======= Date Modified 13 May 2009 14:46:33 =======
Aloha, I know how you feel. The areas affected are painful but the worst thing for me was I felt so depressed. I ended up losing my appetite and my mum was really worried so she sent my dad to drive the long way to pick me up. Once I was at home with my family I felt a lot better.

Definitely take a break from your work and if you can go stay with family, who can look after you, even better.

Hope you feel better soon.

Lol, some of the posts here made me laugh - hypothesis - I always thought you were a she.....

Most of my friends have only just got married or will get married, only one has a baby but they are all professionals or have higher degrees. On facebook, only one girl I went to school with has children, I'm wondering if that's to do with it being a public school. (I'm in my late 20s btw)

I love kids but increasingly I'm so put off by the whole motherhood thing, I'm not sure I want to bring children into a world like this and in fact I think I would prefer to adopt an older child when I'm in my 40s - too many kids needing parents.

It's weird, if your supervisor thought that you wouldn't even make it past year 1 - why would he waste his time supervising you? Failed students look bad on a supervisor's record.

Take what you have heard with a pinch of salt, like the others say, it was probably taken out of context. Now you have even more reason to work hard and succeed - prove them wrong!

I think it's just a bit of fun, although people can be over the top about the whole thing - she says smugly with her dozen red roses ;-)

I made hubby a cheesy card which was fun to do as well as fun to give!

If the skirt is plain black or similar, could you just buy a jacket that would match (I remember buying a black one from Next to go with my pin stripe black trousers)? Then jazz up the outfit with a nice top or shirt.

I think if your partner/family are supportive and flexible, then there should be no problems. I met hubbie soon after I started the PhD and we got married in my second year. We've had arguments but hardly ever to do with the PhD. It helps that I rarely did work on the weekends so this would be "our" time.

lol sleepyhead! I have a full time job thats how I can afford it.... (thats also why thesis is still unfinished)

lol, I'd forgotten about this thread! Thanks for bringing it back to life!

I'm not quite post-phd yet but I've started to do something about the uglyness, got myself a personal trainer ;-)

It's her decision to keep harassing you - point out to her (if she replies) that shes wasting her own time as well as yours (you are a very busy PhD student). Unfortunately this is the nature of research, conditions can change very quickly.

Don't feel bad, she wasn't going participate out of the goodness of her heart (she obviously doesn't have any), only because she was going to get something in return.

Do you have to really use matlab for this? I would avoid programming in matlab unless I have lots of complicated data/plots etc to generate.

This is a very unique situation and people on here have offered you a lot of sound advice. I'm not sure what you are wanting to hear? Nobody can predict the future and tell you if you will be kicked out or not.
The situation as you have described it sounds very confusing and from our point-of-view, it's one sided.

The best thing for you to do is to speak to you supervisor and tell him that you are extremely worried and you want to chat about the situation.

Re this postdoc helping you out with some software, you do sound very worried about this. If he has only "helped" you, then you have nothing to worry about but if you are accused of presenting someone elses work as your own, the university will take it very seriously and you could be kicked out.

I'm using Word because I was using it from the start and couldn't be bothered to change over, especially so close to submission.

My "nomal text" is the same as yours, TNR 12pt 1.5 spacing. For headings, I have used a mixture of the set Word ones and modified them when I thought they were poo.

So for example:
Heading 1 - 18pt TNR bold with 12pt space before and after
Heading 2 - 16pt Cambria (or whatever its called) with 12pt space after, bold and italic

etc

As long as you change the settings in Word for heading 1, 2 and 3 (and caption - I have millions of these) to what you are using, Word will generate a lovely content page for you.

I've looked at a thesis where the only difference between the different headings is size and that looks fine but I prefer to use a slight change in font and size.

You just need to be consistent and it will look professional (unless you use silly fonts!). Word 2007 allows you to apply your custom fonts to all documents BUT you will have had to define them originally as heading 1, 2 etc.

I'd forgotten about this thread, I still don't have a new username and what happened to Pea?

I read the book, really enjoyed it! Looking forward to the movie now...

By actually doing it and not faffing about. No tv, no web surfing, no going out. Basically just lock yourself in your room and only leave to use the bathroom and eat.