I've fallen off the accountability wagon recently due to work going rubbishly and my supervisor being awful, but I wanted to say an ENORMOUS congratulations to Ruby! You're an inspiration to the rest of us to keep slogging away :-)

Hope you can enjoy some quality time off and feel refreshed before viva preparation and all the rest.

Nik naks...haven't had those since I was a kid! Do they still do the strange scampi flavoured ones?

I work in a shared office but there's only one other person in today; I actually find I work a lot better when the others are in because I feel too guilty messing around on the internet, just in case they're looking at my screen!

Maybe you could try making a list of all the jobs that need doing on the chapter, then set an amount of time to complete each one - works for me sometimes.

I'm here, drinking a herbal tea and eating some nuts. Not normally this healthy but have been on a tedious weight loss regime since new year...would love a carrot cake!

Been reading the same book *all day* and lapsed into copying out huge chunks, which is what I do when something's interesting but I don't have the mental energy to try and understand it. Not sure if copying out is a transferable skill but if it is, the phd has equipped me well :-)

Good luck with the chapter.

Right! Friday! Well, I got the thesis sent off to my supervisors on Wednesday and our next meeting isn't until 4th March, so I'm trying to plot out a constructive way of using this time. I spent most of yesterday going through my references and bibliography - I thought I'd been reasonably good at keeping the bibliography up to date but then discovered 30 missing references in the first read-through :$

The first task is to write a conference paper based on a chapter of my thesis. So my goals for today are:
Plan the paper - know this roughly already
Do some cutting and pasting from the thesis
Start filling in the gaps with writing!

Lara & Ruby, hope you both make progress today despite the wave of tiredness and procrastination that seems to have hit. I'm intrigued by the learning style test that you took, Lara - might have a go at that soon.

Just a quick check in - still have a ton of stuff to do before sending the work to my supervisors at 6pm. My internet has been down almost all day, which would be fine on any other day when I just mess around on there, but today I actually needed a whole load of statistics for my introduction :-s

Ruby, I don't think you should worry about not meeting all of your goals in the order you wanted to - so long as you're doing something towards the thesis that's all that matters, in my opinion. Sometimes I think it's better psychologically to pick the least worst task and just get on with it, rather than trying to prioritise everything and do what you think you 'should' be doing.

Armendaf, you inspired me to sit down last night and put all the chapters into done document called "thesis" (yay!) and work off that from now on. So once I've got all my references filled in, formatting standardised, etc etc ....

Lara - new notebook - always good! Bit like the new pencil case at the start of the new school year!

hope everyone has had a good day. See you tomorrow!

Hello all,

Ruby - I do find it helpful, although I have started to use posting on here as another procrastination method! I'm very big on lists and targets anyway, so it's not that I need the forum to prompt me to set the goals, but I do like seeing them 'in print' as it makes me feel pretty guilty if I don't stick to them!

I did pretty much nothing yesterday as an old friend who did her phd here popped in and we all went for lunch, then had to go to library to pick up holds etc etc...then today had to do teaching prep and then teach a 2 hour seminar. I'm at the stage now where I know I can't get everything done that I wanted to do before sending it to the supervisors on wednesday and I'm kind of paralysed by that fact. I'm a real sucker for that - having so much to do that you can't do any of it! Think I'm going to go home soon and do a bit more this evening.

Armendaf - I have to admit I was kind of horrified when I read your post, but only because I know I will end up in a similar situation myself if I don't sort stuff out soon. I've got loads of folders with stuff like "Chapter 2 - June version" "Chapter 2 - NEW version" "Chapter 2 - version with edits" etc etc :$ Hope that you manage to reign it all in; sounds like going to the viva with some corrections already sorted could be a good solution.

Congratulations James! Sounds a lot like my experience when I got my offer and ran into the nearest cafe (happened to be a Starbucks, in December when they have those gingerbread lattes) to hyperventilate before finding a phone box to tell everyone. Every winter when they get those lattes in it reminds me how excited I was then!

Hope that you keep popping in here to let us all know how you're getting on. I'm sure you will be great - sounds like you are very much in demand :-)

Happy Monday everybody!

I would like to say I'm refreshed after a long weekend off but I'm actually knackered, and not in any mood to do work whatsoever! My modest goals for today are to do the preparation for a seminar on participant observation that I'm teaching tomorrow, and to work on my introduction ALL afternoon with no time wasted on facebook or freecell!

Hope this week is a productive one for us all.

Ruby & Missspacey have been quiet recently - hope this is a sign of much work being done :-)

Me again, signing off - didn't make any headway with the book, just couldn't concentrate on it. But I did do quite a lot of writing on my lit review and, pending some tidying up, it's almost in a fit state to be seen by my supervisors. Yay!

Working at home with no internet access tomorrow and away at a wedding on Friday so will be back on Monday morning. Hope everyone has a productive few days!

Lara - sounds like a great idea going through possible viva questions - are you getting them from a book or from asking people who have been through it?

Paul Oliver (2004) "Writing your thesis" has a chapter on formatting which includes most of the things you've mentioned. You could also try searching on your university/department website for a style guide as I think generally there should be some rules on things like spacing, margin/font size etc.

Hello all,

Well, I did actually work on my lit review and read the book chapter yesterday, so here's hoping for more success today. I'm going to try and write some missing paragraphs in the lit review then read a book that I borrowed off someone weeks ago (oops!)

Someone in the department ran a focus group on functional foods yesterday and dropped the leftovers off in our office so today I am officially powered by Yakult.

Armendaf - hope you get a viva date soon. How long have you been waiting? My research is on the civil service, looking at one department from an organizational perspective, hence the organization theory. I feel quite out of my depth (my first degree was in politics, so I've had to guide myself through the literature) but I love the variety of perspectives that people take. What's your thesis on?

Lara - I think you should go and find your journal article, might give you a boost to see your name in print
:-)

Missspacey - Did you get something done last night? take it easy and hope you feel 100% again soon.

Morning!

Well, I did quite a bit of faffing around with the lit review yesterday, definitely more deleting than writing, but I guess that's still contributing to a better chapter in the end. Today I'm going to do some major cutting and pasting as I've come to the conclusion that the structure is all wrong. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this will be actual cutting and pasting, with a printout of my chapter and some scissors, as I find it really hard to get a sense of a long document when it's on screen.

Mr Heifer has gone off to his university to submit his thesis today. I'm so jealous, but it's motivating me to work harder.

This afternoon I've got a thrilling book called "Towards a new theory of organizations" to plough through!

Bilbo - I think I'm going to plan on telling the examiners about "the journey" in the viva, rather than in the thesis, too. I do have a couple of paragraphs in the introduction explaining how my main research question changed early on, but that's it. Good luck with the conclusion - two friends of mine who have just had vivas both got told to strengthen their conclusions by the examiners so don't do yourself down!

Lara - change of scenery sounds like a good idea, especially the British Library - what an inspiration! Just think, they might have one of your books in there some day :-)

Ruby - good luck with the methods chapter. Try not to be paralysed by the deadline; I know it's not easy but you HAVE got time to do it all, even if it's not perfect.

Hi everyone,

I've been enviously reading this thread for a while now, feeling like too much of an undisciplined, all-round procrastinator to join in. So I've finally plucked up the courage... hope it's ok for me to gatecrash.

I'm in the third year of my phd and it's in a right old mess at the moment. My supervisors want to see everything I've done so far (chapters 2-7) on the 18th Feb so we can see what I've got and what is left to be done. At the moment I'm struggling to get my head around what I've actually written, which chapter the various ideas/bits of lit review are in etc. A particular problem for me right now is how much to 'standardise' the thesis - a bit like you were saying, Ruby, about retrospectively writing the methods chapter. To what extent should you let the development of ideas and approaches come through in the thesis, and to what extent should you write it as though you knew what you were going to do and say all along?

Anyway, my goal for this week is to beat my literature review into shape. I'm away Thurs and Fri for my brother's wedding and it's almost the end of Monday, so I have 2 days left on this...sigh!

I don't really know what our regulations are (I'm ESRC funded), but just tend to play it by ear - make sure I get away a bit but base holidays on how much work there is to be done. I seemed to have slipped into taking a few extra days off at Christmas, Easter etc rather than going on 'proper' holidays. It might be a good idea for you to write all thes types of questions down and raise them at your first supervision meeting; some of my friends here are expected to tell their supervisors when they are going on holiday and how long they'll be gone. Mine couldn't care less. But it is always a good thing to get this sort of stuff ironed out at the start.

We can get them printed by the university with the logo on, but I just got some from vistaprint with a professional-looking background, cos they were free - just pay delivery. (hope that doesn't count as advertising - I'm sure there are lots of other similar deals online). They do say "business cards are free at vistaprint" on the back though! I got them for my fieldwork because it involved doing a lot of interviews with government officials and I felt it helped me to blend in a bit better - they all gave me their business cards as welll.

I can't say I've ever had any unwanted phone calls as a result of the cards - in fact the only wierd call I've had was someone who got my phone number from my department's website. Some dodgy guy who rang up on the pretext of being interested in my research then started asking me if I was married! Thankfully it was our communal office phone number. Do you have access to an office phone that you can put on the cards instead of your personal number? It might be worth leaving your number off, and then, when you give them out, you can hand-write your number on the back if you feel comfortable doing so?