I think that the whole PhD journey is a rollercoaster of events and emotions, but this is not an area that people really talk about, particularly when accepting a studentship.  The endurance and perseverance of a PhD student is half the battle. I can remember 6 years ago embarking on this journey with the 'yeah, I can do this attitude' but not really realising the implications of that acceptance.  The first year was me floundering in the deep dark sea at night not knowing what needed to be done or when. There was lots of ideas spiralling out of my head of exciting experiments but no real idea of how to set-up the methodology to realise just a fraction of these, lol.  A transition period occurs and suddenly the methodology is in place and you feel, elatedly, that something constructive is happening. But then there are ups and downs of findings and failures in data. Finally, more elation of gaining the data turns to trepidation of this massive mountain of thesis to climb.  Certainly not a small hurdle and one I felt that perhaps I couldn't achieve. But hey, another transition phase means slowly building blocks of thesis are accomplished followed by the writer appearing from within.  Jubilation at a first draft! A masterpiece I felt, only to be criticised, dismantled and rearranged.  A definite low point of having to accept the flaws in my Nobel peace prize offering, and yet another transition to the person who, although wrote it, will dissect it. Tumbling along with edited version after version to finally a euphoric moment of submission!  But now I realise that I am to undergo yet another role in my journey of critically appraising my own work for the viva. Yes there is acknowledgement that there are contributions and originality in this work, but also it is 'amateurish'.  New work can stem from this work which I can see clearly now, but that would be a new PhD. So in essence the journey has taken me through a very up and down rollercoaster, from which I hope to gain my prize, but not without a few more dips and dives I am sure. 

Well hello everyone! It has been a mad week sorting out paperwork and regulation requirements, but now today is the day! The four softbound theses are packed up ready for courier pick up, hopefully for delivery to the submissions office tomorrow. I just hope they get there safely. So I hope to get an email confirming my submission by the end of the week (assuming the courier does their job). It is exciting and scary lol. Unfortunately, during my quick peak at my bound thesis, I realised that I have one error where I did not change a page number cited in the text. Not much I can do about it now they are all printed and bound. Oh well, I am sure there will be a few other corrections. In the meantime, I have some packing to do for a trip with the bambinos to my parents for a few weeks break, with my laptop, thesis, kindle obviously :p

Well done on passing your viva Dr!

You must have been so chuffed after spending so long on your PhD. I am part-time and am about to submit, so I am looking forward to getting the viva done. I shall take note of your prep for when I do mine, thank you. How did the viva go? I am very nervous about this lol.

My one and only goal today is to collect 5 copies of my thesis from the local uni printers/binders and get them ready to send to my uni for submission. Oh and to maybe sneak a little look at one of them just to make sure it is not full of blank pages, but not to look too carefully as I don't want to see any mistakes just yet :$

Wow, your sup is a task master lol. Loads you with RA work and then, no, a month to write your thesis! At least you have been given a month to concentrate on writing, so make a plan and get going with it. Good luck, you can do it (up)

HI Patience, I can empathize with you on the SPSS front.  That was a very tedious stage of number crunching and the actual results section was very droll writing. However, once it is done the fun bit starts with interpretation of your findings and conceptualising them.  I had much procrastination over my findings and fitting them in to the wider field. Thoughts of my research would spring into my mind at all hours of the day and for a while it was a rather exciting time, trying to remember them all for the next evenings study!  Ok well maybe that is a bit geeky, but I thought it was a fun distraction from endless nappies and stack building with blocks   :p Keeping going at it, as a better phase will be along soon.

Hi everyone, glad to see there is some tip-tapping little fingers beavering away at those theses! I feel for you fm, working hard and studying is a hard combo, but you sound like have taken aboard those sups comments and are making good progress. Keep going and hopefully your next meeting will be a much better and motivating one.

Ady, you are over the worst by getting through the lit reveiw. Its a hard chapter to write and be tailored to your thesis too. The findings chapters are much nicer as you know the work and can draw your conclusions. A great time for some mental procrastination! The discussions were nice too bringing your work into context with that cited in the lit review. You should be on the home straight now!

I have sent my thesis to the printing/binding services at my local uni. Will pick up 5 copies in a week before sending 4 over to my uni registry. I have spent 2 hours PDFing the word doc 7 times as the formatting would suddenly throw a line into the next page or unsettle the alignment of my contents page etc. Argghhh! I have sent the 7th version to the printers and hopefully it will all be aligned (except for possible one symbol - but that is very minor and verging on perfectionism) in the final print. Oh my, I seriously need tea and chocolate now.

What have you achieved in your research (in just a few words)?
What is your contribution to knowledge?
Who are the key researchers in your field and why?
What key papers have underpinned the knowledge for your research and why are these key papers?
Why have you chosen your approach/methodology, justify your decision?
What further research is suggested by your work?

These are ones that were suggested in our Viva prep workshop which are fairly generalised.

Thank you Ady, you are a star! I shall check my email for the rather aged articles that my external has cited in a review that has been very, very useful :p With these titles, I would make an excellent dinner guest, yawn, zzzzz

(sprout)

Hi all, I was hoping that someone may be able to help me again. My uni has one of these (Nature) but only in print and that is 5 hours away, the other is too old for my uni access. The two articles are:

H. Hartridge and F.J. W. Roughton

The Velocity with which Carbon Monoxide Displaces Oxygen from Combination with Hoemoglobin.--Part I

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B March 1, 1923 94:336-367



H. Hartridge and F. J. W. Roughton

The Measurement of the Rates of Oxidation and Reduction of Haemoglobin

Nature 111, 325-326 (10 March 1923) | doi:10.1038/111325b0,


Thank you!

I cannot help with the topic area as this is outside of my field, but I would prefer Cambridge to UCL. I am studying in Cambridge and love the place for its atmosphere and historical ambience. That said both are good institutions.

Well I like my sleep zzzzzzzz!  I would love 8-9 hours but reality of babies and toddlers means I get 7-8 hours. As long as the 8 hours is more often than 7 hours, I can manage ok.  But then I used to do a clinical job with oncalls, so working 24 hours straight followed by about 4 hours sleep was quite normal then :p

I would imagine that the new job has made him conscientious about being 'on the ball' at work. First impressions count, so turning up half asleep would not bode well.  However, I can see your point aswell, so maybe as has been previously suggested, you opt to stay over now and then.

Hi Chococake,

What would be your purpose at the neighbouring university?  I had an arrangement with my local university to have access to the library and communal computer facilities as I was 5 hours drive from my university. My supervisor arranged with my university library to endorse me as a student which then provided me with a Sconul access card to use the local university facilities.  Both universities were part of the sconul system which is designed to allow reciprocal sharing of resources. Not sure if this is what you are after....?  If it is, then your library may be able to help in the first instance.

Congratulations Dr Hypothesis! Enjoy your celebrations :-)

Massive congratulations Dr Pink_Fluff, do tell us all about it when you have had time to celebrate! Wow, what a result! How did you cope with the nerves as I would love some tips too :-)