Hey Bilbo and CG, I'm here too, altho is a lovely cool, sunny morning here. Sounds like you're both making excellent progress!! Wow, you're so close CG, and Bilbo, you've almost finished completely!! How exciting!! And CG, I'd still like to hear about how you feel weird towards the end - suspect I'll be going through something similar.

Keep going, not long now!!

Nice to hear from you Sue! I'm about to sign off now. Just backing up my changes to Dropbox and the usual email to the uni and my desktop computer at home.

Then it's bed :) Good luck to both of you - and anyone else out there - working over the next few hours.

Hi Sue and BB - I forgot to say Happy Easter! - It think it is Easter with Sue and nearly Easter with the others. BB - sounds like a productive hour, and also that you don't have too many PhD hours left to go...must be a good feeling.

Generally wierd because I'm not sure it's real. Although printing out vast quantities of paper with words I've written helps it seem a bit more real! Where did that all come from?! Wierd because I think it can't really be happening to me to have got to this stage at last, also because there's still lots of highs and lows. Also the obligatory freaking out about viva - but I'm not sure that's anything unusual - maybe the only unwierd bit?!

Sue, how's yours going? Think I read your update post about your feedback - a bit mixed, lots to do but a reasonable timescale? How are you going with everything? Are you full time thesis or also job hunting/working?

CG x

Hi CG

I'm full-time on the thesis but did go for a job interview, so will wait and see what happens with that. I had a full-on meeting with my 2 sups, and need to rewrite everything again - I had slightly misinterpreted what all my case studies meant. So - was shell shocked for a few days, but am back into it again. Just have to keep going!! Have no idea when I'll submit, but am determined to make the thesis as good as possible, and tight, and make sure my results are backed up by the theories etc. So, a way to go yet, but closer.

Good luck to you. And excellent that it is becoming real!! Don't worry about the viva yet, you'll be brilliant, but think about that later.

xxx

Just checking out after another hour's work on post-viva corrections. All captions checked, changed type where appropriate, renumbered, and in-text references checked/updated. Have to add sources to all my figures/tables next, but that's for another day. Nearly there ...

Glad you're full-time currently Sue. Poor you with the supervisor feedback. Still, as you say, the recommended revisions will make your thesis as robust as possible, so, yes, keep going!

Hi Sue and Bilbo
BB- it sounds like you're getting through the list and ticking the jobs off...nearly there indeed.

Sue, well, on the bright side at least your sups gave you lots of feedback and engaged with your work...not so good that you have lots to do as a result. You may be surprised how much is reusable - speaking from experience after finding rather nice groups of sentences among chapter draft I'd long since ditched. And even if you don't directly use it the process of going through, familiarising with the theories will have been a useful (albeit slow, tedious and possibly painful) exercise. check me out with my 1:30 am optimism...what's that all about?!

Anyway...back to it...

Thanks Cakegirl. Yes nearly there. Should be sleeping, but decided 2 more of my captions need to be changed, so have been tweaking them in bed.

Thanks for expanding on the 'weird feeling' comment. I went through a similar thing, though mine happened over just a very short time, as everything came together really fast at the end. How near are you to submitting?

Good luck with your work tonight.

anyone travelling the midnight train tonight?

i've been data analysing all night, want to sort out one more set of variabilities and add some extra experimental analyses i was avoiding to my results and then off to bed!!

choo choo! or maybe chug chug chug!

I am doing the "further avenues of research" part of my conclusion. Choo Choo!

Hey cris, hope you're getting on well and not too many train stops to go before you hit the sack!

I've just finished the analysis and i'm leaving the last bits til morning!

how many hours do you guys sleep a day? I have always been a nocturnal, but used to be able to make up for my sleep easily. For the last 4 months though I only seem to have 3-4 hour max sleep every night if I'm lucky, and even when I can allow myself 8 hours sleep, I end up waking up on the dot every other hour for some reason. grrrrrrrrr. Beginning to think this can't be good.

I've just been up, ordering final hard bound copies of my thesis :-) My corrections were approved yesterday, just over a week after my viva, so the next step is to order the fancy final version. Unfortunately my university closed its bindery a few years ago, so I've had to for a long-distance ordering option. But fingers crossed it will work out ok. I am using a specialist thesis bookbinder. I think my supervisor will faint when he sees the number of copies to be signed ;-) But I need 2 for the uni, and 2 for supervisors, and 2 for parents, and 1 for me. And after all that I thought I should get 1 spare, just in case I ever wish I'd got 1 more!

404: I typically get 15 (!) hours sleep a day. But I have a really nasty neurological illness, and that's led me to sleep more and more over the years. My record is over 17 hours a day. Occasionally I drop to 12. If I have to I can last for a bit of a day on just 4 hours sleep at night. But normally I'd need to go back to sleep to get many more hours for my brain to be happy.

BilboBaggins, has it changed anything to drop from 15 to 12? Do you go to bed thinking 'yeah, it's bed time' or because you feel sleepy? I did have 17-hours sleeps but only after 3-4 days of no sleep at all. It used to be ok but now I have to remind myself every night that I must sleep, because I started to see the signs of what lack of sleep can do to you. Maybe I need one of those giant cartoon hammers. :-)

Hi 404. I don't control the drop from 15 to 12. It just happens sometimes, either because the inflammation in my brain is temporarily lower, or because my steroid dose is really high. And then it will usually go back to the 15 hours norm, day after day after day.

I go to bed every night around 11pm and try to go to sleep, even if I only got up 5 hours earlier! And it usually works, at least until about 4pm. Then I might potter about. Then go back to sleep some more. I sleep particularly well after 8am, though that's not an option for most folk!

Good luck.