its my literature review chapter. i get the feeling that my supervisor may ask me to split it into two, because it deals with two broad issues, but i will keep writing and see what happens. May have to make it more concise. we'll see what my sup thinks.

am currently writing a chapter which was supposed to be 10,000 words long. am only halfway and its already 15,000 words long. does anyone have a 20,000 + chapter in their thesis?

mine is.. determination in every way. got it from a poem by Barbara J. Laing. find that it helps me focus on the end, rather than on the present hurdles. what's yours?

chris - wait until people hear that.. "..after getting a PhD? What was it for, you might as well have started out after GCSEs." All the best

thanks guys, you're all so encouraging. thanks for reminding me that its my life and it's up to me how i live it. i can't please the whole world. i have considered emigrating, but for me, i would prefer to work at home but everyone would rather i got this well paying job in a whole different country. speaking of jobs, i dono what they are gonna do when they hear that am applying for visiting scholar opportunity is the US. school, school and more school! its my life anyway, if i like school, that's what am gonna do with my life. can't deal with the 9-5 Mon to Fri, 28 days off a year thing, when will i actually ever LIVE. at least with teaching, i can travel during the holidays and do other things with my time during the week. am considering trying out what i want and testing the US first as a visiting scholar before i decide to emmigrate there.

i tried it. finding it difficult and slow. i've put it on hold for the moment. I find it quite easy doing them manually, tho i like the idea of being able to use different referencing styles in a doc at the click of a mouse.

that just confirms it for me. this so called equality in the UK is all talk. what would make someone think that the intention of an international student who's coming to study bio, physics or whatever is necessarily coming to commit crime and more so against the UK? granted, the specific case mentioned would have warranted concern, but i agree with the Dr. (can't remember) mentioned that this is the usual overreaction. To me it says a lot about the natives attitudes towards immigrants and the causes of crime. May i say, that even without non-EU students, weapons of mass destruction would still be created and used by the likes of Richard Reid et al who are home grown. food for thot.

oh, summer or not, mine is 5 a day. that works for me. i often treat myself to weekends away to keep my sanity and also work part time to get a differeng flavour of everyday stuff.

my opinion - you'd be crazy to take all summer off. for one, you'd lag behind in your work and you'd be stressed trying to remember the stuff and catching up. i like to think of my research as a masters thesis. i wouldn take the whole of summer off doing my masters coz i would be expected to hand in work in Sept. maybe two weeks, a month max. no more.

Otto - i totally agree. we all only have one life. last thing i want to be thinking when am 90 is that i let life pass me by spending my entire time in the lib. Speaking of holidays, there is nothing like labs to report to for us guys in the humanities, leave alone worries about when to take holidays. we take them when we want for how long we like, as long as you maintain regular contact with your supervisor. my friend took April to Sept to work from home, in a totally different country and before that she had been away for December holidays and her sup was fine with that, as long as she handed in work regularly via email. my sup sometime last year told me i could do that, only reason i didn chose to work from home is the lack of a decent lib where i can find all the material i need. My science flatmates tho, get around 10 days off a year, which to me is sic.

goodnight people, enough for today.

great to know am not the only one who's up. i might as well check to see if i're received any email. hopefully i should be done in an hour. wish i didn have to stay up, but if i sleep i know that i won't remember what i was gonna say next and the horror of reading thro my paper.... k, i'll stop there. looking forward to next weekend already - am off Friday to Monday, guess that's what motivating me to get it done.

404 - did it work? am struggling with that as well.

its that point in my life when everyone is speculating on what i should do when i graduate and it's beginning to occur to me that that is just a year or two away. i would love to stay in research -at a particular place- but it doesn pay much... eventually some people make it, most don't. but its close to family. my family expect me to stay here and look for a job in industry which am not inspired by and would only do for the money. however, i won't deny that it wouldn be nice to have a decent salary and some work experience. but would i be happy? or i would just turn into one of those people who seem to care less about anything and whose knowledge seems to have just faded away. am also thinking 30 isn't very far. remaining single is appearing to be more attractive because the last thing i need is to be bogged down with a husband and kids and stuck at home when i could be doing research and contributing to making the world a better place.

is this normal? or am i just loosing it?

i was at this meeting in uni and at my uni you are not allowed to hand in - whether you have completed or not - when you have like 8 months to go. the earliest you can hand in is about two months before the two years are over.

thanks a mil AnnieG. This site seems quite helpful.