As TreeofLife says every methods section is different. You need to describe all your techniques (or reference texts standard techniques) including your data analysis. Basically write down everything you did, then try to make it sounds scientific =)

I didn't realise you could change to PT after your third year Bilbo? My university made me go into 'writing up' phase and that basically said they have little to do with me from now until I submit.

I'm in the same boat SL, my original hand in date was March, then May, now August (as I currently work part time and start a full-time training course in June) and everything is taking so much longer than I want it to. I still have a data-chapter to start from scratch and not even thought about conclusions yet...eek!

I hear a lot of post-phd's say they felt that it would never end but it does, and you always feel more behind than you actually are...hopefully! Good luck to everyone writing =)

Lindall, I think it's really common to have supervisors disagree! Better that than your supervisors totally going one way, and then your examiners disagreeing at the viva, at least you will have thought about the possibilities and have your reasons for doing it they way you have. Go with what makes the most sense to you, that's what I'm trying to do, I get annoyed at comments to start with, but then when I think about it most of them do make sense. The ones I disagree with I talk over with my supervisors or someone else, it just helps clear it up in my head so that if I don't do what they have asked I will be able to defend my reasons why later. I do mine slowly too, I get distracted far too easily, I have come to putting my headphones on with just background noise (like rainfall or something) and doing the pomadoro technique (search tomato timer online there are websites that help with this) which is 25 mins working, 5 minutes break and I don't let myself check emails or anything until the 5 minutes break. It's the only way I can motivate myself to do computer work!

I felt like that a bit at the beginning, but I am just so used to it now. My last piece of work I got back had 48 comments! And that was a later draft but sent to a different supervisor and he had different standards to the other one. You don't need to accept every comment if you genuinely disagree, but if you accept that they are making your work better just do them, they won't take long once you get into it. I have the fun of three supervisors that disagree on certain things so the parts they disagree on I make my decision based one which one I agree with most as it's my thesis in the end =)

Yeah don't pretend you know and babble (I did this once at a talk at my institute and apparently sounded impressive but my supervisor came up to me at the end and said something like 'that sounded good but you realise it was a pile of BS don't you?' hah! He said it would never hold up at a conference in my topic so now I just say 'that's interesting but I haven't covered that in my research so far but I will look into it' =)

Thanks TreeofLife, that makes complete sense. I think I was just over-thinking it =)


Now I'm just thinking how much of a job sectioning up the thesis is going to be aahh! haha.

So it's fine to reference a later chapter in an earlier one? My supervisors comment confused me, and I haven't had a chance to ask him what he meant and wanted to give him the next draft by tomorrow. Also what format do you put the reference in, do you just say Chapter X, or Chapter X Section X, or something else? I haven't sectioned up my chapters properly yet as none of them are finalised so I guess that's a chore for nearer the end anyway!

I'm just wondering what the standard procedure is for citing other chapters within your PhD thesis?

I mention my last data chapter in my first data chapter just as: Chapter x examines such and such. But my supervisor has said that makes it look like chapter x should come before the one it is mentioned in.

Any thoughts?

That sounds pretty good to me! I think I had one chapters data at that point and I was about to start a new experiment for another (it should have been done earlier than this but there were major delays out of my control). I had samples that needed processing in the lab for the other two data chapters which took forever so unfortunately all my data came together at the end which delayed me a bit! As long as you have written down your methods and are thinking about your chapter structure and literature review you should be fine!

Done

Done =) Those were some deep questions!

I've never heard of this before, I googled it and it says it's about going to coffee shops and writing. How would it work online? I need all the help I can get to write this bloomin' thesis =)

Yes it's pretty common, in fact I don't know anyone who has gone abroad for a conference and not taken at least one extra day as holiday. I stayed in the US for an extra 10 days last year after a conference, I just booked my flights with dates I needed, they will pay for a return anyway so it doesn't matter if the return is a bit later than the conference. I did check with my supervisor, but he just said he assumed I would be taking holiday as there is no point going that far and not taking advantage of it! You just pay all the fees for your extra time yourself =)

I have felt like that before, I found that it was because I was a mixture of being anxious about failing and angry at having to look at the piece of work again when I didn't want to hah. My advice would be to talk to someone about it, it's stressful especially when you are mixing in your fears about future careers. Do as TreeofLife says and don't think about it as a big thesis/rest of your life type thing. Look at one correction at a time. Work on it for half an hour to start with and build up slowly, you'll feel more confident once you have ticked off a few of the simple corrections.

I think the thing is it's down to your examiners. I have three different supervisors all with completely different standards on certain parts of my writing, one saying everything is fine, one in the middle and one saying everything is awful because he is a perfectionist and freaks out about tiny typos etc. So you can imagine it's down to your examiners pickyness but you never fail for small typos or errors, the most you will get is minor corrections!