i find it most useful...for allowing me to snack whilst I work, A bit of running or something lets me nibble without getting to be the size of a house:$. It is also getting me a bit fitter too, so its win all round :-)

i know a bit about my supervisors, but mostly stuff they have talked about to the whole class/group at meetings or something, or that have appeared in their biographies at the back of books or on the uni website etc.. Similarly they know a bit about me, but nothing very personal. I assume if you have been working together for 2 years you must be on the final bit? If so, the main thing to consider is - can you get constructive criticism for your work, and can you accept it as such and not as a personal slight. If you can, then although you might  want to create a bit of distance you will probably soon be off and running, and you can put it down to experience and not get in the same situation again. However, if you find that you are not getting the help that you need either because you are not getting the critical appraisal of your work, or are miffed when you are criticised, then you need to do something to put the relationship on a more formal basis. You can cut down on your meetings outside uni - do it gradually, just plead a prior engagement or something and change the topic back to your work - have a few opening questions to hand so you can do this easily and you should be able to achieve what you want without any need to spell out your problems with the current situation.

here the limit for MPhil is 60,000 in social sciences, not sure about elsewhere though

not sure about other unis, or what has been said before on here about the subject but here I the thing they have told us to bear in mind is the length needed for an MPhil, and the length needed for the PhD, the closer your word count is to the MPhil the more it will look like an MPhil level piece of work - or so they are saying. Not that this is necessarily true of course, but I would think you need to aim at least for the middle ground between the two just to highlight the difference. I'm aiming for around 75,000, but I bet I will go over    :-( I plan to make a lot of use of endnotes and the appendix :$

perhpas what you need to do is make sure that every day that you have to do this fieldwork counts, and so I would be making sure I get the info I need, maybe making detailed plans of what I needed to find out. Obviously I don't know what you are looking for, - are you following the same people for a while for example, but perhaps you could record stuff as well as taking notes so that you don't forget any vital bits, using a dictaphone or something? not to record interviews, but to serve as a reference for you rown thoughts. Double check that the areas are the right ones, check with your supervisor and ask if there is anything they would do to make sure they got the right information...and then go for it:-) Oh, and don't forget 'nothing' is also a result!!!:$ :-)

I agree, you need to just hint at a long term relationship of your own, and when you go back/see her again after the Christmas break it will be an ideal time to do this. not only that but you could casually ask about her boyfriend. that would show that you acknowledge she has one and should establish that you are perfectly happy with your own relationship (doesn't matter if it is true or not, she will never know one way or the other) and get you both back to the issue in hand, which is getting through your PhD.

Right I will give it a go! they were used to illustrate the reason why practical science is so important, the mixing of lead nitrate and potassium iodide was probably the best (two colourless liquids producing a bright poster paint yellow colour) but the other bits were not far behind.

Thanks for that. The trouble is there is an awful lot of stuff that at the moment seems important, but doesn't actually fit into the main flow of the argument which is about the effect of potential changes in schools. My supervisor uses endnotes and altohugh I've always used footnotes i was wondering which is the accepted one to use nowadays.

Just before Christmas I did a presentation in which I used some practical demonstrations to illustrate why my subject is important - they were some science experiments of the 'wow' type. One of the lecturers there, not one of my supervisors said he thought they were very interesting and illustrated the points well, and had I thought how I could incorporate them in my thesis. Actually I hadn't even thought of doing that, but he suggested adding a CD/DVD. Is this possible? Has anyone done this outside the Arts field? (my subject is education)

I'm deciding which to use for extra information for my chapters. At the moment I am using footnotes, but I think endnotes might be more useful, some of the notes are going to be quite long I think. there is a lot of background information which I don't want to put in the chapter itself as it is peripheral knowledge, but considering the comments made by someone else in the department when I was applying it is going to be essential to place my ideas in context. The other possibility is to put some of it in the appendix, but I'm wondering if that will be too far away from the text, and therefore make it more difficult to develop the argument. any thoughts?

I think it started off well, but was rather long and not what I thought it was going to be about! I had to roll the screen up a bit because I found his mannerisms quite off putting after a while - wish I had the time to write for three hours a day :$.

It  is interesting, but you need to plan your work according to the timetable of your university, for example here there is a week of induction to fit in, then there is the submission of the proposal (the formal one, not the one you used to get in:-)). Then there is the transfer, then you get left alone for a bit to get on and finish it. I set up a timeline using excel, put the dates along the top, I put the chapters down the sides, with broad areas that I wanted to include and them filled it in, leaving 6 months at the end for final writing up, but with areas for writing up for each chapter, plus review spaces for each etc., each with their own colour, yellow is writing up for example. This allowed me to put in the chapters needed for transfer, their write up etc in the correct months, but still let me allocate some time for other work during this time. The thing with excel is that you can add bits to it, and move stuff around, but it will still let you see where you are in the overall framework, plus it makes you think about what you need to put in it, so you need to have a rough plan at least. My supervisor liked it anyway.

so sorry to hear of your loss. All I can say from my experience is that you need to take the time you need to come to terms with it, and it will probably take longer than others around you think, so you mustn't dispair when they appear to think you should be over it. In time you will find yourself talking more easily about them, at first it will be painful and I found it quite awkward partly because it brought home again the fact that they were no longer there in body and partly because I didn't want to upset anyone else. You need to think of yourself first for a while, I found work was a great distraction, but it depends on you. -My salvation was in fact one of the winter olympics as it went on until late at night and gave me something else to focus on, and an excuse to be up in the early hours without having to justify it. Take care

Not sure about this one, but have you contacted the journal / your IT department for advice?

I think other people are right, it is just her way, i work with people like that and you just have to try to get past their attitude because they probably can't help it, they just have no people skills. The endnote thing was probably an attempt to be helpful. i wish I had had someone to fill me in on some of its workings and I'm still getting to grips with it - so much so that I am using it as a backup to the ref list I have created in Word :$