I'm hoping that is a generous timing and really doable as I will only have about a month between full draft and submission hah! I can only work on it 1 day a week at the moment but will have about 3 weeks in August to work full time on it until I start a full time job in September. I need to hand in by the end of August! I've heard lots of people say it'll take as long as you give yourself. So the tighter the deadline the more efficiently most people work! So it'll be fine!

Hi Ellebelle! I remember someone telling me once that when your supervisors start sending you in cycles undoing and redoing things that pretty much means it's done! Just choose the way you like the best and stick with it.

I'm sorting my data slowly, it's a lot of cutting and pasting several documents together it took me 4 hours to do one months data yesterday, I have 4 more months to go...so I'm preparing myself for another 16 hours of cutting and pasting, yipee! But it needs to be done so best get on with it =)

Good luck everyone!

It was a few years ago though maybe 2010! Might be closer to 20k now, but to be honest I felt pretty rich when I worked there, but my rent was less than half what it is now hah!

You sound very organised so I wouldn't worry! I think it's normal to have to wait for things outside your control, I think I wasted about a year waiting for various bits of equipment that were being used by others or needed fixed etc. If you can turn your lit review into a paper in the meantime that will give you a huge advantage later on!

Hello everyone! I hope you are having a good start to the week! I had planned on working most of the weekend but we ended up getting keys to our new flat on Saturday morning as as it's over an hour's drive from where we live now that took up most of the day. Then yesterday was my partners birthday so I felt too guilty to work when I should be celebrating! And today I am struggling with some data - my database was badly designed by someone who no longer works here and it spits out very confusing data in different forms which then need to be combined/multiplied with each other to get it to make sense...and I don't have the patience today. So the rest of this afternoon I'm going to finish reworking a discussion on another chapter to get that sent away to my supervisor and I'll start again on the data of doom tomorrow!

My pay wasn't just term time, as we worked all through all the holidays when the kids weren't there, I think I got 18k and that was seen as incredibly good for that job as people in the next county (with perhaps slightly lower living costs) got 13k for exactly the same job. Differs from council to council I guess!

For interview costs I've found it's hit and miss whether you get expenses back, charities almost never give you as they can't afford it, universities and government agencies seem to be good at giving expenses, private companies I think are 50/50 whether they will give you anything. If your funding has been extended and you really aren't sure about this job maybe the interview experience isn't worth that cost? It's a hard one to judge though just go with your gut!

Hi Ellebell!

My data analysis is taking far longer than I wanted (as usual), there was problems with my database and it was hiding some of my data and now has spat it out all in the wrong format so it's going to take a whole day to sort =(

I hope you are having a better time of it!

I haven't got to that stage yet! I'm def still in the 'make this good enough to pass even with major corrections' stage. And I don't know if I'll have time to get it to the superficial stage! Your supervisors should be better at telling what stage you are in! Mine are quite vocal on the 'this won't pass, this will pass with majors' type talk hah!

Hrm having worked in a school as a technician and knowing lots of uni lab techs I'd say they generally don't earn nearly that much! The most I've seen for such positions is about 20k, the least about 13k.

But yeah 24k is a low wage for a PhD of course, and I hope you find something with more. But if you were struggling to find a job 24k isn't a bad wage in the grand scheme of things =)

Wow well done on being so organised Glowworm! If you don't have much to do (I'm guessing it's all those little last minute things like checking tables of contents, references, acknowledgements etc), just get them over and done with! Then you can have a nice break to before your holiday! I can't wait to be at that stage =)

My results are getting there, I have completed one proper section, writing, stats and all (I usually do everything separately and now I'm realising it's much easier to do it all at once!), but still 2 sections left to do the data analysis for, although I'm hoping it won't take me too long as it's the same format as my previous chapter just different data and I made all the mistakes last time, so hopefully it'll be much simpler this time!

Hi guys! I hope you are all doing well. I was working my pt job yesterday and will be tomorrow so I have to cram a lot of work in today to get my results section finished. My first job is making some graphs with some data I analysed on Tuesday, and then working out some mislabelling which is confusing things, then sorting that data to make some graphs. Let's do this =)

I'm glad it's helping! I think I will use it today too! I was at my pt job yesterday so didn't get any PhD work done, so today I am trying to get my data analysis done and figures drafted for my last data chapters results. I'm having problems with some data having been mislabelled and so it's taking a while but hopefully I'll work it all out by the end of today! Good luck with your tasks today Ellebelle!

The price of living in Cheshire will be much cheaper than the South East so it might work out that you have the same amount of disposable income as those getting 27k+ in the South East! I'm guessing there would be progression in the pay too, so I'd take that into consideration. Basically jobs are so hard to come by that I wouldn't turn it down solely on it being a little less than your friends are getting, but if you see similar jobs in the area with higher salaries, maybe you can negotiate.

There is a free online timer called Tomato Timer that times you and has an alarm when the time is up which might be helpful too! I think small steps is the way to go! I remember being told to break everything down into the smallest steps possible and tick each one off as you go, it gives you momentum as you are always achieving something =)

I'm very slow too! And I'm not confident in my writing, it usually needs a lot of modifications from supervisors, but I think I'm getting better, just slowly! I also have the attention span of a knat and it takes a lot for me to work on something for more than 30 mins at a time! I'm trying to get into the habit of using the Pomodoro technique when I'm struggling (a timer where you work for 25 mins and have 5 min break) and that really helps when I remember to use it.

Probably true TreeofLife! But he admits to only working under pressure so probably did do a lot of work in the last few weeks! I do have a friend who wrote 3 chapters in 3 weeks and got minor revisions though!