But, I've sat myself down at the laptop and am giving it a go anyway. Shall we see if we can talk ourselves into making some progress today?
Yesterday's aiming for the stars definitely landed me in the trees
Today's aim is, therefore, much more modest, just to achieve some clarity on the section I was working on yesterday and get over the ennui.

awww poor you, you have so much responsibilty, it must be hard to find the time to work on the thesis.

I know you can get it done though! i have faith in you

do you have any spare hours left for the rest of the day to squeeze in just abit of work ?

i read in joan bolkers book, that to do 15mins of work is better than nothing..

i've hit a motivation wall too. and just came across some old reports i wrote in my BSc and i got A- , and A on most of them, that's really cheered me up. and i'm looking through the reports, and i worked so hard on them.. so feeling that i can do it again for my thesis. i just need to organise it abit more.

my supervisor saying i write really badly and very disorganised and my thesis will most probably be crap, has really affected my confidence.

its like if you dont write like him, he thinks its crap.

awww poor you, you have so much responsibilty, it must be hard to find the time to work on the thesis.

I know you can get it done though! i have faith in you

do you have any spare hours left for the rest of the day to squeeze in just abit of work ?

i read in joan bolkers book, that to do 15mins of work is better than nothing..

i've hit a motivation wall too. and just came across some old reports i wrote in my BSc and i got A- , and A on most of them, that's really cheered me up. and i'm looking through the reports, and i worked so hard on them.. so feeling that i can do it again for my thesis. i just need to organise it abit more.

my supervisor saying i write really badly and very disorganised and my thesis will most probably be crap, has really affected my confidence.

its like if you dont write like him, he thinks its crap.

ooooops i dont know how that got posted twice! sorry!!

well i am stuck, so going to try something different. going to make a spider diagram on one large piece of paper (sticking A4 together) and sort out my figures and stuff.

good luck with today !

good idea tetris!! make small achievable goals, that way when you get them, you will feel better!
good luck!

shall we keep an eye on each other. what say you, we report back in an hour, and declare what we have actually done. so 5pm, is the deadline.

i will take your advice, and do the same. my goal is to sort out all my figures and tables for the results section of my chapter.

i dont want to use the figure my supervisor made because he is acting all high and mighty that he did all the work for the paper that i wrote! so i hate his figure lol. i know i'm being childish. maybe i can change it abit or something. its like i dont want any help from him whatsover. as he thinks i'm a failure and i think he hates me for not having written my thesis.

i think secretly he wishes i will quit so he doesnt have to read my thesis and correct it. cause i only have 3 months left. and he has so many other phd students. for which he gets "points" from, but me, he wont get anything. because im registerd at a different uni and ive taken 8 years.
sorry just needed to get that off my chest.

You know, if my supervisor said that to me I would get right back to her with "well, if that's what you think, tell me how I can improve." Supervisors are meant to offer constructive criticism not put their students down with unhelpful comments.

I'm sure you can give the nasty so and so a big surprise and pass him a chapter that will have his jaw dropping.

I'm going to snatch as much time as possible to work on my thesis this evening while everyone's sleeping and unable to disturb me. Let's go....!

thanks tetris, you made me feel better

okay cool! i will work hard on my thesis chapters so when i have to meet him, i can show him what i have done, even if its just in a rough draft version. cause he thinks i've done nothing for my thesis.

yah he should give me contructive critisism! and not just put me down. thanks tetris :)

okay 45 mins left!!

lets get cracking

Hey Lara, how's it going with the diagrams and charts?

I finally figured there was an unresolved issue in the previous chapter I had to clarify before I could proceed and have managed to do just that.
Now on to the chapter at hand.... Objective for the next hour 2000 words.

well i havent done much, i went through my folder and pulled out all my earlier drafts of the paper, so i can use the stuff my supervisors cut out into my chapter.

i still feel bad about what my supervisor said to me. but im trying to focus at the task at hand. basically my deadline is tommorow, and i have to pool together a zero draft of the entire chapter. and have at least 6000 words for the chapter. so far i have about 4,500 words based on my 2nd paper.

and i have to sort out all my figures from the paper and other figures i made but were chucked out, cause of lack of space.

next deadline, shall we say 6.30pm

thanks for keeping me company!

it helps knowing you're working hard aswell.

i'm at the moment making a huge spider diagram, of more details of the things i need to include in my chapter.

Awww, you're so nice. 6000 words with 4500 already, sounds like you're almost there.

Any chance those 1500 words might be about what is and is not represented in the diagrams?

you were right! most of the words came from the figure legends hehe.

thanks so much for your encouragement, i was procrastinating, but you helped me to get something done.

so i feel better now

okay i have finished going through the figures and figure legends from the paper. and rewriting some parts and making a note to go back to this one figure thats quite hefty. i don't want to get bogged down with it at the moment. i will return to it.

my zero draft of the chapter is 6516 words now (with some rubbish stuff in there though and mostly comments telling myself to expland on this and that)...
(i read in a book that a chapter for a thesis should be at least 6,000 words).

now i need to trawl through my earlier drafts to add more to the chapter. and expand on certain things.

i think it's going to be an all nighter for me tonight. i'm going to take a little break now though.

how are you getting along?

Good to hear you're making solid progress.

I'm almost 2000 words into the chapter. At the moment I'm taking a short food and coffee break before I throw myself into the last dash for tonight. I'll be working in new material for the chapter. I just wished I didn't feel obliged with every draft to improve on the last. If I could only let things be editing would be easier and faster.

OK, I'm past the target and now headed for bed. Good night everyone. Good luck with the rest of the evening writing, Lara.