======= Date Modified 02 Apr 2009 14:19:14 =======

Ack - yes, I have been a bit unclear. I meant applying trying to get a part-time job that wouldn't infract the 7 paid hours a week AHRC rule until September. And then after that a part-time job, like 15/20 hours a week or so to finance the writing up period (if I can't possibly save before then)


I don't want to take on any more than the 7 hours before September as I want to get as much as the PhD done as possible, and don't want negative attention from the AHRC!

======= Date Modified 02 Apr 2009 12:11:13 =======

It is some sleight of hand to compare a £8,000 CDL with a fixed four year repayment term to the ridculous 100% 25 year mortgage (and culture of home ownership) lending that has contributed greatly to the economic climate. Only those with well paid jobs can ever 'save' enough to do a MA (since they must eat and pay rent at the same time) and this would take a lot longer than just a year or two. In reality a recent graduate in a service sector job could never hope to save the £8,000 -£10,000 required to do this. And if they did, they would be delaying their career progress by years.



So how is anybody from a low income family ever to do this? There was absolutely no hope of saving money to do an MA, nor could my parents afford to help. I couldn't afford to have a "I don't like debt" attitude.



I don't want to rant on or develop a two year old thread into a flaming ground - I just want to make it clear that



a) since education (sadly) in our society is a commodity and must be bought, those without purchasing power must acquire it somehow i.e. with credit.



b) nobody choses debt. Not everybody with debt has spent it on Fendi bags and booze. Many use their credit cards to pay bills, rent or buy food.



Clearly we don't know anything about the original posters debt. But I doubt they would have ever been in any position to save for a MA.

Urm, the original poster posted this in August 2007 and last logged in in September 2007. I think it is safe to say that they probably didn't get their career development loan.

Sometimes a career development loan is the only way for some to fund their MA. Sometimes the advice to work for a year and somehow save the money to do it is quite misplaced. If one is to save the money - what is one to live on for a year? Part-time might be possible but still the fees need to be paid?

That bloody Career Development Loan! :-s;-) So glad that other people took one out too. It was so worth it because there was no way I would have been able to do a MA and thus a humanities PhD after. When I finish paying mine off in November I feel like burning an effigy of a bank manager!

How did you know I am at Manchester?! But yes, I will check with the Student's Union and see what is the university stance on writing up fees. I really do expect to be done with it by Christmas (if not before, because I'll get tired of living on air!) so with hope there aren't any...

I'm going to sit down with a calculator and a bank reciept and see how much I can possible save by budgeting carefully in the next six months. Perhaps I might be able to squeeze just short of a grand out. That could keep me afloat for an extra month or so.

Yeah, you're right those fees need to come from somewhere. I would have saved some of my ahrc studentship were it not for the Career Development Loan I have been paying back every month for four years :(

Anyway, I'm going to apply for a part time job now and try and save up a bit of a cashpot now. Otherwise I'll only be worrying myself and freaking out when I don't have any money.

Thanks for your replies. Yeah, I'm hoping it is kind of nominal since I will only need my supervisors to read the final draft and then arrange the viva. That and access to the library. Salford's no writing up fee seems enlightened! It seems madness to charge students who may have just had their funding expired or have suppported themselves financially for years and can't any more - right at the last minute. Not every student can pull a couple of hundred or thousand out of the air!

Hmm, I'll bring this up with the supervisor when I next see them. Perhaps they know a way if "informally supervising" off the book :p (joke: I know I need to be registered to do anything!)

Obviously PhD writing up fees vary from insitution to institution but I was wondering what the procedure is at your institutions? My AHRC studentship finishes in September. I think I may overun until around November or even December. Though if the Writing Up Fees are too much, I will have to force myself to finish in September, since I will literally have no savings or way of paying for anything more than a nominal fee. I should probably think about getting a part time job now to pay for these fees in September.

I am especially stressed because I am trying to do the whole professional development thing and sort out a conference panel in the states in November and this will cost a couple of hundred which I may have to finance if I can't find a travel fund.

I just wondered how people cope when the money runs out, when they have a few months left to go, and yet they need to ££££ to try and finish and make their early career work. Sigh. This is more a stressed rant than a question. Sorry! :$:-s:-(

Congratulations! Wow - no corrections!

My thesis topic requires the use of images, and so I use them in abundance. They are however carefully selected and there to - as RubyW said - communicate an idea or contextualise/adjunct something that cannot be written purely in words. Becuase my sources are the result of hours of archival work or extracted from two hundred or three hundred year old books that I have read - including them in the thesis is something of a badge of pride for me because it shows - I think - my research abilities as a historian. I think that the image credit/acknowledgement at the bottom of the page underneath the diagram/image is great because it enables you to show your examiners/sups the achives, sources or places you have consulted. I think it adds something to a humanities PhD thesis.

Siwee, you could find a way to use some of your photos in the text because they show a research ability (demonstrate clearly that you went on X field/archival trip)

I can really relate to this. I broke up with my boyfriend earlier this month (and although I initiated it because we had drifted apart, and I want to try again, things are very much up in the air and probably over -though wish they weren't.) and it has been difficult to concentrate on work. I just drag myself out of bed, and even if I only read one journal article in a day and have a think about where it fits in my thesis, I congratulate myself on doing some work. I have a chapter due in two weeks. So will have to push the tempo.

Best wishes. You'll pull through.

Often the chit chat afterwards has very little to do with the content of the conference presentations. Sometimes the conversation is very general and will border onto the social (depending on who you end up talking to...) In the case of a history conference (you are a history PhD?) why not just jott down a reference of two, or an interesting source/picture a presenter used - anything that might be used in conversation to show you were paying attention. Or, just find a way to link a paper to your own work i.e similar period, theme, nation etc There will always be a way to 'save face' - I do it all the time! :p

Good luck with the next one too. I am currently awaiting to hear back from a journal too! (bites nails)

Congratulations! :)

The boyfriend sent me a card, I didn't send him one. He is off to a gig with friends, and I am off to a party with friends.

Valentine's Day? Bah.

======= Date Modified 09 Feb 2009 09:42:01 =======
======= Date Modified 09 Feb 2009 09:38:51 =======
======= Date Modified 09 Feb 2009 09:36:47 =======





I have had mixed experiences with this. Some academics have been very generous with their [free] time and ideas. Others have paid interest in my work - I have provided them with my work replete with primary sources/ archival material rdirectly relevant to their topic - and they have never responded. Not sure what to make of that - but I would go ahead and just ask people to comment. Sometimes people are generous.







At an academic conference a guy helped me to understand a complex seventeenth-century source because it has associations which as a n00b first-year I was unaware. Two years later and in my last chapter it was invaluable. Another academic at my university made a suggestion at a seminar to increase my chronological scope and her suggestion has improved my thesis immeasurably! So well worth doing. Good luck.


I guess a lot also depends on the proximity of your subject to the prospective reader. I get the feeling that I was used as a cheap and free source for book material once. Which was crap - and hence why to an extent I agree with RubyW: I will not be sending anymore work at this late stage (I am a third year) to people other than those my supervisors know too - once it is a passed thesis I will be more generous with my ideas.