I won't be watching. I find football really, really boring.

Now rugby, there's a proper game...

On Sunday, I have promised to take my mum shopping to find a dress for graduation. She has already been with two of her girlfriends and found nothing suitable. So now it falls to me!!

What do you think would be appropriate? She wants a dress, maybe a cardigan or something to wrap over, some shoes and a fascinator. She had a hat for my undergrad degree and wore it for about 5 seconds because "nobody else was wearing one"!

Advice?! My robes are going to be claret and light blue (where is the *vomit* icon when we need it)

*cough* I would never ever have marked them in the pub *cough cough*

*cough* And certainly never with fellow PhD students who had ones to mark too and sit around laughing at how bad some of them were *cough cough*

I know it's hard not to feel disappointed but until you see the official list of requirements, you may be beating yourself up too much unncessarily. Go and see the internal examiner tomorrow if you can and ask what the examiners report will say, there's no reason they couldn't tell you. Hopefully it might set your mind at rest a bit too if you know exactly what the situation is and hence what you need to do.

I agree, you need to urgently get clarification. I can't decide whether you have major corrections or a full resubmission. I would ask the internal supervisor to say specifically what was recommended, even before you get the official report (which can take a few weeks to come).

I'm doing an Open Uni degree (Undergraduate) and have done for the past few years, it's quite nice you can pick and choose what you learn. I did computing mostly before, but now doing Spanish. And next year I quite fancy doing something like economics.

I'd also like to do an MBA. But not at LSBF before anybody says anything ;-)

Normally a letter of recommendation goes something like this (having written one recently).

Firstly, they state who they are and in what capacity they have known you and for how long. (e.g. "I am a professor in curtain studies at Ipod University. I have known Ramona for a year when I supervised her masters in curtain making")

Then they need to give an opinion on your work ("She shows great creativity and her curtains were very novel and compelling") and you as a person ("Ramona is very studious and contributes well in discussions on curtains around the world").

Often it is good to have some statement as to why they think you would be suitable for the PhD ("Based on my knowledge of Ramona, I think she would be well suited to a PhD in the history of the curtain as she has shown that she is both academically able and also able to work well independently").

Well I have no intention to do so ... yet... but I've often thought about how interesting it would be to do another one given that you understand the process and discipline a bit better than the first time around. I wonder if people generally find it easier given they can concentrate more on "research" instead of worrying whether they're doing enough or where to find obscure journals. And just generally feeling more comfortable about the expectation of it.

You have my sympathies, takes me back to marking coursework! I always found a large glass of wine helped... followed by the rest of the bottle...

Let's put it to the vote!

Good : St Andrews, Bristol, Birmingham, Aston (their business school is quite well known)

All the others would be fairly average. There aren't any that would be really bad.

I'm afraid I don't but what a cool sounding paper!

I do it a lot when I go back to where I grew up, I don't tend to use it away from there as the people I mix with here are a lot different and would probably look at me gone out if I did!

It doesn't bother me in the slightest if people call me anything like that to be honest. I find it a little endearing, if anything.