Hey Donut.

You are making me hungry already with your username!

I am at Bath and I have to say that no one has ever commented on the Uni. Actually my dept has great RAE results! As the others have said it is far more important to have a great supervisor in the right field at PhD level than anything else.

Go for it!

Hiya, welcome to the forum Sparklechops. Loving the name by the way!

Piglet, thanks so much for the advice. I will give it a go today. Like you, I would rather have something to work with, it has to be better than a blank page!

I will report back later.

Congrats on the 'smokin' chapter, I would have been ecstatic if my sup had said that.

Thanks again. I may try the wine later too Ann, bit early for me now.

Hi Ann and Writingup

Thanks for your input. I am in the social sciences too and I think my supervisor thinks I should write something around the 7000 mark. It is helpful to know that I was/am not alone in finding this chapter difficult. I was told it is the most 'fun' to write but I am finding it to be a nightmare!

Thank you.

Oh yes, it has to be greasy after a hangover! GLad the diet coke helped.

I was too, although closely followed by my sister.

Sorry H, I will have a rethink. £320 is a lot of money and I think it is cheeky that you have to pay that much. I also understand about not getting work involved as not everyone is understanding. Could he maybe go to HR confidentially to ask about resources? I know that this does not always work in practice.

I hope someone else can offer some more helpful advice.

Aliby, it is possible to get there, honest! I can't believe the time has gone so quickly, it feels like only yesterday that I started. Funny though as the end point feels so far away to me, I suppose it is all relative. I think my mantra at the moment is 'I will finish, it will happen!"

Laney, that is helpful, thank you.

H, I am not sure if your partner is doing a PhD too or works for the Uni, but have you thought of contacting the learning support unit at your Uni? I wonder if they would be at least able to suggest some titles that you could pass on to him even if he is not registered there.

I don't have any experience myself I'm afraid though, just a thought.

Another vote for the Time Traveller's Wife, although I did find it hard to get into to start with. Worth the effort though.

I am intrigued by Life of Pi now, thanks for the recommendation!

Sorry to ask you another question but I am having problems with the last chapter of my PhD.

I have just given a draft copy of the thesis to my supervisor bar this chapter and can no longer procrastinate about it. I think about what should go in it and my mind draws a blank. I have provided mini discussion sections in each of my chapters so I need to find some way of drawing the whole thing together I think. I can see that I need to include the obvious implications of my research and also directions for future research but I am really finding it hard to see what should go in this chapter.

I realise that this is very much topic dependent but I just wondering if anyone experienced this panic with the final chapter also. I am not good with discussion so I think that is my main problem, the thought of devoting a whole chapter to my weakest point is quite daunting!

I have looked and some PhDs in my Uni library for inspiration but wondered if anyone else could offer any useful advice.

Thanks again, I really do appreciate it.

Thanks a lot for the advice. I will have a rethink about how much the tables are contributing.

Some papers in my field do put tables as appendices and that is what I meant, apologies for not being very clear.

Sorry for the many spelling mistakes, time for a break I think!

I am from the social sciences so I realise that this may differ by discipline but here goes. Do you put tables in th chapter as they wold naturally occur or at the end like an academic paper? It seems to make sense to put them as they should occur but when there are a few it sometimes makes the chapter harder to read.

All advice and experience will be greatly appreciated.