Hello Button, and everyone else!

Potatoes, hope the viva has gone well!

Good luck everyone with the journal papers and all the other work. I was getting a bit stressed about my slow progress until I spoke to my supervisors yesterday and now I feel much happier about it all, they basically said it'll take as long as it takes so don't worry about missing a self-imposed deadline. Which cheered me up. I think it's easy for us to let the stress creep up without us really noticing - that's certainly when I start getting reluctant to do anything, because I feel like nothing will be good or quick enough anyway so I'd rather faff around on the internet instead!

Anyway, formatting my journal paper ready to send off tomorrow (this journal actually asks you to mail four paper copies, can you imagine?! seems so old-fashioned now!) is taking way longer than I expected. But I'm not worried. If I don't get on to my analysis today it'll still be there tomorrow! I've done some useful other jobs so I'm not wasting any time.

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Batfink, nice work with the journal article. I would think it's cute to ask for four hard copies of paper. Its very enjoyable to ruffle through nice printouts. Button and Skig, hope your journal paper also goes well.

I drove 1.5hr one way to meet with my sup, only ended up getting a message from another student: 'he is away, he has something else to do. ' I was hoping half-week meeting with my sup can push me forward. It seems not reliable to depend on somebody else (not even sup) to urge me to work. Drive from myself is what I can depend on.

My goal tomorrow:
1. start the new testing case.
a. coding b.testing

Benyaya, that must have been really frustrating travelling to meet your sup who wasn't there. It has happened to me in the past so I know how you feel!

Goal 1- go over conference presentation
Goal 2- finish first draft of journal article- I will get this done!!

I can't wait to be formatting my journal article!! I'm still not done:$ so the only goal for today is to get it done! I'm almost there!!

Good luck all of you with the work, especially the journal articles! It is satisfying to be finishing off the formatting now - I've had to come onto campus to use the printer but at least I'll go home again with the stuff ready to mail off!

Benyaya, I'd have been so annoyed if I'd travelled that long and my supervisor hadn't turned up! How frustrating!

My tasks for today:
1.) Print out journal article and prepare to mail off
2.) Finish revisions to other journal article and email back to co-authors
3.) Do some more data analysis

I could scream right now:-s I thought I finished the results and discussion but I've just re-read it and I think it's pants :-(

Now I'm wondering if I'm being too hard on myself so I'm going to spend an hour on this and no more. I'm sure sups will tell me if it's not good enough... after all, their names are on it too lol

Oh dear Skig, I feel your pain, the discussion and conclusions on my paper took me ages to get right! Hope the supervisors reassure you it's all fine - or failing that, have some useful suggestions!

I'm ready to scream at my stats this afternoon too. I've been struggling for days to work out what effect constraints are having on a Confirmatory Factor Analysis model and have only just realised that every time I change a constraint the Amos software is changing all of my results, so when I look at comparisons it looks like nothing has changed because all the results are the same. Aarrgghhh! And I can't work out what I need to do to make it stop.

Thanks Batfink. In the end, I took the dog for a long walk to de-stress and I feel much better. Going to look at the paper again.

I'm sorry I can't help you with your problem there as I'm not familiar with what you're doing. I hope you've managed to get that sorted!

Oh, thanks anyway - I think I'm just going to have to re-do a bit of analysis and then focus on my criticisms of the method rather than my non-working model! But I'll think about it tomorrow.

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Button and batfink, I was very frustrating. This happened several times before. sigh~ Batfink, can you try another stat software? or google to see what method/procedure is your software's strong point, maybe you can switch to those methods? or maybe you can start with some simple model, then add more features step by step? I'm not familiar with stat software and models, just some general thinking. maybe someone knows more about stat software can give some more specific suggestion?

I have been headache for the whole day, really hope this PhD journey can end soon.

Benyaya- hope the headache has gone, Batfink I do hppe you've worked out your stats problemo (I avoid stats like the plague!) and Skig I hope you've sorted out your journal article. I was exactly the same yesterday- didn't think my journal article was coming together but then magically it did!

So I managed to finish, edit and send the first draft of my journal article to sup, which I'm really happy about, so I may as well get cracking on another one!

Goal 1- practice conference presentation
Goal 2- brainstorm ideas for journal article
Goal 3- start planning next journal article

Hope you all have happy Friday's!

Good morning!

How are things progressing Batfink?

I hope you're feeling better Benyaya... I don't have headaches often which is a good thing as I'm not very good at being sick.

Well done Button! You're brave, going from one article to the next! I hope you're right and things will fall into place for me.

I've broken the article down into smaller chunks (e.g. intro, method, etc) so I'm just going to give the discussion another last read, put the article together again, edit it and email it to sups for their feedback.

I haven't worked on my thesis for days now and I really need to get back to it soon or I might forget it all :-(

Hope it's going okay Skig!

I've actually been naughty and have booked to go to the hairdressers straight after lunch, and then I'd love to go shopping for a bit of retail therapy. I've had a rather stressful week with a lot of personal stuff going on (nothing serious, just stuff that plays on your mind!) so I think I deserve a little treat. BUT it does mean that I only have an our or so to do work!

I've done goal 1 and am well on my way with goal 2. It's odd, I'm getting quite excited about my journal article ideas, as you get so attached to your thesis that you forget that there's some quite interesting bits in it!

I have been thinking though whether it's okay to cut and paste some bits from my thesis to form a journal article? I don't mean just copy and paste a section and there's your journal article. I just mean that, for example, specific parts of my findings chapter can be made into a journal article, so can I just copy and paste that specific part into the findings section of my journal article, maybe taking a few bits out hear and there to make it more concise? I hope I'm being clear. My supervisor seems to think it's okay, but I just wondered what your thoughts are. I may start a new thread on this.

That sounds like exactly the sort of thing I intend to do with some of my results, Button - can't see any problems with that.

I was going to get lots of work done today but woke up with really sore eyes and one so swollen I couldn't open it. So I spent part of this morning in the NHS walk-in centre, and apparently I have infected eyelids (!!!). I didn't even know eyelids could get infected. So I have to wash them three times a day in baby shampoo until they're better. They're so sore that spending any time reading is difficult, so I'm not going to bother doing any work today. I've been doing housework and stuff instead. Annoying, but one of those things. Hopefully it'll have cleared up when I come back to work on Monday.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Oh no! I hope your eyes recover quickly Batfink! It's the weekend!!

Thanks Button. Its the end of the day for me, or almost, I'm having a last read at my conclusions, then putting it all together before printing it. I'll have a last read before bed and email it to sups tomorrow morning.

I was wondering about publishing... Whether my paper gets accepted for publication or not won't affect the outcome of my viva, right? So, I'm publishing because I want to (rather than I need to in order to get the phd) but my sups names will be on it as well. Now, shouldn't they take a more active role rather than just supervise me and guide me? Or am I wanting too much?