i would imagine that there may be large numbers of applicants for each place, so that might be why you haven't been successful yet.

Oh dear, what an awful thing to have happened. How did your supervisor let this people be your examiners? They surely must have been vetted by him? I'm not sure what the procedure is, but although not at PhD level I had a similar experience with a very new examiner who was obviously out to 'win his spurs' - at my expense, but in my case I had a second viva which was just like it should have been first time round. It would be a good idea to find out why they had decided to fail you, because surely even if they didn't agree with you, they should have allowed you to defend your thesis properly. Was your supervisor sitting in? Your supervisor should know what the procedure is to contest this result, or there should be a written procedure in the uni rules.

We have quite a range of things -this month we have someone in to do a session on speed reading, we've had sessions on master document production, endnote, structuring a thesis, and this Satuday there is a day long session on poster design, conference presentation and getting your work published

for several years I used to man the help desk in the university library on Saturdays/Sundays. What I found was that some students have a great deal of trouble making the leap from A level to degree level work. Often they would come in late on Saturday wanting help with essays that were due in on the Monday. I've had to sit with them and try and work out with them what the essay requires and what resources are likely to provide the answers (often in areas that I had only a vague idea about). they had no idea about creating a plan, or putting any thoughts they had down on paper before they started. some students came in in their third year having never used the library. It could well be that this person needs some basic help in essay planning or organising their thoughts into an essay plan. you could direct them to this service in your library, or you could just reply asking if they need help in planning what they want to write and if so offer to help with this.

if it adds to the body of knowledge it will not be trivial. I've been thinking about this since I started, but then whenever I've had to write anything I always have doubts, I don't think it is unusual . :-)

Well first thing I would do is make a plan - The one thing that has a finite end is the marking, this means you oculd either set to and get it done first, leaving all other time free to do the other two things, or you could allocate so much time every day to this task, for say the first 4 days only (if you spread it over the whole period then you might run out of time if they take longer than anticipated.) When you say you have to get an experiment programmed, do you mean you have to set the experiment in a time frame? If so start at the end and work back to now (sorry if this bit is completely wrong, if it is wrong then maybe you could apply some similar logic to the process you have to put in place, bit outside my field :$. for the third bit, the chapter, it looks like you have already made some progress. I'm at that stage with one of my chapters, but what I do is read through the chapter and put in bits and pieces from the new stuff in a different colour. I can then see what I've added, and it makes it a bit easier to take it out again and put it elsewhere. it speeds up the process. The other thing I do is pose questions or put in comments also in a different colour, for example I might put something like, 'this bit looks good so far, but what do the opponents say, are there any more recent people I need to put in here, what about a table to summerise, would this be good?' -its something my supervisor does, and it is really quite helpful. Oh, and above all, don't panic because that just wastes time!

Mid-life crisis for supervisor I think. He probably thinks he is still young enough to join in with his students and hasn't quite sorted out the boundaries that are necessary for a proper supervisor (him) and student (you) relationship. He has a wife, so that should make you back off, its a short step to the 'my wife doesn't understand me' scenario and then what? Regard him as unavailable, stop pretending he is doing this for your benefit, its his ego that is being inflated. I like my supervisor, a lot, but he isn't my friend, he tells me bits about his life that are part of the normal pleasantries before he gets down to tearing my work apart - well not really he usually thinks its quite good, but if he did criticise it then that's fine too, I'm there to learn not be his mate, and it would be much harder for him to do his job properly if the student/supervisor boundary had been crossed. I think you should cool things off, but do it carefully, wounded egos can be difficult to manage, and get yourself back on the proper supervisor/ student relationship, you will be the one to suffer of the present set up goes pear-shaped.

Personally I would be wary of upsetting this person, you never know who this person knows, or when you may need their help in the future. The person to approach her should be your supervisor who can take the wrap for the change. If you feel you must approach her, then make the process as positive as you can, say how much you have appreciated her input, how much it has made you think about your work and how important it has been to have someone who looks at your work from a different angle from your own (you may even be able to cite a couple of points.. when you asked about x it made me consider y which has improved my comments about z and so on). You could then add something about the change of direction and that although you would still appreciate her input, you feel that someone else might be able to stretch your work in the direction it has now taken (add something about how you appreciate that her obvious expertise was really useful, just as this new person's expertise will bring further rigour to your research.) As long as you get the outcome you want there is no problem in bringing every positive thing you can into getting her out graciously, but there could be problems if she feels pushed. -In my case my present super was keen to take on the role and edged my unproductive person out and I had to do nothing to get him in, other than confirm I would like him on board, but the original one still remains on the team, something I'm quite grateful for in a way, as I wouldn't have wanted him as an examiner as our ideas are worlds apart. You know what they say 'speak softly and carry a big stick' :-)

You may be able to set up a customised set of instructions so that it produces the right format, I have been shown how to do this by our IT department, but have failed to apply it to my work..yet. Although I have endnote, I don't use it to produce my ref list as it doesn't do the right Harvard version and at the moment I can't be bothered to adapt it. I have a word doc that I use as my reference list and as soon as I use a book, journal or article I put it into endnote as a store, but also put it in my word document in the right place alphabetically and it the right format. that gives me the best of both worlds at the moment, but may not be the solution you are looking for :$. There may come a time when I need to use endnote and everything is there, so I may smile sweetly at IT and ask for their help.

I met my supervisot twice during the whole process, and contacted him by e-mail about three or four times. He was totally uninterested in my subject and told me that he had been made to be my supervisor. On the other hand, my PhD supervisor sees the students who are doing their MA diss with him very regularly, and gives them proper feedback. Sounds like you have one like I had :-( . how much that is a problem depends upon how much help you need, or think you might need. Get in contact with them and see how much help they are going to be, and then maybe decide if you need to get someone more enthusiastic!

first of all, you are not alone - and I expect most of us on here have periods of self doubt, it isn't unusual.

Have you actually got an area of study planned, or is this, as has been mentioned, a year for you to get to grips with the methodologies so that when you have refined your topic, you know what your approach will be?

Your supervisor may be expecting you to go to see him with something written down, but the best thing to do is to ask. I send my supervisor stuff in advance so he can comment on it.

Thesis titles do vary, but if you can find one or two that are in the area that you want to research, a look at the contents might be useful, and a search for journal articles in the area may also be of use, and it might also help you with the methodology work.

I find that progress is not linear, sometimes I get loads done, and other times, hardly anything, sometimes you just have to wait for a bit of inspiration, but it comes along eventually, just be patient.

If I were you I would be waiting until my supervisor thought it was ready to submit. If they think it is going to need corrections of the major variety you probably won't save much time overall anyway. The regulations might not allow it, but your super should know if it is OK to submit early.

I have two supervisors, one is really good and reads and comments of stuff. the other is a bit more laid back, but is probably the world expert in one of the chapters I'm writing (so in a way it is good he is a bit on the fringe, I get a bit worried about quoting form either of them as I'm sure one day they are going to say,  'I didn't mean that at all'! ) I also have someone else who is in the supervisory team, but has been sidelined a bit by the other two, which is good as I know we have widely differing views on what I should be writing about. However no-one could be as bad as my MA diss supervisor, I saw him twice, -once at the beginning when he told me he knew nothing about the subject and talked to me about his motor-bikes, and once when it was finished, when he suggested I made one set of results into a table, which couldn't happen as each result was discrete, -and whenever I e-mailed him about something (which was about 5-6 times in total) he took ages to reply and he would say one thing one time, and something completely different the next - Oh and when I asked him when it had to be in (mine was a bit out of sync with the others as i finished in one and a bit years instead of two) he e-mailed back - 'I don't know' which was a great help, especially when a bit of ferreting around showed that it was due in the next week.

I made up my own questionnaire, but based the questions on another one because I want to compare the results, but the original one(s) are not really suitable for mine because of the built in bias in the other ones, so I had to go it alone. I suppose it depends what your questions are for, if yours are, as you say, for a major part of your PhD, then it would just be another thing they could pick up at viva. Mine is just for a minor part and is supplemented with other info etc from different sources. If you have reservations, and can point to literature which proves your point, I think you could argue that you don't want to rely on a potentially flawed method - is there any chance you could use it for a minor part though, as a bit of a compromise? perhaps they could find some money for you to 'pilot' the questionnaire for them? - then perhaps you could write it up as a paper for a journal! :-)

Don't see why not, although they might want to see evidence of further study or may want you to write an essay, but then sometimes they want people to do this anyway. Go fot it.