Oh, I hope you manage to get everything done that you need to by Christmas day!

Right, I now have a quite a good draft of my literature bits. I'm going to leave it for now and mark 3 papers.

Goal 1 everyone up and dressed - done
Goal 2 shopping!!!! - v. successful
Goal 3 ch 6 editing - I guess that is me entertained for the evening with a glass of wine (mince)

Goal 3 - editing ch 6 done so that leaves just ch 7.

Have lost 4500 or 7000 words and will not manage another 2500 from the last discussion chapter :-( Not sure what to do, so I need to get some replies from my supervisors about a couple of areas that could be lost from the lit review chapter. Bet they are all on christmas leave, bah humbug!!! Oh well will go off to bed now.

Is anyone joining me today? It is my first day back and I am so annoyed at myself for sleeping in. My other half flies back from America tomorrow and we have people staying for New Year so I have about a million things to do on top of work. I'll try not to think about it and focus on one thing at a time...

My first goal is to sort out a really good draft of one analysis section for my paper.

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Main goal for today is to finish marking my 3rd year projects - 11 of 16 done, so not too ambitious to think I might get the remainder done today. Just read a really excellent one which lifts the heart after the last one I marked before giving up last night, totally dis-heartened.

The dog still keeping me company although he has just eaten a Christmas decoration which I fear will reapper pretty soon on the carpet and so might scupper my chances of getting my corrections done :-( - You can take his dinner off him mid-meal but dare try and take a bit of plastic from him and you risk losing your hand.

Good luck with the marking, I hope the dog doesn't distract you too much!

I have totally failed with my first goal. I basically have a huge analysis section from my thesis to edit down and sat down and started plying around with it before realising I'm not sure on the actual required word count. I have texted a friend who submitted a paper to the same journal to find out whether the word limit includes data extracts or not because it will make a huge difference.

No point cutting stuff out of the analysis until I'm clear on that, so I am going to work on the introduction section and try to get this finished instead.

I now have a good draft of my introduction and method section. I did a chunk of this before Christmas so it was largely a case of editing.

The matter of the word count has been resolved so after lunch I will move onto the analysis section.

Hello everyone, hope you all had a good Christmas break! I think I really needed the time off.

I'm really struggling to make myself get back to work - was going to work yesterday but ended up surfing the web and watching DVDs instead. So today I'm trying to be strict with myself. I think the only way I can do it is to use the tomatoes method - I'm going to aim for 8 tomatoes today, which isn't that much really so will hopefully ease me back in while also meaning I do make at least some progress! The task for the next few days is to plan and write a journal article based on research I did for my Masters dissertation. So, specific tasks to start with:

1.) Re-read dissertation and make notes on key findings
2.) Brainstorm around these key findings to look for suitable narrative
3.) Identify any further data analysis or reading that needs to be done
4.) Make a plan of the work to be done and prioritise the jobs
5.) Follow and stick to the plan!!

Goal one done, though I forgot to set my timer so don't know how many tomatoes that was. D'oh! Oh well. Brief break from work while I do the washing up and clean the kitchen, because it looks like repair man is coming this afternoon to fix the fridge.

Today I started reading my thesis again in preparation for the viva and got so scared by mistakes I'm finding already that I had to stop! arrrgh!!

Morning everyone. I hope everyone is settling back in OK! I've been doing a lot of marking the last couple of days which I find it really easy just to dip into which has helped me get back into things.

I only have a couple of hours this morning as brother in law is coming over for lunch. My goals are to read an article my supervisor sent me and to mark one or two papers. I will also try and mark a couple after lunch but may end up hanging out with my brother in law drinking mulled wine and watching movies, so we'll see!

my report marking finished last night: three very good, some good, some average, some not so good and one just plain incorrect :-(

Goal today is get full interview transcribed - 13m46secs down of 20m43secs so over half way

Good luck Ady!

I didn't have time to move onto my marking. I now have to leave for the gym as it's closed until 4th of Jan after today. I am going to make sure I mark 3 papers this afternoon. I know I won't feel like it (brother in law and my other half are likely to start boozing over lunch) so I am making myself accountable by promising to post on here after I have done it!

Hi All
I have got another 25 graphs to annotate, number up and insert into the thesis. My aim is to get as many done as I can before taking the family out for New Year tonight!

Some of the last formatting and editing is great to see the final thesis take shape but very tedious aswell. So keen to get it finished but correct at the same time - what a compromise lol.

Hello everyone

I spent this morning brainstorming stuff for a journal article I'm writing. I'm now making notes on various statistical methods that I could go back to my data with. I wanto to get these notes finished and think about whether any of these methods can be applied to the data I have, and then note down a plan to put this all into action. All before I go to my other half's place for New Year, and probably for the whole weekend.