When I worked as a teaching assistant pre PhD, a student threatened to sue bacause he got asked to leave the course for poor attendace and not sumitting work. (It was a speeach and language therapy course, which is a professional qualification as well as academic hence the strictness of rules over attendance). He tried to argue he had a medical condtion that had meant he was unable to attend but this had never been mentioned before, plus the office administrator saw him out in pubs and clubs every week! Don't think he got very far with his case mind.

Thanks for your responses. Given me lots to think about and I'll try and prepare some answers on those kinds of questions.
I've printed out lots of reading to do tonight and tomorrow (and the bonus is they're mostly quite relevent for my PhD too!).

Now just gotta decide what to wear!

I think easy to follow is very important especially if the audience will have people from slightly different fields. If you can explain things well in simple terms I think this comes accross as knowledgable rather than think - there's nothing worse than someone who clearly understands their research but can't articulate it so that anyone else can understand it!

Other than that think it's easier to think of what makes a bad speaker than what makes a good one!
my pet hates are:
Having bullet points and then simply reading them off the slide
Saying erm every other word! The odd erm is ok but I've been to talks where all I could focus on or remember afterwards were all the erms!
Too much jargon and abbrviations that either aren't explained or there's so many of them you can't remember which was which
Turning back to the audience to read off the screne
Fiddling with hair/pen/pointer - too off putting
Reading word for word off a sheet

As for pictures personally I like them and maybe even think the more the merrier! I quite like having them fly in and fly out but I know a lot of people hate this!

If you're really bored do you fancy writing my thesis for me? I can send you all the data and all the relevant papers I've got!

Otherwise cake baking is a good past time. Or lots of excersize (to allow you to eat more cake obviously!) I'm really looking forrward to finishing but reakon I'll be complaining of being bored soon afterwards!

Think it's 0.000083 ie 4 zeros after the decimal place rather than 5. In a table think I'd call is <0.01 or even <0.001 (know that's not two decimal places but shows it's even smaller than <0.01 implies) to make it clear it's not actually 0.

This is quite a scary post. Car insturance is up for renewal on Monday...I would normally assume all has gone through fine and not even give it a second thought, but might just ring up to check before I drive again just to make sure.

How scared should I be?! How much work should I do? and how honest should I be about how little of my thesis is actually written?

I applied for a post doc on the grounds that it was very very similar to my PhD, just researching a different patient group so I'm pretty well qualified for it. However despite coming to the end of my third year I am nowhere near finished and the whole idea of starting a job soon is pretty scary. If and it's a big if I did get it I'd be looking to start in the new year and then write my socks off till then.

But anyway having not had a post doc interview before I really don't know how much of a big deal it is and what to expect. Will the be expecting some perfect researcher who knows all about everything? I'm trying to relax about it as I have a good track record with applications and a not so good one with intreviews! Any tips would be great....

Sure this is far too late for a response, but the only difference between my spag bol sauce and chilli is the addition of kidney beans, paprika, Cayenne papper and chilli flakes. Oh and I like to throw in sweetcorn too by my boyfriend thinks this is weird!

The cat in my old house used to like to sleep on the stairs. It was ok in the day when you could see him, but I don't know who was more scared when I trod on him and nearly went flying! Didn't stop him sleeping there.

Maybe best suggestion is to move to a bungalow!

oooh not been to Ikea in ages. Really love their new ad with all the cats...makes me want to go to Ikea everytime I watch it (though will be very disappointed to find they don't have 100 cats wandering around!) I have no excuse to go as we don't need anything for the house...maybe i'll move just so I can go buy stuff!

Right now I'd like to be able to control the weather. Lot looking forward to getting soaked on the way home!

We used to discuss this a lot when watching 'Heros' and also what would be the most useless superpower? My friend came up with having the ability to make someone select the book/cd/dvd immediately to the left of the one they were reaching for! Other than really annoying the other person this would be a totally useless power!

I'm not a big gadget person, but do havean iphone (got if free with my contract).
I don't like the whole 3D thing. I'm hoping it's a gimmick that'll go away again!
Not sure about the ipad and the like, never actually used one so can't really say whether I'd like ti or not. I can't really see the point of them.

It does sometimes concern me what to do if and when I want to have a family. I did know someone who got a post and immediately went on maternity leave for a year but I think that was a lecurship rather than postdoc. I do sometimes wonder whether it would be better for my boyfriend to be a stay at home dad while I worked, as I'm likely to be earning more and it may be easier for him to get time off (he's a primary school teacher) but this could cause problems with breast feeding. Hmmm guess there's lots of considerations.

Have you tried raising it with your boss? it may be that they can offe3r advice (though understand you may not want to raise it incase it changes things when you havn't made a decision)

You can do conversion courses to Psychology, usually they're one year masters courses (I think). i know one person who did experimental psychology masters with a first degree on medical sciences and another who converted with a degree in maths. The first went on to do a psychology PhD a year later so it can be done.

Computer programming is a great skill for psychology as a lot of experiments are computer based and this is something that is not covered at undergrad level. One thing that stands out is you say you don't like maths, you would be expected to use statistics in psychology. Though I appreciate maths is quite broad. I could never get pure maths but (kinda) like statistics.

Can't say anything about philosophy though, or really comment on job prosects, but hope this helps a bit.

Well done on getting onto a MSc and getting a RA position. I spent the year after my undergrad working in a bar! Hardly career enhancing!

I got a first with low 69% average and it's never held me back. I've never written my average on a CV and it doesn't appear on my degree certificate, so don't worry about that.

Anyway not sure which will help more. I think it was working in an academic environment (as a Teaching Assistant) that helped me get my PhD (though I had also done an MSc) so maybe I'd e inclined to say go down the RA route and it was nice starting my PhD without any debt (bar student loan). You could always work for a year then do an MSc if you find you're struggling to get onto a PhD. Or think about which would you rather do rather than which might help career wise.