I managed to do nothing at all yesterday (didn't even wake up till lunchtime). Must have needed it!

Goals for today:
1.) Get final little bits of formatting done on journal paper and submit to journal
2.) Plan out revisions that need to be made to questionnaire

Ug. Paper finally finished. Brain dead, tired from too long working on this! Time for bed I think. And a nice long lie-in tomorrow....

I had a long lie in this morning so didn't start work til 11am, so now am way behind where I wanted to be with the work. Oh well! The paper is taking me ages to rewrite, but I've decided that I'm going to take most of tomorrow off to do stuff like clean my flat and do laundry (and hopefully go for a good long walk if it's not raining) so it's not the end of the world if this takes me all day.

Sounds very well earned!

I've hit a stumbling block in rewriting the only remaining section in my paper, and it now looks like I won't finish today after all. Oh well. I'll do as much as I can today and then hopefully finish tomorrow morning and still have half a day off.

Hello Rayna, welcome to the site! There's lots of nice threads to join on different topics, and looking back through previous threads is a great way to find lots of useful advice and get a feel for other people's approaches to PhD studies.

No idea how many users there are! There's a smaller core of people who are here quite a lot, and then a lot of people who pop in with specific queries or problems they want advice on. That can sometimes make it seem like a PhD is very stressful, as so many people come here specifically when they have a problem, but we do try to talk about the good side of PhDs as well!

Well done Star-shaped, sounds like you've made lots of progress! I'm about half way through today's work so feeling confident about getting it all done today. Yay, go us!

Good luck with the work, Star-shaped, hope you get done by 2.

I'm going to see if I can get this paper finished off today and so be able to take the day off tomorrow - I hate working on bank holiday Mondays! There's mostly not much to change, but I need to rewrite one section, have another look at the conclusion, tighten up the writing throughout to save a few hundred words, add a few details to the references, and then format the whole thing the way the journal want it. Actually, unless the rewriting takes longer than I expect, that seems reasonably manageable for one day.

Heh, I'm similar! But pretending it's not Saturday is much easier for me today because MrBatfink is away on a lads' weekend (and is camping somewhere without phone reception so isn't even sending me texts to remind me that some people are off having fun!)

My initial goals for today have been achieved. I'm going to add some extra references into my bibliography and mess around with some easy changes and formatting bits and pieces, and save the remaining brainwork for tomorrow. At this rate I might be able to take Monday off and do something bank holidayish, like clean my flat! Woo, thrilling!

Heh, labpixie, I don't think any of my supervision sessions has ever lasted more than an hour! Yesterday's meeting only took half an hour, but literally all we talked about was the draft paper, and they'd already seen a previous draft. We'll meet again in two weeks and that will be focused on the progress of my data collection. They like to meet fairly often but for quite short periods. They're ace!

Anyway, I had a nice evening last night and a good lie-in this morning, and now I'm thinking about work. I can take things fairly steady today and then crank up the work rate tomorrow. Goals for the day:
1.) Go through supervisors' comments on draft paper and plan out changes I need to make
2.) Rework the abstract
3.) Rework the conclusion
I'll see how long that takes me before deciding what else (if anything) to do today.

That's everything done, I can go home now! Yay.

Good luck with it, Star-shaped. I've been amazed by how much I've managed to pull together in a very short period on this paper I've been writing, so I'm sure you'll make the deadline and produce some good stuff too.

Just had my supervision meeting, and my supervisors think that the stuff that I thought was complete rubbish is actually really good. Result! I guess being under pressure really can work sometimes! Anyway, they gave me good suggestions for rewriting it this weekend. I now have until Monday evening to do a final edit so they can have a last look at my abstract and conclusions before I submit it to the journal on Tuesday. I feel surprisingly positive and confident about this now. And will definitely enjoy my evening off tonight!

Now just need to write up notes of the meeting and submit my conference abstract via the website, and then I can clear off home!

Agree, I'm 38 and really enjoying my second year - and I don't feel at all out of place!

Welcome, Labpixie! Posters are quite a nice Friday activity, I always think!

No, I didn't get my references done - I got about a third of the way through and that took an hour, and I just didn't want to do it any more, so I went to the pub instead! In my defence, MrBatfink is going away today for a long boozy weekend catching up with his blokey mates, so if I hadn't gone out last night I wouldn't have seen him til next week. Anyway, supervisor has emailed to say get references done by 12 today, so that's what I'd better get on with!

Goals for today:
1.) Sort out references on paper
2.) Prepare for supervision meeting at 2pm (when they'll tear my paper to shreds....)
3.) Write up notes from meeting
4.) Look at submitting revised abstract for conference
And then go home and have a nice evening with a DVD and maybe a takeaway, followed by a lie-in....

Phew, paper sent at 5.04 pm! It's rubbish, truly rubbish, with conclusions so weak they're practically homeopathic. And I didn't have time to add my reference list so now I need to go back, add in the references and send it again. Gah. I want to go to the pub Right Now, my other half just texted me to say he's on his way there, but this is going to take a bit more fiddling about with. Boo.

Oh well. At least it's in.

Oh well, thanks for trying everyone. I'll have to see if I can get it through an inter-library loan.