Morning all,

Right, here we go, today's goals:

1. Finish writing section 3.6
2. Draft a plan for chapter 3's summary and introduction

Hope you all have productive days today :-)

Morning all!

Linda, I hope you get that diagram sorted! Batfink- I have all the moving to come; we just rent a van for a few days and do it over a long weekend, not looking forward to it! Busybee- sounds like it was good to have a moan with other PhD students, it always helps!

Well I made great progress on my journal article yesterday, but it was REALLY hard because I'm so out of my comfort zone! I really want to get a first draft finished today though, or at least tomorrow. Hopefully that should be achievable.

Good luck all!

======= Date Modified 12 Jun 2012 08:55:19 =======
Morning everyone!

Button - don't envy you moving yourself! We decided to pay people because I was on the second floor with no lift (fun getting that washing machine down the stairs!) and the place I've moved to is on the fourth floor with a dodgy lift - if the lift had broken they'd have had to lug everything up the stairs, and there's no chance I'd have managed that myself (I've got arthritis). I hope your move isn't as mammoth!

Sounds like there are a few good plans for beginning the day already, that's great.

I didn't get as far with things as I planned yesterday, so today I really need to get to grips with my work. I did start planning both my presentation and the thesis structure, though. First goals for today:
1.) Plan content for presentation and identify missing data
2.) Make detailed plan of what's written and what's still needed in thesis

Hi all!!!!!!!!!

I read about moves and I really sudder.... I moved 6 times in the last 10 years..... I really wish you luck and I envy you for your courage!

Regarding my work.... I came to the UK yestarday and today I have a meeting with my supervisors to discuss 2 of my analysis chapters (one is quite good and the second is awful). I will get their feedback and move on from there.

I have also set a new goal for me. To have a full decent first draft by October. It seems quite easy, as I have literature review (2 chapters), methodology, analysis (2 chapters) almost ready and introduction, conclusion and 3rd analysis in 1st draft.
BUT I am working full time, I live in Greece and English is not my first language. These along with the hot Greek summer (yestarday it was 35 degrees) make my goal quite difficult to accomplish... But I will try!!!!

Morning everyone!

Hope you're all doing ok this morning! I think I counted out the other day that I've moved 10 times in my entire life which is far, far too many!

Thanks for your support with the diagram - I have sketched something that looks ok-ish but it's getting it into an electronic form that I'm going to struggle with! I'm not going to do anything else to it now though until my supervisors have seen it and given it approval!

Well today I am mostly going to be getting on with making amendments to my second analysis chapter, good luck today everyone (up)

Eugh, I'm bored already and I've only been working for 30 mins! It's going to be a long day...

hehe know the feeling well Button ;-) I find that if I'm struggling to work sometimes it is better to get away from the desk for a bit and then sit down when I'm feeling less agitated! But if it's critical you get this work done then try breaking it into smaller chunks then reward yourself when you've done them?

Thanks Linda! I think it's because I've never written a journal article before, so feeling a bit under pressure to talk about a specific part of my thesis and working out what literature/methodology bits need to go with it. It doesn't help that I've picked a complicated bit too!

Has anyone any experience of journal articles? I keep writing and then keep thinking 'this will never get published, it's crap!' Argh!

Heh, I know that feeling! But I went on a really good training course about writing journal articles, and then used the method they taught us to restructure a journal article I wrote with one of my supervisors and a post-doc in my department. We've sent the article off but haven't heard back yet so don't know if the method actually worked, but it read loads better once we'd made my changes (even if I do say so myself).

It's actually a really useful method - you find four or five already-published articles in the journal you're targeting that are similar types of articles to yours (e.g. review articles, or articles following a lit-methods-experiment-results-discussion pattern, or whatever yours is likely to be). Then you build up a matrix of what a typical article of that type looks like by analysing the structure of each of th examples under different headings, e.g. format of title; number of sections; number of paragraphs in introduction, main body and discussion/conclusion; number of sentences in a paragraph; number of figures/tables/images; number of references, and so on. Looking across the four or five examples you get a feel for what's typical for that exact journal, and can create a basic structure for your own paper, even knowing how many paragraphs will be in each section.

Then you identify what the central thrust of your article is (its core message), and start filling in the structure with the details that you need to explain that central thrust - that bit is easier done as a mind-map with offshoots for each section and paragraph. You can get quite detailed on that, right down to bullet points describing the content of each paragraph. Sounds like a very proscriptive method, but it really seems to work, for me at least. My supervisor and the other co-author really liked the method when I applied it to the joint article, too.

Anyway, enough about that.

I've started planning out my presentation and identifying the analysis that needs to be included. There's quite a lot I still need to do, but I want to think it all throrugh properly before diving back into number-crunching.

Thanks Batfink, that's really helpful! I had done something similar but only so far as printing about 6 articles from the latest issue of the journal and looking at how long generally each section was/how much detail to go into for e.g methodology etc. But I'll have another look!

Right, I've had a brew so I want to knuckle down and get a bit more written before a late lunch. Hope everyone is doing okay today!

Great post Batfink, really helpful (up)

Right, I've had enough for today, somehow I've managed to read and make changes to the whole chapter so I'm spent all my mental energy for one day! I will see you all back here bright and early tomorrow!

Have a great evening everyone :-)

======= Date Modified 12 Jun 2012 22:36:01 =======
ARGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I am so stressed with my bank and my future internet provider! We tried over the weekend to order new broadband and home phone for our new house, and needed to pay a £110 sum upfront (for various reasons). The online payment system was down and kept saying error in payment. I thought I'd put the wrong card details in so re-entered them a few times. I rang them up and they told me to try again. Anyway, I thought it was something to do with my bank, so I thought I'd leave it until today and sort it as soon as I got back from the post office.

Was just in the post office and my card got declined, eugh, logged onto internet banking and it said I had no funds available...rang the bank and the blooming internet provider has taken payment 7 times off my card and God knows how many off hubby's! So seems my internet is costing me over £1000 ARGH! Bank have told me to ring the internet provider but don't think I can bear talking to them!

And to top it all off, I'm selling something very expensive on ebay and some twerp who has just joined keeps bidding on it despite me stating that they need more than 20 feedback...I've tried to contact them to ask them to verify it and they ignore my messages and then bid again!!!!!!!! Oh my goodness me I think I may explode with stress!!!!



NHIOGD'YGDHJSFOFH#JU#


I do love how my most stressful message on this forum is un-related to my PhD though ha! Some things are DEFINITELY more stressful than the PhD!

Okay, so I have calmed down since last night, panic over! All is sorted except I'm now waiting for the money to show back up in my account. Hopefully that will be today or that means more phone calls!

I'm going to try and concentrate on this journal article, I really want to get it finished today if possible.

Goal 1- read everything written for journal article so far, and make edits
Goal 2- develop findings section

Oh Button, what a nightmare - these internet companies are rubbish sometimes! When we moved house, they tried to charge us a £70 disconnection fee to leave our old flat and then another £70 reconnection fee for the new flat! We were going to stay with the same company but they were just taking the ****! After lots of stroppy complaint letters, they finally let it drop. I'd have been livid if they took multiple payments like they have with you though! I hope today is a smoother day for you and you get your article done.

Today, my goal is to get this chapter finished. I need to:
1. Write summary
2. Read through and check it all makes sense
3. Add references into bibliography

Happy writing/researching all!

Morning all,

Oh Button, nightmare! I can definitely sympathise with you, I would be livid and very stressed too! Hope it all gets sorted for you!

I'm a bit headachy/queasy this morning (seems to happen when I spend too much time looking at the screen like yesterday - see post from a few weeks ago!) so I'm going to do a bit of reading away from the screen. Hope you all have a good day :-)