Hi. I had a similar award with the AHRC and the contribution from the industrial partner was paid to me directly twice a year. This was arranged shortly after the award began and the university was never involved with the transaction. Of course it could be different with the EPSRC scheme, but it might be worth having a word with your supervisor (if you've got one) at the industrial partner or perhaps an administrator there if you think its appropriate to do so.

You might find they want to break the contribution up across the year and will possibly use their existing payment systems to administer it. It you're position is a one-off at the company/institution it might be the case that the payment has been overlooked so I wouldn't worry about bringing it to their attention. Good luck!

Looking on the HP website it appears that the particular one I've got has been discontinued, but the subsequent range seems pretty similar.

I'm using a HP laserjet 1320. The print quality is very high - a real improvement on some of the inkjet printers I used previously. But most importantly it's FAST. I don't know how I'd cope without a laser printer.

The cartridges last for ages - I've used one a year and do all my printing at home, plus I use my scanner (not part of the printer) as a photocopier so it's very busy.

If you buy the HP toner cartridge on the high street they're quite expensive c.£50, but I got my last ones on ebay - genuine HP sealed cartridges for c.£20. You can also get refilled/refurbished cartridges from high street places such as Cartridge World for c.£35 and non-HP generic or refilled ones on ebay for less than £20.

Oh, and yes, it does duplex printing by pulling the page back inside and flipping it over to print on the reverse and works without any installation (like most printers, I think) on my Mac. I'm not sure about the wireless printing as I haven't tried it.

Hurray! Hurray! Well done Dr Ruby!

MH, don't fret. I don't think people are against you. Substitute "want to have sex" with "want to take the friendship onto a romantic level." That's how I've understood what Ruby's saying, and I agree. When somebody says they just want to be friends, that's what they mean: he/she doesn't feel the chemistry to take it further, but that doesn't mean she/he wants to never see you again, and probably wants to spend time with you in a platonic way. Which is, after all, the basis for most friendships, no?

Looie: hope you're feeling ok after the weekend. I agree with the others who say this person might come back into your life as a friend when things have blown over (if that's what you want). It sounds like you're doing loads of positive things to move on. Unrequited love is crap but it the feelings does go away in my experience!

Just wanted to say hi Olivia! I was wondering if you were still around. your advice is very sensible... hope your research/write-up is going well.

I was due to hand-in by September but now working towards submission in June (...the way it often seems to go I s'pose!)

======= Date Modified 20 Apr 2009 11:31:16 =======
Duplicate

Gary... now there's a proper Liverpudlian name!

I'm grew up Liverpool so I should declare my bias from the outset!

Although I haven't studied at the university, loads of my friends have been there (as PhDs and undergrads) and it seems good. From my perspective, the fact that it's a big university is an advantage for making friends - I'm doing my research at a small college so the gene pool of other postgrads who share my interests (or that I like!) is quite small. I've used the libraries which are excellent (I wish I had access to the range of electronic journals they offer for remote access) and the campus is centred on a pretty Georgian square a short walk from the city centre where the students all hang out on sunny days. Some of the city centre areas where students tend to live are slightly dodgy I would say, but probably no worse than elsewhere.

As for the city, you will benefit from the Cultural Revolution of 2008 and a whole load of recent redevelopments. There's a decent shopping area, a new museum opening soon at the docks (which already has a museum, the Tate Liverpool, and bars / restaurants). There are three theatres, the Philharmonic concert hall near the university, another area with more traditional museums and galleries, a rotating sculpture (?) by Richard Wilson (see below), the superlambanana (see below), the two football teams (can't say I've visited goodison Park, mind), two impressive cathedrals at opposite ends of the street adjacent to the uni, a busy night time scene with lots of local bands and hundreds of bars and pubs in the centre and a good train service running out to the suburbs so that you can visit the beaches and seaside towns 15 minutes or so North. Actually, it doesn't sound all that different to loads of other cities (except for the rotating thingy and the lambanana) but I hope it helps you decide...

Rotating artwork:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxnOFjxdvaY

Superlambanana:

http://www.superlambbanana.com/home.php?/home

Hi PG,

Hi haven't had time to really sit down and follow your suggested process of reduction right back to what's most important in my PhD world, but I agree with what you say about plan v. knowledge. I think it's something to with 'inhabiting' the process or 'ownership' of it, which took me a while to achieve a sense of (... and maybe I won't feel it fully until I've finished the thing)

Although, if I did ask those questions I suspect that, for me, the networks of people around me might prove to be the most important aspect. I've been working within an organisation outside my college who do the same kind of work as I've been doing for fieldwork and it's given me a support structure in addition to my supervisors. Even so, I've struggled with feeling isolated but I think it would have been much worse without this set-up.

If I get the chance, I'll try and think it through and get back to you.

======= Date Modified 17 Apr 2009 20:00:58 =======
Hi. I think the feeling of isolation - in my case, coming from a sense of being on the periphery of my college and because of the autonomy of the PhD process - is one of the most difficult things to deal with. I shared a lot of your feelings of disengagement too for a while when I first started. What got me out of it was having a whole load of fieldwork interviews to do, and once I started those I found myself engaging with the process. There have been peaks and troughs (some pretty major ones) since then but I'm in the fourth year now and nearly there with it (...yep, I too had planned to finish in three but the fieldwork turned into an epic thing).

I don't know if it would be a useful technique for you to try, but I realised along the way that when I'm feeling completely de-motivated and couldn't care less about doing the work I'm supposed to be doing, if I start something else PhD-related but less important: perhaps a menial organising task (I've got loads of recorded material to organise and sort, but it could be a bibliographical thing or search), or something indirectly related that I actually want to do or read or see, it will trick me back into thinking about the research.

Perhaps you could apply this on a bigger scale and just decide to free yourself up for a while and do some stuff which is related to your PhD but less work-like and maybe takes you to a few new places: archives, libraries, exhibitions, performances, whatever's relevant that might trigger your engagement. I don't know if any of this will be helpful to you, but thought I'd chip in anyway just in case...

Hi Satchi,

Thanks... I'm glad it's helpful (I've just noticed a few typos though!)

I'm sorry your confidence is low. It's come up in this forum before but I think it's quite usual to feel like you've been slightly 'deconstructed' or I suppose 'exposed' during a PhD and that for lots of people can be a knock to confidence. I know I've felt like that a lot over the last 4 years.

From what you say, it doesn't seem like you're worried about getting through the viva process but I can't see that alienating your supervisor before then is going to help anything. I think you should refrain from venting your spleen (even after the viva), move on from this and use your PhD experiences - both good and bad - to move forwards in your career. After all, you've already moved on into a post-doc position so my advice would be to rise about it and concentrate energy into new things.

As for the travel expenses, I wouldn't take this as a sign of favouritism: department budgets and outgoings change. I know that my college is more financially constrained each year, and where there are sometimes funds available, other times there aren't... getting hold of them is a combination of luck and timing. It would have been nice to have your travel paid, but I don't think it's unreasonable for you to fund this yourself.

So concentrate on doing an excellent viva and move on...

Hope it goes really well!

I found Patrick Dunleavy's book 'Authoring a PhD' really useful to begin with as it gives some quite specific advice about structuring a thesis right down to sentence level. I personally haven't followed his advice to the rule but his suggestions certainly helped me to work out how I was going to approach my own thesis structure / writing at at a stage when it seemed quite overwhelming!

For a less prescriptive apporach, I think Rowena Murray's 'How to Write a Thesis' is useful, and I've tended to dip into this book later in my thesis-writing process.

Also, loads of people here swear by Joan Bolker's 'Writing your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day' which includes lots of useful exercises to get you writing in case that's what you need too.

As for phrases, I agree with the previous poster that specific terminology will come through the literature/context for your research, but there is some advice about general expressions / phrasing in the books I've suggested and Manchester University has also put together some webpages with suggestions:

http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

Somebody on this forum directed me towards the Manchester site last year (thanks, whoever you were!) I feel it's geared towards science writing (I'm in Art and Design) so it might be a good one for you to have a look at.

I've also got some books about academic writing sitting on my shelf which I bought around Christmas, but to be honest I've been too busy writing to actually read them yet! Maybe when I get a few minutes I'll have a look in case there's anything that will be useful as I complete my final drafts.

Good luck with your writing!

======= Date Modified 28 Mar 2009 15:31:43 =======
Hi Eugene.

I really feel for you - this situation sucks.

My advice would be to examine your contact thoroughly BEFORE you write to the landlord. Does it state anywhere that you and your flatmate are jointly and severally liable for the property and the rent? The alternative would be that you both have individual agreements with the landlord and he lets the rooms separately (but in my experience, this is quite unusual).

If you are both jointly liable for the property, then you have some leverage over your flatmate because if you move out then it becomes her responsiblity to pay the total sum of the rent, which I don't expect will she will want to do!

If you haven't decided that you really can't stand it there anymore, could there be a way of resolving the problem without you moving out? For example, is it ok for the boyfriend to come round at weekends (or every other weekend and she can be at his in-between) or two nights a week and make a contribution to the bills?

I can totally understand that having him lurking round while your flatmate's not there is creepy, but perhaps your flatmate doesn't appreciate how weird that would be. I think you should also make that one of the conditions.

Maybe you should explain to her (as calmly as possible and when he's NOT around):

- Why you dont like him being there so much (you signed up to live with one other / it's costing you money / it's creepy when he's around during the day and she's not)

- What she could do to improve the situation (limit his visits to a time agreed with you / make him leave when she does / get him to contibute)

-What will happen if she doesn't do this (you'll move out and she'll have double rent to pay / you'll find someone else to have the room and she won't have a say about who she's living with)

That last suggestion about finding somebody else to take the room. Maybe you could suggest to your landlord (if you do decide definitely to move out) that you'll find somebody to take the room and then put a poster up in college / and advert on gumtree.com offering the room until July. The tricky thing about that would be swapping the tenancy agreement over so that you're not sub-letting to somebody you don't know, as you'd still be responsible for the room and it could get tricky.

Good luck and I hope you sort things out!