Hi to all those happy-summer-submitting-PhDers!  Hooray, I have had feedback from 2 out of 3 sups. I have made amendments, tidied graphs, added some extra supporting data/graphs and explained my way of presenting things (for which there is no right answer).  So I have just to modify the focus of an area of lit review and I think that encompasses all of those latest comments. The feedback has been very positive too but obviously no-one really wants to say 'yes, it will pass' as that will be down to the examiners.  I would love to have a crystal ball lol. So now there is just one outstanding sup,..........oh what should I do?

The sun is shining here, spring is on its way and I am feeling more optimistic!  Hope everyone is progressing well.

Happy summer-submitting-PhDers?? - not too sure where any of those are!!

That sounds great about 2/3 supervisors giving you such positive feedback. What does your main supv say about the 3rd one? Can you submit without his/her okay? If your main supv is okay, I would submit submit submit :-). Never mind about summer-submitting - you might have your PhD by summer - how great would that be??

I'm on target (I hope) to have everything, bar my conclusion, written by Easter. I know it will all need multiple edits but to have the guts of it together will propel me to work even harder to get it wrapped completely sometime this summer. The sun is [sort of] shining where I am so while I am not as optimistic as you obviously are today Dunni, I am optimistic and generally feeling "yes we can" (up)

Keep us informed WHEN you submit Dunni, you lucky thing - honest, I'm not jealous!! ;-)

I have a quiet house to work in where I can have a hot cup of tea without the need for endless reheating (its a baby thing)!  I know what I need to do to re-focus an area of my thesis so yes I am one happy-summer-submitter! The sun being out is novel in the south-west UK as it is usually raining, so I am enjoying that too.  8-)

I have been informed that I could just go with 2 x sups feedback for submission........so I will email the third when these latest corrections are done for an update on progress. It is always a worry that something may have been missed and the third sup could have spotted it.  Otherwise I will be happy to see the back of it, which in essence suggests that I am ready for submission! Gosh a viva in summer, my head is firmly in the sand on that one!

Ady it sounds like you are progressing really well, a draft by easter will be good for summer submission! I found I had a good amount of motivation to reach that milestone.  Keep going with it as 'you can do it'. (Now I have bob the builder song in my head, arghh!!!).

Hey Dunni,

thanks for the reply. Sounds like things are going well for you. thats great. keep going. How much more new work is there left to do with you?

As with me, I just now need to extend my current work onto one more idea. How to approach it I know how to do it. We spent 2 yrs on this damn thing and in the end had to drop it for some time as what we needed didnt exist after realising this mistake. So now I have what i need ( which is the first few chapters of my thesis) i am now starting to fix that piece of work. it means methodology needs to be changed, and I ddont know what I will get out. But its rather emotional coming back to what you originally wanted to find out i nthe PhD. I hope that i will get out some resutls very quickly and just write up on what I learnt.

Hi all, Well my final draft corrections are all done.  Both sups that have given feedback have agreed it is time to submit, so unless sup 3 wants to comment in the next few days, I will be sending it to the uni registry. Just got to figure out how I am going to get it bound etc. It is rather surreal as I really don't feel at all ready to defend my thesis in a viva but I guess that will come with some prep nearer the time.  I feel a little out of touch with current research but hopefully if the thesis is submitted it will give me time to focus on these things aswell. All a bit scary but exciting!

That's great news Dunni, looks you'll be having a relaxing Easter :-)

After the trudge through treacle that was my lit review and methodology chapters and then 2nd edits of same, I am in the middle of writing up my findings. I felt completely lost when I started. Lots of us moan about lit reviews (well, me!!) but at least it's obvious where you start, ie with the literature. I was so confused when it came to my findings that I resorted to posting a pathetic question on the forum asking how to report qual findings. It was embarrassing to admit my total confusion but I got some really useful answers and one in particular, just a rather offhand line by somebody, sent me on my way. Now I am 'finding' writing my findings - I'm reluctant to say easy - but def easier than other parts of the thesis. Wonder if anybody else found the same? I forced myself last week to stop all writing and go back to the textbooks etc and figure out how I was going to report what I found. With a lot of data it's so easy to get sucked into lengthy descriptive accounts but hopefully I have headed that temptation off at the pass. It was a really useful exercise and I would heartily recommend it to anybody feeling a bit lost. STOP, and take stock. I'm working towards having a complete draft by the end of April - some of it will be a first draft, other bits at least a 2nd draft. Fingers crossed, although it makes typing a bit more challenging!!

Hope everybody else progressing well. Pink, if you're reading lately but not logging on, I hope your family are okay and that you got good news. What happened in Japan puts everything into perspective.

Good luck summer submitters (up)

Congratulations Dunni! That is fantastic news!

Hello to Globe Trotter, welcome to this thread, I'm sure that you will get plenty of advise to help you on the final few months of the crazy PhD journey.

Well done Ady on finishing up your lit review chapters! Massive achievement! I really liked writing up my findings. I think that has been the most enjoyable part – except for the nervousness that I felt around my authority as the researcher and the conclusions that I was drawing from my research.

As for me, I finally have some feedback from my sups about my second to last paper. It seems good, just a few comments and some more work needed on the conclusions and then I can send it off. Hopefully that will be in about 2 or 3 weeks. Then only one paper to go! I have been working on the final paper while sups have had the penultimate paper, it is still a bit crap, but after a few more days work on it, I am hoping to send it to sups to have them have a look and give me the brutal comments back so that I can move on with it. So fingers crossed that that will be in a state to send to a journal by the end of April or mid May.

I have also been working on my introduction. During my confidence crushing meeting with sups at the end of last year, they told me that I needed to include more of my theoretical, conceptual and methodological framework into my introduction (all valid points). I mostly have all of this, but it had been spliced and cannibalised for papers, so I have been going over it and re-working it to fit into my introduction chapter. Hopefully this will be done in the next week or so. I’m a little concerned with this chapter that it is a bit repetitive, so I should work on that too. Sups want to see both my introduction and lit review chapters together, so I hope that I can get them off to sups by the end of April.

I am still working FT, so I’m feeling a little strung out at the moment, but really want the PhD to be done (and good), so I still have a little motivation. Although my motivation to be fit and trim and go to the gym has completely gone out the door!

I’m meeting with sups in 2 weeks time, so fingers crossed that the meeting is not a complete disaster like the last one, and that they have plenty of constructive feedback for me, and that i have the strength to see it as constructive and not personal.

Hope everyone is doing well!

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.

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That's brilliant Dunni, so pleased to hear that :-)

Edited rather than put in another post! Chin up Patience (above!), I feel for you. I used SPSS for my masters and really didn't like it so I don't envy you. Hopefully you'll be able to move on to more interesting interpretive material soon.

Fm (below!) although the feedback sounds tough it does sound like you're on the homeward strait. Really tough working and finishing out your thesis at the same time but the sense of freedom when you submit will be worth it.

Well done Dunni!!! You must be so pleased, I envy you your state of mind....excellent work

Just checking in to say I'm plodding on with my quantitative analysis results chapter.
I have never written anything like this as I've never used SPSS before and it is mind-bogglingly boring. I just seem to be stating facts - the percentage of men doing this is x% and disabled people y% and then inserting a graph to show this. I was planning on commenting on the results in an interpretative chapter but this seems an odd way of doing this now.

Oh well, another 500 words to do.

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.

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 Dunni, that's great news! must be such an amazing feeling, and hope you enjoy your well deserved time off.

I'm plodding along with SPSS and writing results too patience - I feel your pain! I am procrastinating lots...! how are you getting on with it?

Wow, Dunni, that's great news. Enjoy the rest with your parents, sounds nice, a bit of TLC is always welcome.

Sounds a bit like everybody else is slogging their way through their write-up - hope everyone still feels they're on target. I'm happy-ish with how it's going at the moment. I had wanted to present my findings altogether in one chapter made up of different discrete sections. I have seen it done this vway in other theses. However, my supv thinks it would be better in 4 separate chapters of about 7000 words each. I don't know why it threw me as much as it did, but it did. I mean it's still the same info being presented. I think it is the thought of four additional intros and conclusions that made my heart sink.

Anyhow - back to the grind, good luck all and Happy Submission Dunni :-)

Another Sunday, another day with me infront of the couputer.

Cougratulations again Dunni! Fantastic work!!!

Ady, I cant remember how the rest of your thesis is being presented, but my results are in 5 seperate chapters. they are all pretty different topics/focuses to it seems to work well. But it does add a bit more work in additional intros and conclusions. And it can feel a bit repetative when it comes to wirting your final discussion/conclusion.

Having sent my final 2 results chapters to sups in the last few weeks I've moved back to my introduction and lit review chapters while I wait for their feedback. So far the chapters are not in as bad shape as I thought they were, so that is nice.