Oh, that's good to know. I was trying to load an old version.:-)

Congratulations: you, like the vast majority of PhDs, have passed with a few corrections to make.

Ignore your miso examiners. I was talking just yesterday to a student who's been really productive, probably one of the best in the department: but his supervisor is always telling him "Oooh, I'm not sure if you'll write up in time...what if you need an extension?" and so on. Some people are just gloomy.

As for the corrections: I passed my transfer report and got quite good comments, but when I got the report back it was literally covered with comments and "corrections", but when I looked closer a lot of them were quite daft: the examiner didn't like the Endnote format and had circled every single reference, or had pulled me up for italicing certain Latin words (which I thought was correct anyway).

Know just what you mean, Mira. The advice Tricky and MissSpacey give is brilliant. It really helps me to make lists and tick little tasks off one by one (in the spirit of the Beijing Olympics, apparantly Confucius said it doesn't matter how slowly you move, a slong as you don't stop).

If you're having trouble sleeping (and I know what that's like), my advice is to find a friendly person to have a good moan to, whether a friend or the uni postgrad office.

I also tend to get a lot more done if I come in on a weekend. But can easily spend a Wednesday faffing, moaning and eating.

Though when it came to writing my transfer report, it did seem like I'd done quite a bit.

He he...Sneaks, I just got a vision of that fisherman bloke off The Simpsons: Oliviaaaaargh!

Exactly: earlier this year I was kept off a machine for weeks by the same person who's kicking up a stink now! Short memories...

Thanks Tricky. It's another PhD student who is unhappy that I've booked the machine for a couple of weeks. The objection from them is that no-one should be allowed to book equipment; our argument is that's nonsense: how else do you manage shared machines? There has always been a booking system in place. I've been told I'm being "unfair", because I've booked it. I just wondered if other uni's had booking systems, or is it first come first served?

There's a hiatus on use of the machine at the moment while this is argued out, which is likely to get me earache from our sponsors!

Is it a human or a robot? Robots (hello, Agilent) have real trouble undertstanding my voice, and I've a British accent.

Apologies for the poor use of commas in that message. That's how stressed I am, I usually take pride in my commas;-)

Do you ever have trouble getting access to instruments that you need?

I'm currently at the centre of a bit of a ding-dong with other users, we have a booking system in place, which I used to book time on a machine, but another user has stamped their foot cos they want it (and they want it NOW...). Result: emails from the higher echelons flying around re: does anyone have the "right" to book equipment. What's the situation in your institutions?

I should add that my industrial partners need me to do these analyses, otherwise we may not get next year's funding, so I'm a bit nervous:$

To add the the Vista comments: be aware (as I wasn't when I got my laptop) that certain useful programs that you may need, as a science PhD (such as EndNote, Chemstation and ChemDraw) are not compatible with Vista.

I wish he hadn't; it put a very unpleasant image in my mind :$

Polish toilets are the best I've ever been in. The flush is connected to the door handle, so you flush by opening the door and leaving the cubicle.

Does take a while to work that out, though.

Not me, but my former boss used to disappear from his desk every so often. When I rang his mobile once, to ask him to check an email I'd sent him, he replied "I'm in a small room with no internet access".


Turns out he was sat on the bog having a read.

Hi,

There is no excuse for breaching your confidentiality.

But I do know of two cases where extra examiners (internal and external) were used. It was not anything to do with the student, but to do with the 1st examiner being inexperienced, and needing to be observed by an experienced examiner. It may not be anything to do with you.