Thanks for your replies.

Yes, on a bad day I can be asked for ID in a supermarket for a bottle of wine, and in jeans and a t-shirt I don't look 25 - I think I need to go formal to get some kind of respect.

Yeah, the students I will be teaching always look effortlessly stylish. I won't be socialising with them, but I'm starting to think that a personal makeover would probably improve my performance in networking anyway. I may as well get practice in for when I go into the post PhD workforce...eek.

I am going to be a GTA on a art history course this term, and frankly, my wardrobe and scruffy hair aren't going to cut it. I don't feel confident turning up to a seminar in front of c20 well turned out art history students (of the type that populate my university). I figure I'll get a smart haircut and sort out some casual modern knitwear.... I know I should be confident to just turn up in jeans and a t-shirt - but I know that these 19 year olds just won't really take me seriously. I'm lanky and gaunt so look scruffy pretty easily - and I'm becomign aware that I may need to sculpt my image a bit more of teaching success, or at least to get through the session with dignity! :$

What do you folks wear to teach?

Thanks.

Rewards will wait until I've handed in my chapter in late september and I get paid. Until then a strong cup of tea and peanut butter on toast will do me!Heh.

Sorry to hear about financial problems and laptop death. Hug. When I need comfort I reach for peanut butter on toast and a strong cup of tea. Cheap and comforting. :-) I couldn't afford a laptop in my first year and so I used the library computers during the day and the 24 hour computer lab at night. If you bring a jumper and a flask of tea it can be okay. You can sometimes hire laptops for c£30 a month of the university. Best of luck.

I'm currently living on literally pennies waiting for my studentship in October. Got shed loads of work too.

Heh. Thanks. I meant 'special' in the sense of a particular edition dedicated to one topic. :$

I'm hoping that once this PhD is completed I can undergo a transformation worthy of Anne Hathway in The Devil Wears Prada...heh.... :p

I do what I can to stay vaguely in some form of presentable appearance when I leave the house. That being said, I don't actually have a pair of socks that either matches or doesn't have a hole in the heel (I have started to double layer my socks). My weight has always been quite low, I am the same size I was at 17. That being said, when stressed I lose a lot of weight and end up looking like skeletor! ick. If I am working on a chapter I get this harried look in my face, forget to shave or wash really, and stagger into campus to print it off looking like a wreck. When I teach next year (my third year) I am going to make a real effort to try and look competent and smart. But really, what with teaching and writing up, I'm going to look like a wreck in front of a class of freshfaced, well dressed 19 year olds! sigh. ;-):-s:-(:p

After weeks of waiting and checking my worldtime clock to see what the editor of the journal in the US could possible be doing - I have had my paper accepted for a special edition of a journal related to my research. I am on cloud 9 and need this because I have my panel soon and feel really shitty about a lot of my thesis. The journal article isn't to be published for about a year though! :-0

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If anyone fancies Swedish Indie music.....nice to work to.

Lasse Lindh - 'Vi' (We) from his album 'Jag tyckte jag var glad' (I thought I was happy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWvrGteE9_U

'A' level results are practically irrelevant for postgraduate courses. Despite getting near perfect marks for my A level History coursework I fluffed the exams (scribbling out answers in despair and starting new essays repeatedly half way through the exams) and got a grade 'C'. Now I am on a PhD which is in essence a history PhD. So there is no correlation and nobody has asked.

I think the leap from South Bank to either Oxford or Cambridge is too high. You might need to do a year long or so engineering course at a university higher up the league table before you leapfrog up. My undergraduate degree was read at an instiution just outside the Russell Group and managed to do my MA and PhD (so far) in a top 10 institution. I don't think league tables tell the whole story but to an admissions tutor and other staff at Oxbridge Southbank would be a longshot.

If you are in Manchester it will cost you £3.30 for a dayrider from Kingsway to Spring Gardens on the No.50. If however you have a young persons railcard you can get the train for £1.10 return. Bargainous? I think so.

:-);-)

Hoop

Thank you Shani! That would be a great conference to get myself known in North America for jobs etc. I have a paper in mind for it too. Plus I am actually trying to get on of the speakers to be a external examiner.

:-) You have your star.

I still await my first. (grrr ingrates!) ;-)

Ah! A forum search reveals that we talked in the past! :-)

Your study of animals in the life sciences(?) is very different from mine!