Hello everyone how are you all today? Work is going slowly but getting there. I only had the energy to do about 2 hours work yesterday so thinking I should do weekly aims next week rather than daily ones and then I can work at my pace better. So by end of this week I want to have typed up the Brazil notes. Hope all work is going well!

Hi Everyone!!!

I have not been able to get on the forum because of the new changes untill now!!!!!!! Anyway, just to say hi and hope everyone is getting on ok. I had a bad cold Sunday so did very little Monday as i was recovering, but am fully better now. Still working on chapter 1!! although hoping to have it finished by tomorrow night. Then i need to do the little things (contents page, abstract etc) as i am hoping to hand in a complete first draft of the whole thesis on Tuesday morning. This will be everything except chapter 7 and the references as i am still working on these. I got my chapter 7 back this week and it needs some more work!! Anway aims are :

By Tuesday 19th have everything done except chapter 7 and references to hand in

Tuesday 19th- Tuesday 26th Hand in next draft of chapter 7

Tuesday 26th -Friday 29th Make sure all the references are in and are correct!

Week begininng the 1st September : make sure all my papers are in correct folders and double check i have everything! Write a plan for my viva preparation and start this. Also finish chapter 7 when it comes back again!!!

Anyway hope everyone's day is going well. Also goos luck Lara with your supervisors meeting. You have worked so hard and i hope everything goes well.

oh no i wrote this massive message and it got deleted :(

oh i can't be bothered to rewrite it. let me write the key points

1. WELL Done tractorgirl on nearly completing your first draft and having it ready to hand in on tuesday. that is BRILLIANT! i am so proud of you and impressed! you did it! yeh! :)

2. i had a really good and productive meeting with my 2nd supervisor, she gave me LOADS of constructive critisism. tore my summary outline of my phd thesis to shreds!!! right now my thesis is crap, but lol, i dont mind, i'm just so happy to get feedback!! but its good that i know now what i need to work on. i feel like i have a set of things i need to do, so dont feel so lost and confused as to what to work on. i feel very overwelmed, and my head is a mush, it was a 3 and half hours meeting!!!! but i learnt more in those 3 hours than i did for the past couple of months!! so i'm really glad she made time for me and gave me feedback on my thesis outline. although she said the thesis outline was too long and detailed. but at least i got my feedback. because this is the only feedback i'm going to get now. she's off on holiday now. my 1st supervisor went on holiday without replying to any of my emails and hasnt signed my entry forms. but he's coming back sept 1st. so that's my deadline to get my thesis completed with all the feedback and harrass him to sign my forms and arrange examiners for me.

3. i'm going to make a 2 week plan starting tommorow. i'm taking the evening off now. tommorow i will write up my notes from the meeting, and then go through the critisism of the thesis outline one by one. approach it methodically.

Hey Lara, glad you liked the lecture. I personally found it very inspirational. I urge everyone on here to watch it.

The powerpoint slides to go with the lecture are somewhere on Pausch's faculty webpage, which includes some acknowledgements to time management books.

The first thing I did after watching the lecture was to clean my email inboxes. I had nothing filed, just thousands of emails in the inbox. :$

I also took on his rule about creating a deadline..even if it's not a real deadline, have a deadline...a person can't plan without a deadline.





Good to know your supervisor meeting went well!


(up)

Yeah, good for you Lara. I'm following your progress with interest and really rooting for you. Just five more weeks now! Must be nerve jangling. All seems like it's coming together for you now, which is the main thing. Looking at what you wrote all the time ago and comparing it to what you write now, it's evident that you've come miles and miles.
:-)

Here's the link to Professor Randy Pausch's lectures:

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Randy/

The one concerning time management is No.4.

He also became very famous in America for his 'Last Lecture' listed at No.5. Warning: watching this may almost convince you to become an academic.

The context of his lectures is very sad and poignant...but you learn all about that in his lectures.

Hi Lara, this is fantastic news! Well done!!! You should be really proud of what you have achieved so far and you are nearly there!!!!!!!!! Hope you planning for the next few weeks goes well. Make sure though you have a little break in between though as you really derserve it!! Anyway, again well done, what a brilliant way to end the week!!!!!! :-)

Thanks you guys!! for the kind and encouraging words!

TG you are very kind, thanks so much :) i love your enthusiasm its so contagious :)

although i must confess - i feel like i have so much to learn and understand and write. theres still so much left to do for my thesis, but you're right at least i have a draft i can now improve on, and work on, even though its really crap at the moment. and needs ALOT more information and holes to fill in, and at best its a skeleton, and needs so much more detailed information. i barely have any references in it! but at least its not blank pages...i think at the moment its probably about 30%

but i feel positive about it, even though theres so much to do- i dont know why but i am not feeling embarrassed that i didnt know the stuff, i've just been focusing on the wrong and little minute details instead of the important bits. so from now on, im going to use the mentality "its good enough" and force myself to move onto the next bit. and start to make more of an effort to understand it and be able to explain it verbally. i am not very good at explaining stuff, i might get it, but i find it hard to articulate it.need to work on that. or i have a vague understanding of it. lol its almost like revising for an exam.

i didnt know the answer to any of the questions she asked me which has highlighted what i should be learning and understanding in preperation for the viva. imagine being in the viva and not even knowing the basic information! the questions they ask to make you comfortable! to start off with. i didnt even know those. right now, i dont know anything, but there's still time to learn and revise and understand.

Miss spacey, the lecture was indeed good, thanks again for telling me about it! its definately changed my perspective on things!! being grateful for everyday we have...

i've started a time journal and its really helping me with motivation. its nice to clock in what you've done on an half hourly or hourly basis. :)
it's so sad he died though, he had t all, good work life balance, and lovely kids and a wife. it really saddens me. so tragic :(

really makes you think that life really is so short, and you never know when.. gotta live one day at a time and make the most of each day. and not waste time complaining but looking at the bright side of things.


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walminskipeas, thanks so much for your supportive and encouraging message, i really appreciate it! :-)

okay only 5 weeks left, eeeeeeeeeek okay now i am stressing out that time will run out! and so much left to write.

i think i might go for the "sprint" and try to get as much done by september 1st. will pretend that's my deadline for my thesis and get it to final draft.

i dont know if i should work on multiple chapters per day. or work on one chapter per day.
or maybe set myself mini deadlines for each chapter, and if i havent completed the chapter by the mini deadline move onto the next chapter.

thanks K, you're right. i will do that.

i was having a panic/anxiety attack last night. i kept worrying that i really believe i am going to fail my phd. irrational unhelpful though it may be to just worry, but i couldnt block it out. i feel that i have to learn all the background knowledge to my phd in 5 weeks which i should have been doing over the years. naughty phd student that i was!

so advice for those newbie phd students. get your background reading and knowledge down as early as possible!

but then again, once you submit your viva, i may have a few months to revise and prepare for the viva. i just feel that i dont understand or know anything about my phd or the background. i feel like a fake phd student, i just played one on tv lol.

anyways dale carnegie states the only thing that can push worry thoughts out of your head, is to do *something* to engage yourself in your work. because you cannot think two things at the same time. ie i cannot worry that i feel i am definately going to fail and work on my chapter at the same time. so if i just concentrate on my chapters and push worry out of my head.

i then tell myself, what matters is i just try my best, and if i do fail than that's just life and will have to deal with it, like anything in life.

one of my collegues a professor, sent me an email yesterday telling me my 1st paper has been cited in several other scientific journals. i have to admit i felt quite chuffed that papers were citing lil ol me ! lol

but then i got reviewers comments back for my 2nd paper, and it needs major revisions and whilst reading the reviewers comments stressed me out, because they know so much and i kept thinking, i dont know that, and that. and i should cause its just general background stuff. i think that was the trigger for the panic attack last night.

and also that i dont know the background knowledge, or i might have a vague understanding it, but i cant articulate it or explain it to someone else.

Anyways, the only way to combat worry, is to work on something that engages your brain. so will distract myself from worrying by working on my chapters.

my aims for today:

work on chapter 5: results section. restructure and reorganise results and condense and remove repetitive results and add extra result analysis.

and like K and wal said just work on it bit by bit. take one section at a time..... each step/section completed and finalised means that you're one step closer to finishing..


good luck everyone who is working today! (up)

okay folks, its sunday which means a brand new spanking week , which we can grab hold off! i am going to make a resolution not to be depressed and negative about my phd. i was telling a friend of mine yesterday that i feel that i am going to fail and he said, i shouldnt think like that. i think i just needed to let it out my deepest darkest fears and insecurities and now that i have said it out loud i feel better about it. he was being really supportive and said to try my best and agreed with me that it wont be the end of the world. i guess i just needed to hear that.

anyways so it's a brand new week. so i am planning on working super hard and get as much done as possible! there is still time, and anything is possible and will use the philosophy of it's "good enough" without becoming obsessed at making it perfect.

my aims for today:

1. email a professor that formulated the original idea of my phd, and type out the reviewers comments on the 2nd paper for her to see.

2. email a collegue that i colloborated with on chapter 5 and ask her for help. since my own supervisors cant help me. ask her a few questions that are troubling me.

3. re-organise and restructure my results section for chapter 5. and start reading papers to think of what the data could mean and think of an idea of what it means. thinking is hard! especially at this late stage where you want everything to just be on a plate!

Well done Lara,
That's precisely what you need to do; keep going. I'm also working on Sunday, so my aims is to do some reading. I started reorganising chapter 3 and found some gaps for which I need to re-review some papers. So, that's what I'll be doing all day and hopefully I'll have plenty of things to write about tomorrow when I go back to the office to keep working on the actual document.