I think it is good to present at some point during your PhD journey, even if it is just a poster presentation opposed to a formal presentation. Does your university have an annual conference where you can present at? In my uni they organise this and expect students to attend where possible and present if they have no other means, ie teaching or recongnised conference presentations. It is a challenge to convey your research to a group who have no prior knowledge, but then presenting to your peers holds different challenges and critisism! Alternatively get together with the other students in your faculty and arrange this for yourselves, inviting your supervisors of course! This shows good research skills if you proactively get involved without being railroaded.

Thank you so much everyone for taking the time to reply. After reading all of your thoughts and experiences I am feeling much more confident about writing the overall discussion. I will draft out my discussion structure today and tomorrow then start to write! Oooh it feels very strange to be writing up the last chapter! Looking forward to the editing phase where it will all take shape as a final thesis :-)

I think all of the concerns you have listed are probably the same for most students undertaking a PhD. My first concerns were am I good enough? Do I really know what I am doing? Will my endless experiments fall neatly into a nice thesis? Will I get any good results? How do I write a thesis of that magnitude? Have I included all of the relevant references? Is my thesis good enough to pass? Am I good enough to get through the viva? Yes I have had, and still have very similar worries to you. I am not yet at submission although in the new year I hope to. However, I think you need to feel good about what you have acheived. You have a thesis submitted with a supervisor who would pass you! (His comment about the examiners is likely to be a flippant get-out-clause!) I think that you need to focus not on a pass or fail, but what you have acheived in the contribution of your thesis. What are the good points as I am sure their are many? If there are errors take a list in with you to show that you have noted these. Supervisors are not likely to allow an inadequate thesis to be submitted and examiners are not usually there to make you fail. In times of worry/panic it is easy to let these thoughts and fears rule you and as such end up putting this viva on a huge pedestal. Take some time out too, just to reflect on how all of those other previous fears were just unnecessary worries as you have surpassed them. This will be the same when you look back on it in a few weeks time.

Well I guess I don't feel quite so dumb now!!  It all seems a little too easy to just 'cut and paste' from my previous discussions. I also worry about repeating the same thing from experimental chapter to the overall discussion.  So I am pleased to hear of others having the same quandary. I had forgot to add the 'contribution to knowledge and implications to the wider field' in my discussion plan, thank you!

As for streamlining, I am going to head over to that fun task after the discussion is written.  I have 41,000 words so far for a 40,000 word thesis with a discussion to write, oops! So I guess it will have a radical trim by the time I am at submission.

It would be good to know what sort of word length a discussion should be..........can anyone advise me on that too? 

Hi everyone,
I am sure this is a really dumb question especially as I am really not looking forward to writing the last 'discussion' chapter of my thesis. How did you construct the final discussion? I am writing a science based thesis so it has several chapters on experimental phases each with its own discussion on what I did, what I found and what I planned to happen next. For the final chapter I was expecting to have to write a mind-blowing, all exciting, action packed finale (arghh!). However my supervisor suggested I could (via cut and paste!) discuss the findings of the first experiment, what it meant and then follow on the next experiments, what they meant followed by the next etc. Basically take what I have already put in the chapter discussions and knit it together. Oh and add some limitations at the end and a 'what next if I ever have the inclination section'. Is this really all it involves?

Hahahahah, the double decker cot is genius!  Mind you hubbys work had to supply a bigger house for us and our babies so it was just as well they didn't know about this lol.

When we first moved we had a small house with no office space so I had the small area under the stairs for my desk which was actually a great set-up for me. The lighting was not the best sorted by a lamp  but it was my domain for all of my papers, niff naff and trivia! I worked on my PC then with everything plugged in around me.  Now in our larger house (thank you babies!) we have an office area in the dining room so our desks are there with.....laptops! Hubby has a mouse via USB and has set his up as the network.  I then have wireless capability for the printer, shared drive/files and of course the internet. It works really well with the exception that I have to turn on his laptop to access the printer wirelessly, a pain if he is away and he wants to take his laptop.  However, the drivers are on my laptop so I can just move over to his desk and plug in!:p Realistically I don't print out that often so it is not a problem.

A question for you to consider.....where would you keep all of your associated stuff (papers etc) if you just use your laptop with no desk?  Would a desk space be useful to store stuff on, opened at key places, be useful? However once babies are on the move a locked cabinet may be the natural choice (For paperwork not babies lol)! You can always move the laptop around if needed.

I am a P/T student aswell and have a 4 hour drive to get to my uni (I relocated due to hubbys job for my maternity leave).  I have found Skype tutorial session with members of my supervisory team invaluable as we have a face-to-face conversation. Can this be arranged for you?  All universities must have video conferencing links etc so it is really easy to set up. My Skype tutorials are usually conducted in the evening when the babies are in bed (yes, three babies lol) so they are very accommodating for me.  They are arranged monthly ish and we go over Chapter comments, paperwork formalities etc.

As regards your supervisor it saddens me to hear people having poor feedback, guess I have been lucky with proactive ones!  Can you speak over the phone with the one that seems to be helping you to arrange an additional one to your team? Therefore you are not removing the one who is not helpful but are adding an extra dimension? 

In my uni if you have a draft of your thesis and aim to complete in the next 12 months you can enter the write-up stage whereby you only pay a small amount of the usual annual fees. I think it represents about 25%. Is this an option for her to do?

I think firstly you need to find out from your supervisor why they are advising you to give up. If it is related to the content not being enough for a PhD then can you get a Masters from it? If they have doubts about your ability to mix work and studies then you need to know what areas you need to improve on from their persecpective. I am part-time and started constructing the thesis content at about the 4 1/2 year point. I am not far off having all chapters written with 8 months left. My daytime is taken up with family commitments so am restricted to evenings and also live away from uni now. My supervisor keeps in touch via Skype and we have never had a need for a frank discussion but I suggest you do so. If you give up how will you feel, will you always be kicking yourself for doind so?

For my literature review I searched and obtained numerous papers which I filed into key areas. From this I would sort out the most prominent papers to review first which involved highlighting key pints in the paper and typing this out in a literature review. Subsequent papers were then reviewed and slotted into themes within the literaure review. Each themed section was modified to compare, contrast and dismiss as appropriate. I would note that for the thesis write-up, post experimental work, the literature reviews undertaken in the early PhD did not feature in my final literature review. This is because the final results and findings will shape and focus the lit review more specifically. My original literature reviews were fairly broad for the topic. Subsequently I was still ordering papers in the write-up phase as they be new to the area or slightly differently orientated compared to the original searches.

Hi Pineapple, I am not there with my submission but I can feel your concerns. I am sure everyone who has done this feels that their thesis could have been strengthened, altered and rearranged over and over. I don't think that the thesis will ever be 'complete' as such but it will be good enough to pass the viva. I am sure that the supervisory team would not have allowed it to be submitted if it was going to fail as their reputation is also influenced by your outcome. I would take the time to note down all of the errors that need to be corrected and take this with you to the viva. Then I would look at the areas you are concerned about and write down what improvements you could make. This may come up in your viva but you will have addressed this already. I also think you should consider all of the good points and contributions you have made as this will highlight to you what you have acheived with all of this work. Hopefully this will empower you to feel better about the thesis. The work you do now in prep for the viva will make you feel more confident for the big day. I agree with previous posting 'what will be will be'! Good luck.

Thank you Bilbobaggins, I too am part-time so am looking forward to the end of six years lol. My three babies employ me during the day (for free!!) and then in the evening I am sitting at my laptop typing away while hubby puts his feet up. I try to get a couple of hours each evening and then a wednesday afternoon when the babies go into nursery. I guess I get realistically 15-17 hours a week. I started the 'real' write-up about May time so have acheived a lot in just a few months.

I am inspired by the fact you did use Word without too much problem, I have had to switch to the latest Word which was such a trauma so I am worried about the thesis not being easy to do in Word. Did you put graphs in with wrap-around text for each chapter or some other way?

I am feeling better about this last formatting not being too bad and slow given the experiences shared by yourself and Peljam!

Thank you Peljam, I have asked my supervisor about using the LyX software for the thesis or if the uni suggests any others!  I have alot of graphs to add in but may do them on a separate page after the text so the examiners do not have to flick through to the back of the thesis. I think the 'wrap-around' text option may get very awkward to do in Word with so many to add lol.  I also have each chapter written in a Word doc so have been slotting them into the large thesis word doc once I have addressed feedback comments. I am looking forward to the editing stage as at least it is almost done by then, and am glad to hear that it doesn't progress as slowly as I had imagined.  Did you used the LyX software for a science/experiment based thesis?

Thanks again!

Oh my, I have just finished addressing comments for the fifth draft chapter and am now facing writing chapter 6. Chapter 7 is the discussion which I am least looking forward to so am saving it til last! I am feeling good about the progress as I have til May 2011, but it still seems so enormous. I will have editing to do, formatting, adding in graphs to the final and that seems as though it will take forever. Then I have the concerns of whether I have enough references that are relevant to the area and have I included all that is relevant?

I have almost accomplished the word limit and have little left to write so why does it all seem so daunting still? Realistically how long does the final editing and prep take? I am so close to having it written and now I would just like to get it submitted! Anyone else found this part a hard slog as I would love to hear some words of wisdom right now?

Thanks for reading my rant!:$

Well done BevCha! What fab news and I bet you are riding cloud 9. I am writing up as a PT student and this certainly inspires me to keep going. This is exactly what I dream that I will be announcing next year, heres hoping!