I'm here. Just been editing my bibliography after getting a photocopy of 2 sort of relevant articles and reading them. And then drew up a final list of things to be done before I submit before the end of this month (at least 1 month ahead of my 6-year part-time university deadline). Eek!

Hi Sue,

Nice to hear from you.

If only I had an earlier abstract to update! Unfortunately no. But I've been able to put something together, drawing on material from my intro, and obviously the chapter by chapter structure, and - most importantly - the conclusions.

It's exactly 300 words long and looks good. So I'm signing off for tonight. Want to get some sleep if I can manage it.

Good luck to you with your work. Oh and yes I recommend Dunleavy's book a lot. I wish I'd followed more of his advice, but it did help me a lot throughout.

Ok can't sleep at mo, so might as well have a bash at the abstract for my thesis. It's the last substantial thing I have to do, barring continuing to tweak the conclusions, and sorting out a few other bits and bobs.

Have a copy here of Dunleavy's "Authoring a PhD" and he basically argues that it should SELL SELL SELL (sorry my emphasis!) the contribution angle of things. So will ponder that. And also look at my university's examination report, which should clarify what the examiners are looking for.

Also have abstracts from a few other theses to hand as a guide.

Can't help thinking this will be the hardest 300 words to write ... :p

I didn't use, or need, EndNote at Masters level. However if you are planning to do a PhD in a similar area, and are already reading relevant journal papers and books, it might be worth you starting to enter their details now, because you will benefit from them in the PhD.

Even in my PhD (and I'll be submitting next month) I haven't used EndNote to generate my bibliography automatically. My department uses an unusual reference style, plus I'm a history student, so have lots of rather odd footnotes and other references. But it has been a wonderful tool for remembering and managing journal papers and books that I would otherwise have forgotten I'd read.

Nice to hear from Sue and Cakegirl. I'm keeping going too, though I've been very knocked out of late, and am creeping towards the finish line rather than sprinting.

I'm expecting to submit within a month's time, which is rather scary. I just have to finish some last minute rewriting of the conclusions, and write up my abstract.

I even sorted out (hopefully) my temporary bindings today, so I can take care of all that easily at home.

My thesis is too short as well, but I've been reassured by my supervisors and other staff in the department that it will be ok. What did your supervisor say about the length of your thesis?

Good luck with your viva. Let us know how you get on. Mine will probably be in 2 months - eek!

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True, but I would have said the same thing 13 years ago when I was a full-time PhD student.

Now the only way I can complete my part-time PhD (and I will be submitting in 1 month!) is by grabbing those odd moments, just an hour or so at most, often days apart, for everything, including writing, analysis, reading, thinking, the lot. So it is possible.

I don't know if you can retrain yourself, but I have to work very differently, in 1 hour bursts, often many days apart. I can't ever have a whole day, or even half a day. So I make the most of short bursts.

The way I manage this is by always having a list of things to get on with, and picking off the least unappealing things. So there is always something to do, and make progress on.

This isn't what I used to be like. I used to be more like you. But since I fell seriously ill, and can only work in very short bursts, I've had to adapt. So maybe it is possible.

I'm severely disabled, and have the Mac version of Dragon (MacSpeech Dictate) because I lose control of my hands so frequently. But I find it difficult to use, mainly because I'm a history student, so it can't cope with obscure words and spellings I need. Often it's more work than a help.

I also have the problem that I have great ideas which I can't type up quickly enough. My solution to that is to record them, speaking into the computer, and recording them directly that way. Then I replay them back, and type them up. It's amazing how great the ideas can be generated that way. Typically I will have forgotten almost all of it, and am rather impressed by what I said!

I chose my external in discussion with my supervisor. My research is very niche, and there isn't an obvious external. Could have had an academic from a different time period (I'm a history student), but in the end we went for a general expert in the time period and broader context I'm looking at, and someone who's familiar with the wide range of evidence I used.

My supervisor contacted the external informally by email, before filling out the formal form to nominate them to the university. Now we're waiting to hear from the department who the internal will be. My viva will be in about 2 months (submission in 1).

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 keep summary details for each paper/book in EndNote (there are quite a few appropriate fields that you can use to fill in anything you like there). Then I can search for keywords, or topics that might be relevant, and it remembers a paper I will have totally forgotten about.

I have rather a big problem with this, due to brain damage from neurological illness. Luckily EndNote remembers things I forget!