Same :( Also have a huuuuuge number of exams to mark at the end of Jan. But after that, no more marking and no more teaching. Just phding. Have to finish by Sep 2010 and am a bit behind. Still enjoying it, but I think the next few months will be stressful...

One of my students sent with this link

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1225528/Babies-mothers-accent-says-Dr-Kathleen-Wermke.html

cos it's not a million miles away from my own research. I was interested in all the comments by the readers - so many say what a waste of everyones time and money this is. What do you think about this? Not this topic in particular, but the whole 'useful to society' thing?

As far as I can see, to the outsider, loads of social sciences research is meaningless, even between disciplines. But does it have value within the community? As a linguist, even this story has a lot of intrinsic interest, but does it justify the resources? I think so, but I can see why others wouldn't agree.

I struggle with this sometimes. Why am I researching what I am researching?

No, it's just the Harvard or author/date system. The difference is purely to do with how the sentence is constructed. If you force yourself to stick to only either Jones (1975) or (Jones 1975) you'll restrict the sentence structure.

But it's not two referencing styles, it's one.

By the way, I'm using endnoteweb. I think the answer is that when you need Jones (1975) you simply choose the option to remove the author, then manually type it before the citation.

yeah, but can it be done differently for different citations. You might say:

...blah blah in reference to this model (Jones 1998) which Smith (2001) believes is superior.

I know it must be simple and i'm missing something, but what? :)

How can I change where the brackets go in an cite while you write endnote citation?

For example, by default it will do the following:

blah blah blah (Jones 1985) blah

but I might want:

blah blah blah Jones (1975) blah.

I can't see an option to change it, but if I make the changes manually in word they won't be saved.

Any suggestions?

I'm in the same subject area and I never go into uni except to teach and for meetings. Having said that, all my supervisor meetings have been via skype for the last year. I spent my entire first year feeling a bit guilty about this, and I was sure everyone else was far more commited than me, but now, coming to the end of year 2, I realise that you have to do whatever suits you.

I look after 3 young kids, I teach, and I do a little bit of self employed work to pay the mortgage. The most I am likely to get is 3 full days on my phd in any week, but usually I am grabbing hours here and there, whenever that may be. The trick is to make your work focussed. If I'm working for 3 hours, then it is solid, no messing about, 3 hours work. As far as I can tell, I'm where I should be in terms of progress.

What I'm saying is, as long as you keep on top of it, and are staying sane, it doesn't matter how you are organising your time. I've never even discussed this with my supervisor. I figure that as long as I make the progress he expects, it's none of his business. I doubt he'd be interested anyway, as I think he has a similar attitude.

The worst thing you can do is compare yourself to other people. There'll be a few 9-5ers doing the same subject, but they aren't necessarily being more productive, they just prefer that way of working. You don't have the luxury of choosing.

Just had an unsolicited email from sup saying 'thought you might like this' - a nice simple description of why I need chi squared for this. He mentioned it in a meeting but I hadn't asked for clarification cos I didn't want to look stupid.

Maybe there is no such thing as a stupid question :)

thanks both. Yes, definitely chi squared, just looked back at something sup said.

Yes, the figures represent choices between A and B. There are other participants, but I need to see if each pair is significantly different from each other.

I need to test if the difference between two results of option 'A' is significant.

Person 1 - option A = 165 (68%) option B = 79 (32%)
Person 2 - option A = 139 (60%) option B = 91 (40%)

I know it's simple, but I'm new to this. Chi-square? T-Test?

Thanks :)

okay, bad title. I'm well aware which it is, I'm just asking what you use. I taught academic English to international students for years before starting this phd, and 'the data show' and 'the data are' have always sounded wrong to me, no matter how many times I read it. Now I have to actually use it, it sounds even stranger. I'm a linguist, so I'm happy with the process of language change and the reasons behind it, I'm just interested what people tend to use. Hey, let's have a poll!

Had my first rejection the other day (also my first submission!) from a journal. I've presented at a few conferences with no rejections so was feeling naively confident, but it's a bit of a sobering process reading the reviewers comments. Although it was a bit of a battering to the old self confidence, I'm glad it's happened now (yr 2 of 3) rather than towards the end. It's also, according to my supervisors, a good introduction to academic life! At least the comments were relatively constructive, apparently this isn't always the case!

Anyway, just thought I'd share that with the class :)