bars will fix your broken spirit :-)