It took a couple of months for my supervisor to turn around an earlier draft last summer! But this time he was being extra quick, I think because he knew my uni registration deadline was looming.

Haven't had my viva yet, and don't even have a date yet. But chilled about it 8-)

I emailed my final draft to my supervisor in early December 2009. He sent the printed version, all covered with scribbles, back to me just before the New Year. I think he was rather fast, given it was Christmas, but then that might have helped him find time too.

My draft was 70,000 words. How long is yours? That could be a factor in how long it takes to read through. Also it's arguably better that your supervisor takes a little bit longer to read it thoroughly than possibly skips something important that they should have picked up on.

Well done. Wonderful felling isn't it? :p

Sorry you've had to deal with this Alpacalover. I do think you should get your second supervisor involved though, if only to encourage you to keep going to the end, especially if your main sup is so discouraging! Frankly the things your main supervisor has said are totally unprofessional, but you're stuck with this person, so you need to find a way to carry on.

Try to ignore what he says about your day job: that's what your doing, for good reasons, and you're not stopping. Focus on his feedback about your writing, and any specific tips about what you need to rework, and focus on doing that, just that. Don't dwell on the past in terms of how rubbish his support has been, and the lab environment. Just do what you need to get to the end.

Also if he thoroughly gets you down do consider getting other support at the university, even counselling if that would help you vent your feelings, and keep going.

Good luck!

For the record the extra details I add in EndNote for my own benefit are in the Keywords, Notes, and Call Number fields.

Keywords has a list of keywords typed into it e.g. "ray tracing, planetary surface simulation" etc.

This means I can search for any of those words (say 'ray tracing') in Keywords only, or across all fields. And it will find this article and others that match the search, even if the searched-for word isn't in the title.

Then in Notes I put a very brief summary of the article/paper/book, to recall what it was about and the keypoints of relevance to me. So just a couple of sentences usually, though sometimes I write an awful lot more than that.

If I can find a detailed abstract I will put that into Abstract as well, but I don't usually have one of those, in my field. I'm more likely to make up my own notes in the Notes field.

The third field I use to add information is Call Number, where I record if I have a copy of the article e.g. a photocopy, or my own book, or a PDF file (rare for humanities!), or whatever. Basically so I can track it down again easily if I want to read it again. Also if it's in a library and I don't have a copy I might record the full library reference so I can find it easily again without rechecking the catalogue.

I don't use EndNote to automatically generate references. It doesn't work so well in my discipline, and the departmental style was hard to replicate reliably in EndNote, so in the end I just resorted to typing up footnote references manually. But EndNote is wonderful as a database of things I've read, and subsequently forgot.

I don't know if you can save EndNote databases to the web. But I have my own copy of EndNote installed on my computer at home (I bought it from the UK suppliers Adept Scientific at cheap student rates), and so never access it at the uni. I'm a student based permanently at home.

Referencing in history is really precise: you have to list the archive, the reference/catalogue number, the document name, any date, and any specific page or other identifying bit. And since a thesis needs lots of references to primary sources (as well as other references to secondary sources i.e. books/articles etc.) we end up with a ridiculous number of footnotes - or at least I did!

I use various fields in EndNote to summarise details about the papers/books I'm reading. So the core contents, any key points, themes etc. that I want to note. There are plenty of fields that can be used for this. Then the information is stored permanently in the computer for me, can be recalled whenever needed, and I can search across all my EndNote database for specific methodologies/sources etc. recorded in the notes that I've typed into these fields.

I'd say go with the supervisor too, over and above academic reputation. I was in a similar position, nearly half-way through my part-time PhD, but my supervisor was moving 500 miles away, and I wouldn't be able to go there very often to meet him. In the end I decided to stay registered with my current university, partly because I rely on extra support as a disabled student which is easier to arrange locally, partly to make things like library access easier. My supervisor stayed as my official supervisor, communicated long-distance with me, mainly by email, and another member of staff stepped in as a joint supervisor when I reached the nasty writing-up stage and needed more face-to-face contact and more regular meetings.

I did a similar thing with supervisors, after mine moved hundreds of miles away. He was going to stay as my main sup, but over time it turned out I needed more face-to-face contact during the difficult writing-up phase, and someone local stepped in. Officially my old sup was still my main sup. But I had a new additional sup who was acting as a joint (and sometimes main) supervisor.

Easier to handle all that informally, rather than go through the hassle of changing officially. Especially because I was AHRC funded, and they have to approve sup changes too!

Are you funded by a research council like AHRC? If so they would have to approve the change. Check their rules and regulations on this. AHRC award funding based on your supervisor/department.

My own research is firmly in a history department but when I speak to other people they always assume I'm an English student :-)