I have no personal experience of this, but I would echo the need to ensure that you can have a safe pregnancy in your particular lab environment.

Personally if I were in your shoes and had the luxury of many years ahead in which I could consider starting a family, then I would wait until after the PhD. Yes, they can be done at the same time, but both are big things that will take huge amounts of your time and energy, so if it was me then I would have to have a very good reasons for choosing the path of doing both at once.

If you don't want to do a post doc that is understandable, but do you intend not to work at all after your PhD? Because any 'normal' job would give you maternity leave. Plus you say that your husband can support you both and your living situation is stable, so how crucial is it that you have maternity pay? Would you be able to cope without it?

The other argument in favour of waiting for a while is that if you've just come straight out of undergrad study into PhD, maybe it would be nice to experience a little bit of 'normal' life before becoming a mother!

Good luck with whatever you choose. :)

I know you probably feel time pressured because you want to finish in September, but perhaps it would be worth taking a few days leave? Sometimes a decent rest makes you more productive than you would have been if you'd carried on going in out of a sense of obligation (I speak from experience!)

Sorry to hear you're having a hard time. I hope things pick up soon.

What kind of jobs would you be looking for? Research? Policy?

A lot of people do a Masters in Public Health as part of being a public health trainee (a five year scheme). Some more info about this kind of route here: http://www.publichealthy.com/trainingoverview.aspx and here: http://www.fphm.org.uk/training/default.asp

======= Date Modified 07 May 2009 14:11:18 =======
============= Edited by a Moderator =============
www.findaphd.com

Fair enough. You did sound like a spammer.

A serious point for you to consider: if you ask for the opinions of people on an online forum tied to an online postgrad recruitment site, you will get a bias in the answers caused by a self selecting study population. You will need to acknowledge this in your findings and/or ensure that you have a number of different ways of locating participants.

Sorry if you already knew this. I am not trying to be patronising. I just thought it would be better to point it out, as it is unclear from the OP what your general methodology is.

======= Date Modified 06 May 2009 14:59:09 =======
I agree with Rubyw - it's a sign of progress. And the fact that you can detect differences between your work and finished theses (which must have gone through many rounds of revision) shows you are critically aware of writing styles.

So stay positive, keep going, enjoy your progress. Keep reading other people's work and seeing what you can learn about writing from them, and if you're really anxious see whether your uni does any short courses in academic writing skills.

It's one of the many things you'll learn in the course of your PhD, so don't let it get you down! :)

Do not attempt to do 2 full time masters courses at the same time. It's not feasible. It probably wouldn't go down very well with the host institutions either.

You really need to choose between them. If you're struggling, try to think of answers to these questions:
1. What do you want to do after the Masters?
2. How would each of the courses help you towards this aim?
3. What are the reputations of the respective courses/departments/institutions?
4. Can you speak to existing students on the courses to find out what they are really like?
5. What is it that appeals to you about each course? Are those things likely to be important (e.g. a specific module might sound really interesting, but the reality might be different, and you'd have been better off going for a course which had a different focus)
6. What are your existing educational/research strengths and weakness, and how does each course complement these?
7. If you're not planning to do a PhD, how might each of these courses affect your employability?

I'm not an arts student, but it sounds like you already have the ideal educational background, and I'm not sure another MA would improve your chances.

What might do is having some research experience, of some kind. Is it worth trying to find some kind of researchy job, even if not in an academic sector? Could you try to get any articles published while you wait to reapply (even if not in academic journals)?

Regarding your first attempt, was Oxford the only place to which you applied? It might be worth (a) asking for feedback, so you might be able to produce a stronger application for next time, and (b) casting the net a little wider.

Good luck!

I'm not a Mac user but I thought Endnote was suitable?

There's also a Firefox extension called 'Zotero' which may be suitable.

======= Date Modified 24 Apr 2009 10:55:47 =======
I think it might be a bit difficult if you do a Masters that bears no relationship to what you want to do at PhD. Ok, it demonstrates that you are capable of higher level study, but I suspect some admissions tutors/funding bodies for PhDs might look at your CV and wonder what the point was.

You say you want to study insects, but that's still quite a broad topic. Do you have an idea of how you might specialise within that? One avenue that might be a feasible way of pursuing the distance learning route without straying too far is to perhaps study something like veterinary epidemiology (e.g. http://www.rvc.ac.uk/PostGraduate/Distance/MScVetEpiPublicHealth/Index.cfm) or infectious diseases (e.g. http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/prospectus/masters/dmsid.html), trying to select modules that focus on topics such as parasites and malaria. I guess it depends on how interested you are in the interactions between insects and human/animal health.

On the other hand, perhaps an MSc isn't necessary. You can't get PhD funding straight away with a 2:2, but sometimes several years' worth of relevant work experience is considered an equivalent. If possible, why not try to get a job as a research assistant/technician in a relevant department? A couple of years work there might be considered enough to avoid having to do a Masters. Or at least they might be more amenable to letting you do a Masters part time and fitting your job around it. I'm in the process of changing fields and have been working as an RA for the last few months. I plan to do a full-time Masters in September, but I know that if I wanted to do it part time and carry on working part time, my boss would be amenable to helping me juggle that arrangement.

What do you mean by "I don't have the means"?

In the sciences, in the UK, it's quite normal for people not to do a Masters before a PhD. The usual reasons people do a Masters first are (i) not doing well enough in their BSc to be accepted to do a PhD or (ii) wanting to change fields. So if you did well in your degree and feel that you have enough of a knowledge base, then maybe you don't need to do a masters.

With regard to an MRes degree, it's a type of masters course that has a greater emphasis on research. So whereas and MSc will be about 50:50 of taught vs research content, an MRes will have about 70% research and 30% taught component. Another thing to conisder is getting a job as a research technician/assistant to get more experience of working in a lab, and to try to clarify your ideas about future directions for research.

Good luck! :)