Sounds like you're making progress Pinapple. And well done on the jobs. OUt of interest, when you took all your post grad stuff off your CV, what did you say you'd been up to for the last few years? I've been thinking of applying for stuff and removing my PhD but I need to explain what I'v e been doing with my time.

Isn't cvv the sercurity number on the back of your debit credit card? And the fact they then went on about different banks made me think it was some fraud thing - i.e. they'll sell you card details and cvv numbers if you give them lots of cash (or maybe they just run off with your cash!).

Either way, could new users be pre moderated at the weekend? ok so not great if you're a postgrad who finds this page at the weekend, but it would stop this entire site getting spammed every weekend.

None of them stand out as me, but I'd say 2 is the closest.

Interesting debate about IQ and PhD. I tend to agree with whoever said that people doing PhDs/graduates are probably surrounded by others who have done similar things and also have high IQ, therefore your perception of what is average is skewed by this (they put it better that I just have!). You only have to watch TOWIE, big brother or Jeremy Kyle to realise what average intelligence might be! For my research study I had a patient group and a control group. I had to work hard to find controls outside the University population as they all did too well on the cognitive assessment and I ended up with a significantly difference in IQ between the two groups.
Then there's the whole what is intelligence anyway? and is it measured by IQ tests? I don't know quite where to go with that one. I do know IQ tends to correlate with scores on cognitive assessment. Years in education also tends to correlate with scores on cognitive assessments, even in the over 65 age group.
As for being intimidated by high achievers, I think to an extent it’s normal to compare ourselves to others and unless you have very high self esteem or are an arrogant tw@, you can end up comparing yourself unfavourably. People probably see me as a high achiever, I always did well in school and am on my way to getting a PhD. I’m also currently unemployed and have been rejected from 5 interviews in the past year.

Sneaks - At conference last week my supervisor sat all day making notes on her ipad. It seemed to work well for her.

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Would love to know about paying online surveys. I've been wandering round the psyc dept taking note of all the paying studies! mostly only £5 or so a go but reakon I could spend an afternoon earning enough for a night out!

No worries about the viva secrecy, not sure I'll reveal mine, though probably will! The problem with mine is that my external can only come Friday afternoon and the internal teaches then! They're nw looking at other days but the internal and I would have to travel to London. Not happy about that prospect.

So if not Kindle, what is a good way to read papers? Once I get my next job I'd like to get something as carrying around a laptop can be a pain.

you could be right Sneaks. I only looked at the statisitcs/research ones which did have the October deadline.

Oh and Gumtree often has random one off jobs on there.

I'm also considering care work if none of the academic jobs pan out. My supervisor is applying for funding that may include a postdoc so I may work with her on that and do care work in the mean time.

Sneaks - I think the fast stream for civil service had a 17th Oct deadline.

Delta - I'm in the same position as you. Currently doinda bit of teaching, but not really enough to survive on.

My money making schemes have included contacting the inland revenue to see if I'm due any tax back and signing up to take part in clinical drug trials. So far nothing has come of that one as I didn't meet the inclusion criteria for the latest trial.

I have been looking at temporary Christmas jobs as I've been getting interviews for academic posts so really hoping to get something for the new year. So far I've been turned down for a job in boots :-( Think I failed the online 'what would you do in this situation' test. I've also applied for a temp job with the local post sorting office as they tend to need a lot of temps. Not heard back from that one yet. I'm also going to approach a couple of shops or bars but I'm putting off doing that as long as I can.

Good luck with the search. Do you have a viva date yet? I'm STILL waiting to hear about mine.

continued.....

Into September and I finally wrote my introduction and chapter 6 of 8. I realised what I’d actually been doing for four years, and also what I should have been doing instead! With a few weeks to go I still had to finish my penultimate chapter (which had been started in July with my cut-and-paste special but had dragged on with another analysis that my time line to completion claimed would be done in September 2010!). On another good day I managed to redraft three chapters in an evening. I spent my procrastination time making an abbreviations list, my list of tables, list of figures and I wrote my acknowledgements in the bath!
Two weeks to go and I tackled the general discussion. Productivity hit an all time high. The penultimate chapter was finally done and the general discussion was written in 2-3 days. A week to go and I still had so much to do. September 30th was looking doable but there were appendices to sort out the abstract to finalise and the last of the redrafting. Thankfully references and formatting had been done as I went along and for once Word helped out and didn’t go crazy when I put everything into one document.
Final week and it all came together. My final document was finished, printed and bound. I sat the night before submission drafting this and thinking over the year gone by. If I could do it again I’d have got on with the writing sooner. I don’t know why I had such as block on just getting on with it. I was able to let it drag on because I got funding for another six months. In many ways this helped. But in many ways, without the financial incentive to get on with it, it was easy to let things drag and I spent far too many days putting the writing off for tomorrow. I’m reasonably happy with the final thesis but I do feel it was all very rushed at the end.
Good luck anyone entering into a final year.

I decided to start a thread about my experiences in a forth year. I hope it's of interest to any one esle who is going into continuation. I'd also be interested in hearing other people's experiences of their continuation, or writing up, if you want to add them.

A year ago I entered the next stage of my PhD journey. Three years were over, technically I should be finished but I was heading into a continuation year for my PhD. Armed with my chapter layout and time line to completion all I had to do was write my thesis. Not to hard right? Well by the end of September I was already behind on my timeline. I was supposed to have finished at least one chapter but in reality the word count was zero. But ho hum!
Autumn came and I tied up the last few loose ends of data collection. I finally divided my main research group into subgroups which made the results more interesting, and then analysis, analysis and a bit more analysis. I can play with SPSS til the cows come home! But writing slipped onto the back burner. Winter came and I started avoiding my lead supervisor, (in so much as you can avoid someone who you never see!) I knew he’d ask how much I’d written, so I avoided arranging meetings about things I really needed to discuss. In return he didn’t contact me either.
March arrived. This was where my timeline to completion ended. I was supposed to submit at the end of March, but instead I still did not have a completed draft of a single chapter (oops). Sometime around then I went to a party where I remember chatting to another final year PhDer who looked horrified when I mentioned how many words I actually had written. We were both aiming for September 30th and he had a LOT more done. Cue panicking slightly! With April and May I finally got some momentum with writing. I spent a week at a conference in Montreal and mostly hid in my hotel room with my laptop trying desperately to finish chapter 3. Finally I sent the first two completed drafts to my supervisors at the end of May. Four months and six chapters to go. I nervously waited for feedback, I thought the chapters were ok but my supervisors had not previously seen anything I’d written (oops again!). If they felt they needed a lot more work I was never going to finish on time, but comments came back with minimal changes needed. Phew.
I’d hoped to get the next two chapters off by the end of June, instead they were finished mid July. Six weeks for two chapters, and with 10 weeks to go I still had four more to do. Cue a few sleepless nights. Was I going to finish in time? Thankfully supervisors were pretty happy with these two chapters too. End of July I had a great day of productivity. 3000 words in 10 minutes through the power of cut-and-paste from my upgrade report. Pleased to finally able to make use of previous work! Through August I plodded on and cursed the stupid decision to move house six weeks before submission (if anyone is ever in this position – don’t move during this time is all I can say!

My uni guidelines stated "it should not usually be longer than 1 page". there was a guy submitting at the same as me who had a two page abstract and the administrator commented on it. He just said "my supervisor told me to do that" and they accepted it.

I just checked and my abstract is 415 words. I had to change my layout slightly to fit it onto one page (I had 20 pt spacing between paragraphs in the main thesis and 10 pts for the abstract).

Hi I did your survery but had problems as two questions said to skip the next question if you gave a particular answer, but then all questions were compulsory on the questionnaire.

I've also been wondering about leaving the forum. Then again as soon as I get my viva date I will be on here finding as many viva posts as I can!
It's also been interesting seening people have the same problems finding jobs as I have been.

Then again as I didn't post here that much during my PhD I'll probably poke my head in when I can and post on threads I think I cna help (usually basic SPSS or stats questions!).