That sounds like a great day, Emaa! Just the thing to re-energise yourself.

I didn't achieve as much as I wanted yesterday, so I'm up early and ready to get going. Well, once I've had a shower and got dressed!

Goal 1 - have shower and get dressed
Goal 2 - rewrite abstract following supervisor comments
Goal 3 - send abstract to seminar organisers
Goal 4 - think through supervisors' suggestions for new questionnaire questions

Morning! (Just!)

Spent this morning madly trying to rewrite an abstract for a seminar presentation by lunchtime so my supervisors could comment on it and I could get it sent to the organisers asap (the deadline was yesterday but I begged an extension). Almost done - just need a few minutes away from it before I go back and re-read with clearer eyes. Phew!

Goal 1 - rewrite abstract - almost done
Goal 2 - write up notes from yesterday's supervision meeting
Goal 3 - think through comments on draft questionnaire and start planning changes

I think that'll be more than enough to keep me going today!

Congratulations Montezuma, that's great news!

I guess it's natural to go back over things in your mind and think about how they could have gone differently, it must be difficult to accept that this is really all over after so many years of hard work! Maybe as the days pass and it sinks in more you'll find you really start to enjoy having finished. Hope so, anyway, it seems a shame to get all the way through this and be too dazed by the experience to enjoy it!

Love the new image too!

Blimey. I'm going to be at least 39 when I finish my PhD. I don't have a house, or a car. I don't live with my boyfriend because we can't afford it. What is this myth that somehow doing a PhD is the only thing that prevents people from having this amazing life full of material possessions??!! Life out there for people with 'just' a degree or a Masters is not guaranteed to put people in a position to have all the stuff that's being mentioned here as signs of achievement. Most people work long hours for low pay and hate their jobs, and are also terrified of losing their jobs, and many would give anything to be able to go back to studying! We are lucky, and I think it's important to remember that. And the three or four years spent doing a PhD is nothing compared to the 30 or more years that most people will spend doing a job they probably hate - at least we have a chance of escaping that fate through the things the PhD may open up for us....

Rant over! 8-)

Morning everyone.

I had a completely useless day yesterday when I was achieving so little that I just gave up and did housework and made a big pot of bean chili instead. And then I overslept and missed the early train this morning, and the later one was horrendously delayed, so I've only just got into the office. Gah!

Never mind, goals for today:

1.) Draft out abstract for conference presentation before supervision session at 12
2.) Print out and re-read draft questionnaire before supervision session at 12
3.) Go to supervision session at 12
4.) Go to statistics class this afternoon
5.) Write up supervision meeting notes (may be left until tomorrow...)

Heh, I know that feeling! Something about familiarity with people making it more difficult to risk looking foolish in front of them, maybe? I also get this nagging doubt that people outside my area will raise an issue that's so blindingly obvious that I won't be able to believe I didn't think of it, and all my research will fall apart as a result. Not very likely, but The Fear is still there! In reality, it will all go well and nobody will think of anything to ask that you haven't already thought about, and it'll all be a big success and a relief to get out of the way!

Good luck with the seminar - I'm sure it'll go way better than it feels at the moment...

That sounds really frustrating, Sneaks! I'm going to start writing a journal article soon (my first!) so I hope my supervisors listen to me a bit more than that!

Today's task: get my draft questionnaire finished. I have to send it to supervisors on Monday, but I'm off to a colloquium all day tomorrow and have a big family gathering for my Dad's seventieth birthday at the weekend, so it would be a relief to get it out of the way before I go.

Goal 1 - finish inputting all the draft questions and references into a table
Goal 2 - go through and edit obvious issues with questions
Goal 3 - tackle the main section I'm struggling with (need to build up to that one!!)

Not achieving much today. I slept in and then my train was delayed by half an hour and I had to wait ages for a bus after that, so didn't sit down at my desk until 10.30, and the morning seems to be slipping away. Gah.

Goals for today

1.) Think through two sections of questionnaire
2.) Go to library
3.) Go to statistics class
4.) Go home early and get an early night because I'm clearly too tired to think properly!

Oh, and the question about how long it takes to write 30 pages - well, it depends how many words per page etc! On a good day I can probably write 1000 - 1500 words, but often I'm a lot slower than that. Don't know if that helps!

Oh dear. Mine's coming slowly too. I keep discovering things I need to think about and putting them to one side. That's no solution!

Goals for this afternoon

1.) Go through questionnaire very-rough-draft and note in the sources for all the questions
2.) Identify areas where I really do need to think it through (rather than things I'm just lazy about/avoiding)
3.) Get supervisors to sign ILL form and take to library (thanks for the reminder on that one!!)

Good luck Sneaks. I keep having days like that, it's very frustrating.

Today, I am pushing on with designing my questionnaire. It's slow going - much slower than I expected. Ah well.

Goal 1 - work on first section
Goal 2 - work on 2nd section.... etc etc.
If I can get three sections done well today then I'll be happy.

Hi Cornflower

The first thing - take a deep breath and try to relax about this as much as you can! I totally recognise the way you're feeling - no doubt all of us have felt this at some time or another (and probably more than once - I know I have!) But it is possible to do, and it gets easier, and your confidence will grow.

The first thing to say is that this is a draft that you're writing. And it's a draft that you're writing at the very beginning of your PhD work. They're not expecting perfection, they're expecting first tentative steps, feeling your way through the subject. I started my PhD just over a year ago, and I felt very like you at the beginning, but now when I look back on a year ago it staggers me, firstly how much my understanding of my field has changed since then, and also how much I have developed in that time.

Maybe the most unfamiliar element of it all has been learning to trust my supervisors with potential mistakes, and not to be worried that they'll think badly of me if they see where I'm actually at with the work. It's quite a brave thing we do, working closely with people who are so far ahead of us in careers/experience/knowledge etc and opening ourselves up to their comments about how we're doing, but if you can find a way to embrace that (and I appreciate being able to do that depends on the kind of supervisor(s) you have!!) then you'll get so much out of the experience. I know that's how I feel, at least.

Re the writer thing - I'm a writer too, mainly novels, and I know it really helps my PhD work (which is in a completely unrelated discipline). It means I can focus on the work and not worry so much about the wording, as that flows reasonably naturally. Academic writing is very different, of course, but in a way it's just another genre to master, so I think we're very lucky to already have these skills! That in itself is a reason for confidence.

As to managing to write 10,000 words in 11 days - yes, it's difficult, but it's by no means impossible. I've done the same thing several times over during the course of my first year, and it got easier each time, but was perfectly manageable the first time, apart from the stress I caused myself because it was the first time and I wanted to impress my supervisors. It sounds like you have a good approach by starting out with time to think about the structure. If you can break it down into sections so you're not thinking about the 10,000 words as this huge single task then I'm sure it will feel more manageable. And if you can work on it steadily and give yourself breaks so you don't burn yourself out, you'll get it done.

Hope that helps! And good luck with it!

Thanks very much, PM sent. And I'll look at Google books too.

Hi all. I need two papers that I can't get from my own uni subscriptions - can anyone help? Might be that they're too old and I need to track down paper copies, but I'd be grateful if you could check your electronic systems! Thank you!

Stern, Dietz, Guagnano (1998) A brief inventory of values. Educational and Psychological Measurement 58 (6) 984-1001

Schwartz (1992) Universals in the content and structure of values. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 25, 1-65

Hello everybody. Been rushing around doing non-computery things for a few days so not been to the Forum, hope everyone's doing well!

I'm currently designing the first draft of a questionnaire I'm using as part of my main data collection. Need to get the first draft sent to my supervisors by the end of Thursday. Yikes, too much to do, as usual!

Goal 1 - track down some journal articles that use a scale I need
Goal 2 - go through the questionnaire plan and pick out easy bits to do today so I feel like I'm getting somewhere!!