I agree with Hugh - travelling is exhausting and being away at a conference is hard work. I definitely need time off after things like that. It always sounds to me like you are making great progress, Zutterfly, and you might find that a bit of time off pays dividends.

I think it would be worth looking into who the proposed supervisor is, just as with any PhD. I can only speak from experience of an OU Masters, but my supervisor in that case was a respected academic who split her time between OU and another uni.

Sounds like a plan to get some input from your supervisors, Hugh. I'm guessing if it fits within the overall word count and is all relevant then it won't be much of an issue - it's hard to know in advance how many words/how much time each of these chapters will take. I allocated 15,000 words to my current chapter and it is going to be lucky to stay below 20,000.

I would say do them in chunks and mix them in with other stuff that's more interesting. Also, allow me to be a bad example to you - don't find yourself in the position of still transcribing the blooming things when you're meant to be writing up ;)

Sounds like a good plan to do the teacher training early in the day. It'll help that you know your content really well - my best teaching experiences have been the ones where there was an overlap with my own research, rather than just helping out with someone's class. If you're teaching a large number, it sometimes helps to get them doing things in smaller groups so you can circulate and chat to them a bit - I found that it really helps to start getting to know the students a bit so they feel better about contributing in class.

Good news about the interview - good luck!

I was really nervous the first time I had teaching, Teaddict, but it helped that I was teaching along with a member of staff and so had someone to chat to. Do you know yet what the set-up will be - how many students, what stage they're at, that kind of thing? Don't be thrown if you get a room full of 18-year olds staring blankly at you and saying nothing, as I have had - it's just what they sometimes do! I found that my confidence with teaching grew over time and it was something I enjoyed - I just try to throw a bit of humour in and 'be myself', and some groups of students engage better than others. Your uni might offer some teacher training to postgrads.

I'm having a couple of birthday-related days off, Hugh, but hoping to be productive on Thursday and Friday! Speaking of time off, what are folk doing over the summer - taking hols or not? I'm planning a week off, but for some reason feeling guilty about telling my supervisor - not that she'll say anything about it, I think it's just me who thinks I shouldn't be taking time off at this stage!

I got the same sort of deal as Hugh for Office 2013, and I think it's a rolling offer. I then discovered I could get it for free anyway via uni, so have installed it on various machines - might be worth checking if you can get it via your uni email? (I just clicked on a download link within my uni Outlook email window). I've used Open Office and it is compatible with the other programs, you just need to watch or you can end up with various file types floating around, and I found its functionality more basic than Word.

Is that maybe something that could go into 'suggestions for further research', satchi? i.e. maybe data that weren't included this time because they didn't help answer the research question, but might be important for a future study?

This is something I haven't done before, but I can't think of any reason not to do it, if the quotes add something to the discussion - it shows that your discussion is grounded in the things your participants said.

I'm in a similar position and live in a different town to my university, and the commute means it is just not feasible to do any social stuff there. I echo the advice given by others, to try to socialise with people outside of university. To be honest, as I've gone further through the PhD process (I'm now well into third year), I've just kind of resigned myself to the fact that this is a strange and isolating period in my life and it will come to a fairly quick end and hopefully I'll be back out working and talking to folk! Online groups can be useful for checking in with others who are experiencing some of the same things.