Hi everyone,

I'm also supposed to be submitting this year but really, really struggling to motivate myself. I'm officially 'full-time' but based in industry and spent most of my time last year managing the launch of my research as a commercial product. Still collecting data for my last chapters and have the majority of my thesis to write. Funding runs out in October :/ Overwhelmed is an understatement.

Be really grateful for any motivation tips? :)

This is a really useful site:

Hi guys,

How is everyone here getting on? I've been having loads of up and down days recently - some days things seem to plod on and I feel like things are moving along, and then other days I remember how much there is to do and I just feel like hiding in bed all day! Feeling pretty overwhelmed at the moment! Hope things are moving along well for everyone else.

TreeofLife - that site looks really useful, I may have to go back to that nearer write up time.

matcha - how are the motivation levels these days? I wish I had some tips for you. I think the only thing that works for me is blind panic! Hope that you're feeling a bit less overwhelmed these days.

Sorry to others I've left out - I haven't really looked back at older messages (just posting quickly before getting back to work). Good luck everyone!

Tulip

I've actually started writing my thesis document so at least I'm making some progress in that.

My supervisors have asked me to complete another 9 month project now, so there's no way I'm going to be submitting for another year though.

Still haven't found any extra funding, and I'm waiting to hear the outcome from some other sources but seems very unlikely that I'll get it.

I am just trying to do as much tutoring online that I can and when I get to back to the UK I will be trying to do as much work at the uni as I can, and look for a part time job I guess.

So I have spent a lot of time filling in 10 funding applications (none of which I have heard back from yet) and 2 of which required my supervisors to submit references.

One of my supervisors has been great and filled out the references, the other one is being a total idiot and hasn't bothered, but is so caught up in his own lies that he forgets what he has told me! He told me he sent one, and that 'they must not have received it' and he said he would send it again. Today I got an email from the funders who said they haven't received it still, so I emailed him again and asked him to send it, and he said he isn't sure that he will have the time! Clearly he hasn't even written it otherwise it wouldn't be such an onerous task to send it!

It doesn't matter anyway, it probably won't be a successful funding application either way, but I don't appreciate being lied to, and it would be nice to think my supervisor actually cared about my funding situation and completion of my PhD. I've already decided I'm going to get a part-time job to fund my 4th year anyway.

So, update time. I didn't get any other funding, but I have got a part time job for 15 hours a week, so I should be fine.

My supervisor has now said I have to have a first draft done my Christmas... so really not sure how I am going to do that! I will just have to work 12 hour dates on the days I am not working...

Mine was due in in Dec but now it's moved to Feb, but money stops in Dec so I have to work part-time soon....haven't written a complete chapter yet - just bits here and there - and still need to finish analysis! Mixed methods and still have both quant and qual bits to do. agh. Tell me stories of success.

I am submitting next week (September 5th) as my funding runs out on the 6th. I'm submitting in Australia so there is no viva, we just send our thesis out to two external examiners. The thesis is finished and printed, I'm just sitting on it. I refuse to look through the printed version in case I see a mistake, too late now! (we have to submit professional hard or soft cover bound theses).

I'm a sociology so I didn't have lab/experiments but I did have a content analysis and qualitative interviews. I only have one publication and no conference proceedings, here in Australia (or at least at Monash) conference proceedings are not being considered publications, and most of the conferences here don't offer them. Rather, they might do a special issue in a peer-reviewed journal, but you are not considered automatically even if you presented at the conference, your paper has to be accepted in the same blind review process.

In terms of the write up, I'm always a bit shocked to hear the amount of writing students have left with so little time! I think that just freaks me out a bit, but that might also be because I'm in a social science background where most of what we do is write. By February I had the first full draft of my thesis complete, with 4 full sets of revisions completed by this August.

It hasn't been easy though, there have definitely been ups and downs. I remember when my publication was accepted and I did the revisions, I had to do ANOTHER set of revisions and I just broke in tears, thinking I was a complete and total failure (to be fair I was stressed I was getting married in less than two months and it was an international wedding!)

In terms of success (and might not be what peeps need to hear) Time management and discipline is what kept me going/kept me writing out my chapters, and lots of revisions.

Hi everyone,

I know it's now a new year, but thought I'd bump this thread to see how everyone is doing. I just found out this week that I have enough data now to wrap up another chapter, so I'm really pleased! I still have one final batch of experiments to work on which could take another couple of months, but this still frees up a lot of extra time to focus on writing. Final deadline for me is Sept 2015 and I'm still a long way from having a complete first draft, so between now and 1st June I need to get a complete draft together. I've worked out I need to average about 3,200 words a week to do this - should be doable with experiments, but it still feels like a long slog! But on whole feeling a lot more positive about the prospect of writing up and soon being finished. I hope everyone else is doing well!

Hello everyone! Could I join this thread? My funding runs out in March and I was hoping to finish by then but it's really not looking very likely (and I was told it was incredibly unlikely by my supervisors). But I can't really afford to live without funding for very long so I'm giving myself the goal of having a full draft by the end of March and hopefully having something submit-able by the end of May. I have two data chapters written whcih need major work and a lit review which is currently with my supervisors. Two more data chapters and a discussion to write and then making everything the right quality...yay! Good luck with your write up Tulip =)

Hi everyone. I'd like to join too. I'm in a very similar situation to Tulip - I need a full draft by June for submission in September. I have a lit review in reasonable shape, about half a methodology chapter and a lot of my data analysis is written up but I'm not quite sure what form my chapters will take yet. At the moment it looks as if one of my themes will take about 20,000 words - is that too long for a chapter? Good luck everyone!

I'm trying to get a full draft by the end of April but it looks increasingly unlikely. I've written one paper and I have 2 chapters out of 6 done (and bits of the others) and data collection is finished now at least. My stipend finished in September and my savings run out at the end of May...

Good luck to all!