My funding council (AHRC) allows full-time PhD students to take up to 8 weeks off a year. But the university might permit a smaller total.

My PhD is very part-time and was done almost totally from home. Oh and going to archives in my own time to do historical research. So I set my own timetable. It doesn't matter if the days/hours vary from week to week.

As a PhD-er you don't have fixed classes that you need to attend, like a Masters student. Sometimes the university might put on formal training sessions, to teach PhD-relevant skills, like using EndNote, or Word effectively. But even those are often optional.

My department even has a few distance-learning students, living on other continents. They have to come to my institution occasionally, but most of their supervisor contact is conducted by email/post. In other respects they're just like the local part-timers though: typically at a distance, not seen on campus, and working from home, with contact/support from supervisors.

It does depend by subject of course. A lab-based science PhD would be difficult from home. But I'm humanities, so it's very easy.

Convention can vary. I used to do it after X but was told when I started my PhD that that is very wrong! So my footnotes now go after the end of the full-stop at the end of the sentence, so after "... blah blah blah."

There are also a number of books on viva preparation, for example Rowena Murray's one, and Tinkler and Jackson's (the one I'm using). Your uni library should have copies of these books, and the books could give you more tips. I bought a copy so I could use it more easily at home.

I don't have a viva date yet myself, but am expecting it at the end of March, so will be starting to reread my thesis and prepare properly shortly. Just had a meeting with my supervisor this morning to discuss how the viva works in our department and to tell me what to expect from the examiners :p

If the project isn't thrilling you (putting it mildly!) then that's a big worry. You need to have an enthusiasm for what you're doing to get through a PhD in one piece.

If you did a Masters in something else you'd be in a good position to do a PhD later.

Nasty condition that one. I've heard of people being excused from the MRes part of a 1+3 before, if they have suitable prior training. Shame that's not possible in your case.

Good luck!

If you don't want to do another MRes might you not be excused, because you will have one already? And then you'd have the funding to do the PhD in the topic of your choice.

Don't worry about alienating funders: I don't think you will at all. People turn down PhD positions all the time, sometimes even going onto others funded by the same research council / body!

I'd ask your supervisor if I was you. But I'd assume yes you need to label them.

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Gosh, congratulations Poppy! I don't have my viva date yet, and I have submitted, but am expecting it to be end of March. My external examiner was decided before I submitted, but the internal was only sorted out afterwards, and has recently changed again, so that's caused a teeny delay.

I found that things speeded up hugely in the last few stages. Particularly at the very end, when I was thinking I would still need a couple of weeks, and then 24 hours later I was all done!

I have about 500 footnotes in my thesis. This is normal for my subject (humanities). They include a mix of references to primary and secondary sources, and the opportunity to develop points more fully as appropriate.

I found it easier to write them as I went along, otherwise the task of filling them in afterwards would have been too much. I still had a few to sort out at the end, but just a small number.

No viva date yet, and since my internal has just been changed it must be ages off. My supervisor suspects end of March. At my university the viva's typically within 6 weeks of submission though. Have started very gentle viva preparation, but have mainly been resting. And haven't had a viva nightmare yet, though I had plenty of submission nightmares before submission!

I actually found it easier to join everything into one combined file, shortly before I submitted. Then when I printed to PDF ready for printing and binding it all came out as one file, and I didn't have to join things. I use an ancient Mac Office - Mac Office v.X from about 10 years ago!

Glad you solved your problem. It's the sort of fernickety thing that can be a real hassle.

I also found the task of going from Masters-level writing to PhD-level writing very intimidating, purely because of the sheer scale of words that were required in the latter.

The only way I could cope was to break the writing task down, into smaller chunks, and focus on more immediate goals that way. I also used a lot of brainstorming techniques like mind maps.

Oh and when I was writing the main chunk of my thesis I found it easier to work on 2 chapters simultaneously, so if I got stuck with one I could switch to the other, and vice versa, making progress that way.