I'm tried to PM you links to the files on dropbox, but PMing doesn't seem to be working.

.... seems it did PM you. 5 times. Sorry!

I can get these for you...

Congratulations! I am jumping on the "have fun and relax for a few days/weeks" bandwagon. You deserve it!

... cont.

I don't think there's any harm in putting in an application. At the end of the day, even if you don't get invited to interview it's good experience for later.

I think it'd be tough to have a full time lectureship while trying to work on your PhD - could you drop to part time on the PhD? You would almost certainly lose the rest of your funding, and will possibly have to pay fees.

I have just accepted a 50%-time teaching fellow post in my dept. My funding has expired and I'm going into my continuation year (i.e. 4th year). These are all things that I thought deeply about before deciding to apply and accept the post.

Good luck with your application if you decide to go ahead :-D

Hi Boo,

This sounds like a great opportunity to me, but I think there are a lot of things you will want to seriously think about so that you go into the application/job with your eyes wide open.... (note, my experience comes from working in a science dept. these things may be quite different in arts/social sciences).

- lecturing in academia does not just mean lecturing. It is likely that you will be setting exams/assessments, marking assessments and required to give feedback on practical work as well (subject dependent). This is very time consuming! There will be periods when you are extremely busy preparing and giving lectures, while marking work from the previous term.
- you may be required to act as a pastoral supervisor for undergraduates, again this is a role that can easily take more time that one might expect, especially if you're working with first years.
- lectureship posts, particularly permanent ones, will often have a required administrative role - this might be something like undergraduate recruitment, training research students, outreach etc. but most lecturers are required to have some involvement in tasks outside of research/teaching.
- as you'll be a new lecturer, it is likely that your uni will require you to take an accredited lecturer training programme. At my uni, it's called the Postgraduate Certificate of Academic Practice and is 600 hours work over 2 years. Most unis seem to "buy the staff out" of teaching commitments to get this certificate, so you'll have a slightly reduced teaching load to enable you to train.
- You'll probably be able to argue that your research time should be spent doing your PhD, but they might expect a larger research output from you too.
- You may have to set and supervise undergrad/postgrad dissertations, again time consuming but can be rewarding, especially in terms of research output.

... (cont...)

Definitely send him an email! But, I wouldn't frame it in a "i'm just letting you know I'm applying" tone.

Could you email him to ask a question about the post? Perhaps link it back into the experiments you've taken part in? That tells him that you're applying without looking like you're asking for special consideration. It's quite typical for prospective employees to ask questions about the post. Just make sure the question you ask isn't something you can find out easily.

For example, with a recent teaching post I applied for I emailed in advance asking if a start date of September would be considered (the funding for the post was available from July). It just meant I'd told my colleague I was applying, without explicitly emailing him to say "oi, remember me? I WANT THAT JOB!"

I'm completely and utterly in agreement wowzers here. Your words are those of someone who is not well at the moment.

Get yourself back to the Doctors ASAP and have a medication review. Perhaps print off the comments you've written here and show them to the Doctor? And then I strongly advise you to look into getting an extension, not just so you have longer to finish so that you can take a few weeks off. I really think you need a few weeks of GUILT FREE time off. Don't make big decisions when you feel like this.

You've reached this far, so you CAN finish it. You are clearly bright and capable or you wouldn't have got this far through. But it seems that your mind is unwell at the moment, and that's clouding your ability to feel hope. There is hope, you're sooooo close to the end. You're just under the weight of the big black depression cloud at the moment. Take time away, regroup, get well and then come back to it if you still want to.

That "country music and suicide" paper is actually quite relevant to my PhD.... Thanks!

I'm looking at how background music can be incorporated into technological interfaces to positively affect user behaviour and experience. Yeh, I guess that's kinda weird too. But, again.. I like everyone else who's doing a "slightly weird" PhD has had to justify it's existence to many people, on multiple occasions. I'm getting quite used to it now!

Doing a PhD about PhD examination blows my mind though. I mean... what if you failed that one? Geez. That's pretty vicious. Though, I guess you'd become a fountain of knowledge about why people fail PhDs. I'm not sure if that's a good thing though....

Hi Pixie, I'm in a very similar boat to you. My funding runs out in September. I'm planning to finish the research by November and submit in April. Life (stupid life!) got in my way too which is why I'm far behind where I had hoped to be.

I think, with still having research to do at this point it all seems overwhelming. Have you got a precise plan of what research still needs to be done?

Something that I have done recently which I found really motivational is to write the Abstract for my PhD. It's kind of a fantasy abstract in that I don't know what the results of my experiments will show, but it summarises my PhD story and helps to tie all the work together. Writing the abstract didn't take too long, but having the abstract written up (and printed out and stuck to the wall next to my desk) has really helped me get some motivation back. More importantly, it didn't take long for my supervisors to read and comment on which has really helped to formalise the plan/aims etc. in my mind. Think of the abstract as the wood. The research you're doing, and struggling to do is the trees. Writing the abstract has helped me to see the wood through the trees.

Oh and following ultimax's advice in another thread I bought the "Finish Your Dissertation" book. I'm just starting to read it now (as in, I'm sat at my desk now with the book in front of me) and so far, it seems to be really helpful. Thanks again Ultimax!

Thanks ultimax, that's fantastic and just the sort of thing I was looking for :-)

Problems printing posters seem to be one of the typical stresses of being in academia.

I once developed my own poster entirely from scratch, including setting the page size on my computer exactly (using mms). Then, when I went to print it, I was told it wasn't A0, it was too big! I explained that I had set the page size precisely using mms so it *had* to be correct. The pdf info on my compute was correct. But when you opened the pdf on another computer in miraculously got bigger.

At which point the printer told me that mm on pdfs for Macs and PCs are sometimes treated differently. WTF?!?! Here I was thinking a mm was a standard unit of measurement. But apparently not. (Actually, I don't believe this guy but whatever).

Anyhow, long story short, I just printed the poster to be an two inches too wide. Took it to the conference. And it didn't matter in the slightest.

Hi all,

I'm in the process of resurrecting a research student seminar series in my department (it used to happen, but fell by the wayside when the organising students left the uni). The idea is that every fourth seminar is an opportunity for students to do a short 15minute research talk, but the other seminars are related to other training needs. These seminars are un by our development team, academics or students from the department.

I was wondering if any of you had a similar series in your departments? And if so, what sort of sessions do you run?

We currently have suggestions for things like:
-- overcoming procrastination
-- speed reading techniques
-- getting the best out of a conference
-- surviving your Viva

Does any one here have any ideas of topics they would like to go to at this kind of event? Obviously I'm asking the same of the other students in my department, but they're not very forthcoming with ideas. Most would come to an event like this, but don't want to be that proactive in organising anything or requesting specific sessions.

Many thanks for your suggestions in advance!

Personally, I think this is a really good initiative, so when I get a nice list of topics and our website up and running I'll post it here so that others can maybe adopt something similar in their departments.

Most importantly though, we have the support of the department who are going to provide tea/coffee and cake. Provide cake and they will come!

I'm not quite at the proper writing-up stage as I'm still planning and running experiments. But, I'm trying to write as I go so those links look really awesome. Thanks alice and ultimax!

One thing that I have found that really helps me to overcome procrastination is to use the pomodoro technique thing. The way that I do it is to work for 25 minutes and then have a 5 minute break. It's pretty simple, but knowing that you only have to focus for 25 minutes really helps me to get writing/doing something.

Also, with this technique, I allow myself to have 1 "unproductive" session per topic, per day. So, say I'm working on analysis some data. If I've had one unproductive session that's okay. But, if the next one feels like it's not very productive then I move onto the next item on the to-do list. There are some days when my brain just isn't tuned to analyse data! Rather than stress out about the fact that I should be analysing the data but I'm not, and procrastinating more, I've moved onto something else which needed to be done as well. I find it helps me to keep going.

Good luck with the writing. It may not seem it when you're doubting yourself, but the end really is in sight now.

And don't feel you've let your supervisors down. Barely anyone I know actually submits according to the schedule they originally proposed. You're supervisors will be used to it. You haven't let anyone down by taking an extra few months.

Hi,

I'm sorry to hear that you're having a difficult time.

I'm no doctor, but it sounds to me like you probably are depressed (not being able to concentrate or get out of bed are pretty typical symptoms). I, myself, am suffering from depression and anxiety at the moment. I was probably ill for at least 6 months before I accepted it and tried to get help. I have been on antidepressants since March and have finally found a dose that seems to be having a positive effect (third time lucky!).

It's really hard to accept that you might be ill. But, it sounds like you are. If you genuinely can't get any meaningful work done, I would encourage you to look into taking Leave of Absence and getting yourself better. I didn't do this. I really should have done. I regret that now. It's a big step, but ultimately your health is most important.

You don't have to give your supervisor all the details. I simply said to mine after I had seen her for the first time in a couple of months "I haven't made any progress in the past 2 months. I am now being treated for depression and anxiety with SSRIs. They are not working yet, but I want to get better and am trying." Since I told her, she has been excellent.

We are now meeting once a week, without fail - even if it's just a 15 minute check in on what I've been doing. If she's out the country, we'll chat on skype. This means the meetings are not big pressure ones where I have to show huge gains in progress.If you don't want to take LoA perhaps you could suggest something like that to get you motivated a bit more in an unpressurised way?

And finally, be kind to yourself. Accept that you are possibly ill and you can't work at 100% for now. And don't beat yourself up about that.

Thank you so much for that description Thumbelina. In hindsight, I definitely should have taken LoA in Jan and done just that. But never mind. I'm glad to hear that you're doing better now, and hope the road to recovery continues for you.

And Smoobles, that is *exactly* my problem. Even when I go away for a weekend, I usually take my computer and work on the train there and I always sleep with my notepad next to me. PhD is the first thing I think about when I wake up, and often the last thing I think about when I'm sleeping. Not. Healthy. I am actively trying to fix this, but it's hard to find other things to think about!

I suggested taking the first 2 weeks of June completely off to my supervisor and she was VERY enthusiastic at the prospect, she really didn't need any persuading at all. I am so blessed and grateful to have a supportive and understanding supervisor, even if other people in my department are less so. And she's a professor so she has some clout. So that's the plan. Two weeks of non-gulit ridden time off. Obviously, having no money I can't really do much exciting. But I'm going to read books for pleasure. And watch DVDs without coding during them. And I really can't wait.

She also said to ignore the comments on funding and that she was still going to request an extension for me, explaining the trials and tribulations I've been through over the past 3 years which have resulted in my broken brain. So, fingers crossed there is still hope on that front. But if not, she said she has a plan B. Again, my supervisor is the most awesome.

And this community is such a lovely supportive place. I'm definitely going to read and post here more often. I'm glad that I've found it :-)