You are welcome Hugh, I am glad it helped! I actually spent some time on my PhD for the first time in a while today (been putting all of my energy into preparing for job interviews recently). It was quite relaxing oddly because it was a break from prepping for job interviews and quite straight forward as I am just applying 'on paper' edits to my electronic copy of the final thesis so it does not require a lot of thought (e.g. re phrasing the odd sentence, deleting parts, shortening sentence length etc.). I will be spending the majority of the weekend on it though- I just want the job interview out of the way.

I didn't get the job I went for the other week by the way- I knew I wouldn't as I was a nervous wreck in the interview. Fingers crossed for this one :)

Hi guys

Glad you are all progressing really well. Wish you all the best,

I want to ask you about conferences/publications. Do you wait for your supervisor's approval of a conference abstract/paper or you send it off especially if the deadlines are approaching and supervisor never get back to you?

Chase them up one more time saying if I don't hear back from you saying otherwise by 5pm today, I will submit the conference paper. And then go ahead and submit.

Agree, this is a good strategy. Someone I used to work for used to write papers with lots of authors and would send round a final version and say "Let me know if you have any edits, if I don't hear from you by COB tomorrow, I'll assume you are happy with it as is".

Okay, this week is crunch time at the end of a year that has felt like crunch time! Basically, I have three days off work to finalise everything to send off to the proofreader. If need be, I have next weekend too but I think I should probably be okay. Things seem to be taking a lot less time at the moment because I don't really have an option to procrastinate, and knowing that in just a few days my thesis could be basically finished is incredibly motivating!

Hope everyone else has a productive week too.

Good luck Teegs! I know what you mean, I do best when the time for procrastination has long gone as well! You're nearly there :-)

All the best teegs! :-) You're almost there, well done!

Thanks for the support guys! It's going well so far, the main challenge is that the more I immerse myself in my thesis, the more I'm swamped by a belief that all my research is all rubbish. I know it is not (necessarily) a realistic thought, and it's certainly not a helpful one, so I just need to let that thought be rather than getting sucked into it, and work on the bits I can change (i.e. the writing).

What are you guys up to this week?

Teegs90, oh my goodness I can so totally relate to that - that's exactly how I've been feeling reading through mine today. I think it's because I have read it so many times that there is no novelty factor to it, and it just feels so simple to me. But I guess if someone was reading it for the first time, it wouldn't read like that, or I hope it wouldn't. I'm working on editing this week. Can't wait to move on from thesis :)

It's so great to hear that other people feel the same way about their thesis, makes it easier to believe that is part of the process rather than a sign that I'm going to fail!

Today has been pretty tough, as I'm working on a chapter I particularly dislike, where my supervisor has been quite forceful about analysing things in a way I disagree with, and I gave up trying to convince her and am just hoping that my examiners don't see it as a major problem.

I've ended up instigating a process where every time I have a negative thought about the thesis, I decide whether it's something I can fix in the next few days (if so, it goes on my to do list) otherwise, I write it down on a bit of scrap paper to get it out of my head, and then put the thought into a bowl (can you tell I'm a psychologist? Trying to practice what I preach!). I'm not sure if it helping... the bowl is looking pretty full!

I also have those feelings of 'it's all rubbish' - I think we're all just too close to our own work at this stage and it's hard to maintain perspective. Good idea for dealing with the negative thoughts, teegs! The other thing I guess is that some of the 'negatives' can go into the 'limitations of this work/ideas for future research' section of the final discussion.

I am applying edits to my conclusion chapter now then it is going to my university's printing service. I am really fed up of the sight of it now that I don't even want to check the references (making sure they are all there)- I just want it gone. After my sup has looked at the hard copy, I plan to send it to a proof reader anyway before submission so I am confident that any last minute errors in that sense will be picked up.

I am feeling quite weird about having it printed and handing it over to my sup because I will have no idea what to do with myself until I have it returned!

How is everyone going on this week?

Zutterfly, woohoo! Well done! If you are anything like me, you'll miss it for the first 2 days, & then taste the true flavours of freedom, & then will never want to see it again ;-)

Mine is also off to proofreader in 2 weeks. Are you aiming for a Dec submission?

Hi again, I have a question: if you are making reference to a section in another chapter, do you write "see Chapter X; section X.X" or is it ok just to write "see section X.X". I am trying to reduce word count!

Hi again, I have a question, if you are making reference in Chapter 8 to a section in Chapter 2, is it ok to place "see section 2.4.2" or should you place "see Chapter 2; section 2.4.2"? (Chapter numbers are in the footer of the thesis next to page number so it is easy to navigate). I am trying to reduce word count!