I haven't posted in this thread before, but I'm submitting by the end of September which is just 10 weeks away. AGHGHH.

Anyways, I thought it might be fun/motivating for me to daily blog my last 10 weeks of this epic process. I'm mostly using it to keep myself accountable - if I publish on the web what I am going to do each day then I'd better well do it! Plus I'm tweeting/facebooking each post which my friends/parents can see so that should stop them from bothering me about being antisocial for the next 10 weeks!

I need to do my intention to submit, but I realise that means I need a title. Definitely something to figure out ASAP! Yikes.


Anyway, here's the first post in the blog (from yesterday).

(And yes, I'm behind where ideally I'd like to be at this point. But, there's no point in dwelling. Just. Keep. Swimming.)

I thin pre-registration is a good move too, as long as there is also a move to also appreciate and value research that hasn't accepted the initial hypothesis. It's still interesting to publish work where the initial hypothesis wasn't quite right, as long as the outcomes that are shown are framed in the right way.

I've been finding it very hard to publish my work with comments like "an interesting story in the presence of a failed experiment" - which is absolute crap. The experiment didn't fail, the experiment brought us closer to understanding a complex phenomenon. The initial hypotheses of the experiment were justified from our previous understanding of what was happening. Now, we're closer to knowing a bit more, which means that hopefully our next hypothesis will be closer.

Apologies for the rant, I am a little bitter about this particular topic :-)

(Oh, and don't get me started on people who report p values and leave out the effect sizes. Come on!)

Note - i'm not in psychology per se, it's more applied psychology. And lots of people do their experimental design/analysis really, really poorly.

I think it becomes fishing if you don't follow up on your reframed hypotheses to check the outcomes match with your new way of thinking.

For example, you have some hypotheses, you run an experiment, the outcome isn't what you expected but you look at the data and find an interpretation that seems to fit. If you stop there, and report your conclusion in an absolute way this, in my view, based on a fishing exercise. You've looked for something, and found it. Wow. Big deal.*

However, if you carry on and do another experiment with the reframed question in mind, perhaps changing a few parameters or changing the method entirely, then you're trying to get closer to the truth of the matter.

In my research, I've done this with about 5 iterations and I think I now have a sensible explanation for what is going on and why the answers weren't as obvious as they perhaps first seemed. My final conclusion is being reported as a further question, i.e. I'm at the point where I'm pretty sure a) is the cause of this weird thing, but I don't have sufficient evidence to state that for sure. But, I can make a justified, logical argument to explain what I'm seeing in the data.

I see this type of science is about a process of getting closer to the truth.

*it's possible to report these inferences and ideas as conclusions without stating them as the absolute truth. It's hard, but not impossible.

Well, it sounds to me like you have a good reason for wanting to do a PhD (even if that reason isn't academia).

If I were you, I think I would try to highlight with your PI that although you may be taking resources/space and may take longer than a student who isn't experiencing problems with their mental health you are committed to the program and to doing high quality research.

Try to focus on what you can bring to your PI rather than what you are taking. Are you working on a project that is likely to lead to high quality publications? Are you good at writing? What makes you a strong PhD student who is going to create a high quality output?

One other suggestion - a friend of mine also has mental health problems and is doing a doctorate. Her supervisor is not great at dealing with her issues on a pastoral level, but he's brilliant academically. She still wanted to work with him, but needed extra support from a pastoral side. So, she found a new supervisor to join her supervisory team who knows nothing about the content of the work, but is experienced in working with students with mental health problems. This means that when she is in mental distress she can talk to the other supervisor and he basically handles the primary supervisor on her behalf. Not sure if that made sense, but perhaps an arrangement like that would be an option?

I'm afraid I don't really know enough about the American system (assuming you are in the US) to comment on precise options - if you were in the UK I'd suggest offering to go part-time and work in a supermarket or something to give you extra 'years' to complete while under less pressure to be achieving things day in day out.

But if you are genuinely passionate and interested in doing the PhD, then I would think there is a way to make it work somehow.

I had something similar happen to me. I was on a fully funded PhD but became ill and stopped working. I lost my funding as a result and had to get a part-time job to eat and pay rent. I was still registered as a student on the PhD and still notionally working on it, but wasn't making any progress because I was convinced that all the work I had done was crap and needed redoing. Now that I am better I can see that I wasn't thinking creatively and my intelligence-levels and thought-processes were definitely severely impaired when I was ill.

I ended up taking a leave of absence from the PhD to get better, and then returned after 9 months. I'm now working as a full time teaching-focused academic (I've been *very* lucky in the job I was able to secure which is in a different department to my PhD) while finishing my PhD in the evenings and at weekends.

Honestly, it's the hardest thing I suspect I'll ever do. I will finally submit my thesis 6 years after my initial start date this September (in the UK you are only supposed to have 4 years, but I had 9 months off and 15 months of extension).

But, for me, the motivation is that, if I put myself through hell for the next 5 months, I'll be in a position to continue as an academic beyond the end of my current contract. I'll have the PhD and teaching experience and, hopefully, have a pretty competitive CV.

If I didn't love my job, I would not still be doing the PhD. I needed to take time out to realise that.

So, I guess my only advice to you, is to look carefully at why you are doing this PhD? Do you want to be an academic in the future? If not, then I suggest looking for something else.

Well, why do you want to study architectural engineering? None of us can answer that question for you...

Rather than extensions, can you take a leave of absence? It sounds like you aren't quite absolutely sure you want to quit. And if you do quit, then you almost certainly won't be able to get a job in academia.

I took a leave of absence for health reasons and while I was away decided that I really missed academia and definitely wanted to come back and finish because I love teaching and don't hate research. I then got an extension, so am still going. But, am definitely going to submit the thing by the end of September. That'll be 6 years after I started, but 5 years 3 months of registration.

It's been a struggle, but for me it's worth it. And, now that i'm doing my PhD while I'm well I'm really starting to enjoy the research aspect again.

Sounds like you need some guilt-free time out to figure things out without the pressure of the deadline getting closer.

I actually wrote a blog post about my strategy for dealing with rejection - I've attached a link.

But, basically... my advice is to take what is useful from the comments, and ignore the rest. It's not easy but the more rejections you receive, the more you get used to the process of ignoring the rude and incorrect comments. However, there may be some useful content in the review (even the nasty one) which can make your work better. So, take a deep breath and read it to identify those helpful snippets from within.

In terms of what to practically do next - I agree with pd above, definitely contact the editor and check whether a 3rd reviewer is going to be assigned.

I'm pretty sure I've read some research that says from a readability perspective left-justified is better and easier to read. I'll try to dig out the paper.

Ah okay. How are you sharing the excel file? Is it saved on a shared drive or something? I guess I'm still missing some context to properly understand what you're trying to do. Excel doesn't seem like the obvious tool for something like this.

Here's a youtube video for trello:

It's basically a project management system but it's free and really easy to use. The only down side is that it's hosted online and not currently available offline which is a limitation for some projects I imagine. But, I use it extensively for managing collaborative projects.

Is there a particular reason you want to use Excel?

There are lots of tools out there for collaborative working which is what it sounds like you are trying to do... trello is the one that springs to mind.

Totally appreciate the effort. And it's sorely tempting. But nah... you didn't get me. Unlike my boss who sent me in a minor panic this morning about a presentation early next week which I hadn't put in my diary.

Obvious April Fools are obvious :-)

I don't think you're going to get anyone with time to check your data input.... especially as it's not entirely clear what you are asking. As long as you have the data set up so that each row is for a particular participant/subject then you're probably on track. Can you ask your supervisor?

If you haven't found it already, then this is the best SPSS book ever http://www.amazon.co.uk/Discovering-Statistics-Introducing-Statistical-Methods/dp/1847879071

Happy Easter everyone. I hope you are either enjoying a day off, or if, like me, you are working you are making significant progress with your thesis :-)

To that end and so I can make a bit more progress today, does anyone have access to this paper?

THANKS in advance,

Spiral.