Hi everyone,

Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend. Glowworm - hope you got your draft off and enjoyed the theatre! AislingB - I also need a draft ready for a few weeks time and expect it to be very rough indeed, it just feels like everything takes longer than you expect. Mathsgirl and GM - I hope you're both feeling a bit better now and that things are running a bit more smoothly now work-wise.

I've been feeling poorly most of this week so it hasn't been great work-wise, although I have finally optimised my last set of experiments so I'm happy with that! But since I took a couple of days off I'm working through the weekend and hoping to get a couple of literature review sections tidied up and around 800 words drafted in new sections. I'm struggling with motivation though, I just keep wanting to watch stuff on netflix! i think everything just feels very overwhelming at the moment and a lot of my friends are going on holiday and enjoying time off from work right now so I feel like I spend my life chained to my desk writing... Hopefully this will all be worth the effort in the end! Sorry for the woe-is-me moment - I know we're all in the same boat and it could be worse. Have a nice weekend guys!

Tulip

I'm also working for the weekend. I'm sure so are a few other students on this forum.
This is good you aimed some goals for the weekend. Work hard on them and you will feel great and more motivated on Sunday evening.

As for me I'll have a long week coming. So I have to work hard too. I need to prepare two presentations. Travel to another city to go for an interview, attend a talk and take a class. I should review a paper, prepare some documents
AND KEEP WRITING MY THESIS.

So let's work hard and good luck.

Thanks for the kind words mathcomp! I saw your other post and I think I had a similar weekend as you, I got very anxious and overwhelmed with work! Glad to hear you're feeling better now and had a nice pamper. I ended up taking Sunday afternoon and evening off to try to relax, and after a productive day today I'm feeling a lot better :)

So far I've managed nearly 700 words today and I'm on a roll so will continue working for another couple of hours tonight! Good luck to anyone else working and hope everyone is doing well.

Tulip

Hi everyone!

Sounds like a lot of people are struggling with motivation and illness. Everyone I know seems to be ill atm :(

Thank you all so much for your kind words. I'm very happy to say that I did manage to get a full draft off last week (hence my absence because I've had the weekend off!!). The support on here has been great and it's lovely to know that I've been in your thoughts. Thanks again.

Tulip, I know that overwhelming feeling so well and have struggled with it immensely over the course of my phd. You can do it, and it will be worth it, I promise. I actually had to temporarily disable my Facebook account because I couldn't cope with everyone being abroad and putting up these fun happy profile status things - GAH! It was driving me insane! So I disabled my account and plan to reactivate it after I've submitted (and go on holiday - *evil laugh*!)

;)

I actually feel like I'm much more productive without the distraction of Facebook whenever I feel the procrastination monkey creeping up on me! I also believe taking some time off once in a while helps, so well done for getting your 700+ words done yesterday, Tulip.

How is everyone else doing? I need to get cracking with my references, charts and bits and bobs this week while I wait for the feedback on my full draft. Also doing some 'real life' stuff like bills and shopping that I've been putting off.

Good luck everyone x

Hi everyone,

Congratulations Glowworm on finishing your draft and Tulip on your 700+ words! Hope everyone else is doing well.

I have been busy with marking and also struggling with confidence and motivation issues. I saw my supervisor this week. Luckily, she is always very positive and encouraging which helps me a lot, so now I just have to keep writing for the next three weeks to finish another chapter. I will aim for 1500 words between now and Sunday evening.

Good luck everyone!

Hi everyone,

Glowworm - thank you for the kind words, it's nice to know it's not just me that doesn't always want to see other people's holiday photos etc. (but only because I'm jealous and would LOVE a holiday right now!). Hope your week is going well and you can relax a bit while the draft is with your supervisors! AislingB - sorry to hear you've been struggling a bit this week, good luck with the work this weekend! Also good luck to anyone I've missed.

Progress this week has been pretty good - since Tuesday I've written a few more literature review sections (about 3000 words) and got a large chunk of data analysis done. So tonight I think I'll sort some boring reference bits out then watch a film with the boyfriend. Then the plan for the weekend is another 1000 words and to sort out buffers for my experiments next week - I'm hoping to have three days at home with friends and family next weekend so this is keeping me going :) Have a nice weekend everyone!

Tulip

How's everyone doing?

I'm waiting for my feedback on my full draft and should be concentrating on catching up all my referencing but I'm finding it soooo hard to stay motivated and concentrate. I've got so little time left that I should be pressing on, but I kind of feel in limbo until I get my feedback, which I'm hoping will be end of this week or early next week.

I hope things are going well with you all. Any updates?
G x

Hey everyone,

Hope you're all having a good week. Glowworm - how did you get on with referencing this week? I can only imagine the feeling of limbo without a thesis to work on, my supervisor is only willing to look at individual chapters instead of an entire thesis, so I don't think I'll have that problem. Fingers crossed you get your feedback soon!

So progress this week - I've made good headway with my remaining experiments so hope to be finished with data collection very soon! And today I've got a few hours to write so hoping for (at least) 600 words of literature review. I tend to reference as I go along which I think slows down the writing but I'm really worried if I leave it until the end I'll suddenly run out of time! Hope everyone's having a good week and have a lovely weekend.

Tulip

Hey Tulip

Good to hear from you. I've done ok with referencing, but it's been hard to stick with it and concentrate cos I'm still in my little limbo zone! :) One of my supes is sending me feedback today and the other one seems to have gone AWOL at this really convenient time!

Oh well, at least it's the supervisor who will give me the most useful feedback who I'm still in contact with.

Good luck with your lit review and have a great weekend. G

Hey,

How is everyone getting on? Quick update - I was supposed to finish data collection last week, but I had a chat with my supervisor yesterday and he reckons I have another 6-8 weeks of experiments to do to tie up loose ends! My absolute deadline is the end of Sept and I have only drafted half of my thesis, and when I said this to him, he laughed and said I'll have to figure out a way to do both... I am absolutely fuming still and feel so so deflated! Quite honestly I could happily throw the towel in, but it's too late for that now.

Sorry for a pathetic self-indulgent rant - I really hope everyone else is doing better than me and are just busy working. Good luck to everyone working this week.

Tulip

Hey guys I hope you don't mind me joining in but I'm in the final writing up stage too and struggling!

Tulip - do you think you need any more experiments or is it just your supervisor? Do you have another supervisor to get a second opinion? If you have enough data for your chapters I would really question whether your supervisor is doing it for your thesis or if it is for his own good - publications etc!

I am trying to finish a draft of one of my data chapters and it is dragging on and on as I keep having to go back to the raw data to fix silly mistakes I made =( I wanted this one finished two weeks ago!

I only have two weeks left until I start full-time teacher training and still have one chapter to write from scratch and every other chapter to redraft probably twice. My final deadline is end of September too...but I won't have time to work on it at all after August as I start a full-time job at the beginning of September. Sorry about the whinge - having a slight melt-down today! I hope everyone else is having a good productive day =)

Hi guys,

Joining the thread too. Also writing my thesis at the moment with a self-imposed end of June deadline. I am part time and in my fifth year so in theory I still have another 3 years to go but I have had enough. My supervisor thinks the same which is a good thing :)

Struggling with the Lit Review chapter but this is the only one left as I have already finished the rest. Actually, that's not entirely true as I still need to write up the Abstract and the Conclusion chapter.

As I work full time (9 am -5 pm) the only time I got to work in my PhD is between 5 -8:30 AM and between 5:30 pm till midnight and during weekends.

Feeling really tired at the moment and it is really hard to get up that early given that it is winter now here in Australia. I am so pathetic and I want to finish this ASAP that have I even written the Acknowledgments already :)

Good luck guys.

Hey guys,

Nice to see some new faces on the thread (even though it's GrumpyMule's thread, not my mine of course!). Caro - I spoke to my supervisor about these additional 'loose end' experiments and (although he won't explicitly admit this) they're essentially the beginning of an entirely new line of enquiry that he wants doing because there are no new students to continue the work when I leave. He has told me previously that I have enough data for a PhD and a contribution to knowledge, and when I tried to discuss a plan/time scale for these new experiments with him, he didn't want to give me any straight answers, so I've decided to just write my thesis and job hunt and leave as soon as I can. I've had enough of academia in general and his difficult ways/the department overall.

Anyway, it sounds like you've got a lot on your plate Caro but I'm sure you'll get it all sorted before September! Aleruri - that sounds like you've made fantastic progress, good luck with the end of June deadline! Wishing you both a productive day!

I'm still feeling quite angry about my supervisor, so I'm hoping to channel that into some work with the intention of being done sooner than planned! I'm hoping for about 500 words of my last results chapter today, anything more will be a bonus!

Tulip

Thanks Tulip! I feel a lot more positive today! I spend this morning sorting out my graphs for that chapter, and this afternoon I'm doing my part-time job so just having a break from that at the moment but won't get home until 6. This evening I want to replace the graphs in my chapter with the new ones I've made and finish a table that is half made. Tomorrow I'm going to finish up this chapter adapting the text of my results and discussions to the new figures and send to my supervisor (I hope!).

It sounds like you have the right idea, don't let him use you as a data-making slave! You are happy with your data and that is what matters most!