I agree with what DanB said. We need to know what the university regulations are, what mark is a distinction, things such as units equally weighted, how is the dissertation weighted. I'm not sure on what gounds you think you can appeal but most universities have specific grounds for appeal and anything outside these (including academic judgement) will be rejected.

Harsh though it may seem the fact that you worked while studying is irrelevant - generally regulations only take into account actual performance (I submitted my MA dissertation three weeks before giving birth (done at night school while working very full time in the city) and apart from allowing me to take snacks into the three hour final exam to maintain my blood sugar there were no concessions).

Wow - well done you - just shows if you stick with it good things happen(gift)

Dressing got wet so have taken it off and it is much easier to type with but probably need to put another dressing on to keep it dry.

(Am still getting out of loading dishwasher etc though and reckon I can milk it for at least a week!)

======= Date Modified 06 37 2010 10:37:39 =======
Can anyone access this?
Benton, G, 2009, From Principle to Practice: Four Conceptions of Interpretation, in Journal of Interpretation Research 14(1)

Thanks


Edited for wrong journal name!

So last night we were having dinner and I decided that I wanted some lemon on my fish. So I picked up the new knife I had jsut bought becuase I didn't have a decent (ie sharp) small knife. Instead of getting a chopping board out I decided that I could do it in my hand. Well that might have worked with the old knives which were not sharp. Knife goes through lemon and takes a huge chunk out of my left index finger.

Cue panic in house as children run away because there might be blood and they are squeamish, husband finds a small plaster which really isn't going to do the job and looks in our first aid kit which seemed to be all calpol and hangover cures, I forget all my first aid training (which I only redid mid September)...

Eventually I remembered that I still had a fieldwork first aid kit from work in the boot of my car so I send husband out to look for that. We opened the kit butthere was not much of any use in it (and it was all "use by 12/2005"). None of the bandages were the right type I had used in my training but I eventually find something that will do. We then had some hilarity while I try to explain to my husband how to do the bandage while holding my hand above my head (I did eventually remember that) and he tried to do it.

Phone call to parents to say we are bringing the kids round on our way to casualty (cue panic from mother and a reminder that they are going away at 6am this morning so if it will be v late we either have to stay at their house or come round at 5.30am to get the children)

But casualty was brilliant - in and out in 40 mins. Made the day of the nurse who cleaned and dressed the wound with 8 steristrips with my telling of the tale of how it happened and my reaction when she asked if I had any hobbies ("err why" ,"it might affect your quality of life" ,"eh"well you won't be able to play a musical instrument for a while and it might mean you can't do any craft activities for a few weeks" "I'm doing a PhD - does that count as a hobby")

Only problem now is throbbing finger and an inability to type (oh & the dressing needs to stay on and dry for at least a week so that means no cleaning for me and my husband will have to wash my hair in the bath!)

Lazy day for me I think

Hi

I am going through something similar at the moment so I can really relate to what you are saying.  I started my part-time PhD in December ( I work lecture full time in a university but have to commute 3 hours a day to get there). I am supposed to have written 10,000 word f my lit review by end December but so far I have written 2,000 words and they are rubbish (I sent them to my supervisor to show I was doign something and his only comment was "they will be a lot better after the work you are doign over the summer" which I took to mean - this is so bad I'm not even going to comment) (I wrote them in June/July & have written nothing since).  What I do have is some very detailed plans/notes (using mind manager) plus a research seminar I am giving next week which I am hoping to get a few thousand words out of.

My big fear is that what I am writing isn't "PhD standard" even though I have distinctions in both my masters' degrees and I have publications.

A friend who has a PhD already and one who is near completion told me that I just have to write - get something down on paper as it an be edited and refined at a later date. Don't try to "write a PhD lit review - just get some thoughts on paper and then take it from there,

I have broken what I need to do into sections and so hope that by just thinking of writing a few hundred words on x and a few hundred words on y it will add up to something.

I don't think you need to justify one article over another - include them both ("x say y; z et al put forward a contrasting perspective...").  For my MA dissertation (15,000 words) I read about 200 sources and 167 of them made it to the final version - I expect that I will be over 500 (or more) for my PhD.

Don't know if this helps but you aren't alone :-)

I am a part-time student, self funded with no budget for comsumables, fieldwork etc. I think you will find that a lot of us ldthink that £5000 is a huge amount but I guess it depends on what your experiments are. I have already spent hundreds of punds of my own money on equipment, books etc plus a couple of thousand travelling to fiedlwork locations (and I have only done pilot study) and a conference.

I guess some of the cost of the scholarship is for the use of the lab and other facilites (desk space etc)?

Significantly wekaer doesn't even begin to describe this one - the first half page was beautifully crafted with references (all correctly cited) and then the next paragraph went along the lines of "This topic is worth researching because I am interested and I think it would be a good topic to do research about". The only bits that had references were the two plagiarised paragraphs - everything else was entirely unreferenced, was all written in the first person (with a writing age of about 12). The research design included anything and everything but didn't link to the literature or the aims of the study.

I haven't taught this group before about I seriously worry how she has got to third year if this is typical (the two staff who taught this program have left and so modules have been divided up between those of us who are left).

(But on a brighter note the first peice of work I marked was well written, had a good research design which linked to literature, was ambitious but achievable for undergrad dissertation and made me look forward to supervising that research project)

Well we are at the end of week 5 of teaching and I have found my first piece of plagiarism (I was the first in the faculty) and it was a research proposal - I don't know whether to be pleased I found it (although as the plagiarised bits were the only decently written stuff (and the only bits that had references) in the whole piece of work how the student thought I wouldn't notice is a mystery) or whether to despair that if they are plagiarising at the begining of term (and in their final year) it doesn't bode well for the rest of the year.

Did you read other theses? I've come across a thesis from Australia which has overlap with my research (but not much) - I want to read it as I think it will be helpful from a subject perspective but also from the perspective of seeing what one is really like (to gague writing style etc) but I am worried that I may end up inadvertantly plagiarising.

Any thoughts?

Depends on which one and what role.

I'm not against them (and I studied with what is now a private university when I trained as an accountant - the quality of teaching was excellent but there was very much a focus on teaching to test - not sure that that is compatible with other aspects of university - learning for learning's sake, research etc. But what they were doing was very good and very high quality). They are more akin the teaching universities (which exist in the public universities as well where the emphaisis is on teaching rather than research).

I'm part time (and self funded with my own research project) so timescales might be a bit different. In first 6 months (supposedly equivalent to 3 months full time) I wrote my research proposal (with lots of tears), presented at an international conference (held every 2 years so although it was very early I felt it was important - the abstract was done a couple of weeks after I registered for my PhD) which was really helpful in shaping my research, wrote a chapter summary and timetable (which were a bit of a joke but were required), started reading, more reading, more reading. I haven't really done much real writing and that is what I really need to get on with. I also made contact with useful people (I'm in social sciences and part of the research will involve interviews) and planned my research trip (which was combined with family holiday in July/August).
I've got to do some proper writing though...

I'm really amazed that you are finding it difficult to find conferences in your field - although the very specific conference in my field is only every two years (and as most people in the field are in China or Australia tend to be the other side of the world) there are still loads of other appropriate conferences.  I was lucky enough to go to the specific one earlier this year in Malaysia but have also presented at a major international conference in my wider subject area in London. Had I been able to fund it (and were I not doing my PhD part time while working full time) I could also have gone to a symposium in America last month.  Next year I have already identified a conference in Latvia in the summer, one in Plymouth at Easter and the main conference which is about every two years will be in the Middle East in November and I am sure there would be lots of others if I had the time and/or money. I am on a subject mailing list which is a great source of calls for papers.  I'm sure there are more conferences out there for you to present at.

It is a great experience - it's so much more than the experience of presenting which you can get elsewhere but it is a chance to network with others in your field and get feedback on your research.  My research has changed as a result of an hour I spent very early one morning with one of the leading academics in my field chatting before breakfast. I also HAVE to present at an annual PhD student day at my PhD uni as well as presenting a research seminar at my work uni (which i find the most scary - colleagues are the toughest audience adn the least forgiving).