Stop fretting and get on with it ;-)

And take hope from this, a few years ago I went to the main conference in this country in the general area of my PhD, lots of eminent people there - I started my poster presentation two days before it and still won the best poster competition! So you CAN make a good presentation under limited time, just need to not worry about it too much.

Sorry, I should have answered the other part of the question - yes it is possible to get such a 1 (i.e. lots of significant figures) depending on the model - I often used to have to deal with getting a significance value of 1 for my F-tests, just means it's so significant your head may explode :)

Lots of people withdraw from courses before they start for various reasons, I wouldn't worry too much. I would check what the cancellation policy is (to make sure you won't be financially liable in any way) but then accept it and withdraw if the preferred uni comes along.

It probably means it's 0.999999999999 or something ridiculous and just calls it 1 as it has run out of significant figures!

Neither, try JabRef - it's open source and platform independent. So it's free, free as a bird!

And Dispatcher, that made me laugh very very hard! I'm not always a grumpy git 8-)

I got my supervisors a nice bottle of red wine each. They were most pleased :-)

Hi Poi, I work in the private sector and have done for just over a year now (just started a second job recently having been in my first one for a year).

What do non-academic employers appreciate? Ability to project manage, presentation abilities, logical thinking and a logical pair of eyes on suggestions that may seem a bit wild and wacky, the ability to get down to the bottom of a problem, can pick things up quickly.

I would NEVER be tempted into academia - I earn more than my peers and my conditions and perks are as good, if not better.

Today, I moaned about:

- the young man in the shopping centre with his trousers around the middle of his thighs so I could see his underwear
- another young man with his hands down the front of his trousers
- two young ladies talking to each other and I couldn't understand a word they were saying due to the slang they were using
- potholes
- people walking three abreast on the pavement
- people walking too slowly
- someone nearly walking into me because they were texting and not watching where they were going
....

You get the picture. That's it - I declare I am DanB and I am a grumpy old man. And I'm not even 30 :-(

I think I'm going to have a cut and paste ready to everyone who thinks they're so brilliant because they're a top notch student with top grades and can perform origami on sheets on pasta or whatever.

Stop thinking you're so unique and special, you're not, there will be loads of people out there with similar and even better grades and relevant experience. And that in itself isn't enough for a PhD either - it's as much about endurance as it is about intellect.

*Guess who didn't get a lot of sleep last night*

And what's to say all the other candidates and many more besides didn't tick all the boxes too?

Firstly, LOVE the username!

And as said below, just stay at home and do something that doesn't need you to be in the lab - find some journal papers to read, type up some notes, do some data analysis.

Or watch rubbish daytime TV 8-)

I have spent this morning actually reading the manifestos of the main parties I would consider voting for. It's just made me even more confused as there are a couple of policies in each I really wouldn't want to be voting in favour of!

I read this in the paper today. I looked at the end to see he's flogging a book. I soon went on to read another part of the paper.

I don't think it's an unreasonable request as it could be deemed exceptional circumstances. I would try and get hold of your internal/supervisor/head of dept/whoever asap to see if it's permissable and arrange it. Make sure you play up on the fact it's been postponed already!