13 today COME ON! 8-)

I'm pretty bad at getting to sleep early myself Satchi but at least it meant you got the e-mail!

Kim is a book by Rudyard Kipling which I'm teaching in a week and a bit. It's great but quite tough-going- my knowledge of the Disney Jungle Book didn't really prepare me for this. And I didn't manage to finish it last night, what a shock *rolls eyes*

Hi Yellow,

Sorry to hear you're having such a tough time. I haven't got a lot of advice as I've not been in this situation myself, but is there any way you could organize a meeting with both of them there? It's not fair to expect you to know what to do when they can't get their heads together to help you out. If you get their sets of corrections back and they disagree substantially then (with my limited knowledge) the best thing to do seems to be to mark out exactly where they disagree and ask them to discuss this with eachother and you.

Hope this helps...

======= Date Modified 08 Jan 2010 13:25:47 =======
Hey Button,

I'm a tomato addict. I've been using it for a couple of weeks and my average at the moment is about the same as yours- ten. I was talking to my supervisor about this the other day and he was impressed! It may only be five hours a day, but at least your know its five hours of solid work. I am, however, trying to push my average up. Eventually I'd like to do the full 16 a day...Here's hoping!

Edit: that's 16 tomatoes= 8 hours (ish). Not 16 hours!

======= Date Modified 07 Jan 2010 21:12:31 =======
Glad you had a great day Satchi :-)

This week had been going pretty well until today when I couldn't go into uni because of snow and all my motivation dissolved. Tomorrow I will go in, even if I have to do it in wellies!
So, this week's aims so far:

1) Have draft of conference paper to show to sup on Thursday. I realise I've been banging on about this for ages but the 16th is D-Day so I really must have this done!! : I am sending this tomorrow; if I can get it sent in the morning I might even get it back before the weekend which would be very handy. Means getting up early tomorrow but as I've lolled about all day, surely I can do this?!
2) Meet with others to discuss conference grant on Wednesday. Have list of hotels prepared beforehand, and some ideas for timeline. Turns out this is next week anyway. Good, but the fact I've got 2 training courses and a conference to attend next week underlines the importance of getting article done tomorrow!
3) Have read 'Kim'. Will finish this tonight.
4) Have transferred all dates into the lovely diary my flatmate bought me for xmas
DONE- one at least!
5) Have finished 'Troilus and Criseyde'. Will have to do this tomorrow afternoon/evening.

Hope everyone is doing well.

Hey,

I agree with the others, you sound quietly confident so I'm sure it'll be fine. Like Bilbo said, I also tell myself 'it's only ten minutes, I'll be out of here soon and then life will continue as normal'. I used to suffer quite badly with nerves and as sappy as it sounds looking at things like this in a slightly more philosophical way really helped. Your'e just a person, talking to some other people about a subect you know a lot about!

Good luck.

Thanks Natassia,

Glad you liked it : ) I know what you mean about ricocheting between the two 'chapters' but I think it's good to at least recognize why that's happening. I spent most of my first year struggling to get any regular amount of work done, but never figuring out why. Now I'm obsessed with routine! Being completely unable to do any work in the house is probably a bit of a handicap though...

Ive had a bad day. 4 months into my second year and I'vef inally realised that I only work well and consistently if I'm in the office during regular hours and have my daily goals planned out. I can't function without routine. Today I couldn't get to uni because of the snow so...I've sat here all day and done nothing. And I don't have time to be doing nothing at the moment : ( I'm feeling glad, however, that I can finally recognize this. I came across this poem today which made me smile and thought some of you might like to read it - I like to think I'm now at chapter 3 :-)

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit … but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter 5
I walk down another street.

Hi Megara,

You say you've changed lots of little bits but have you tried reviewing the overall structure? I find it helps to write down a sentence for each paragraph explaining what I want it to do, then see if they match up. That helps me to move things around, cut unnecessary bits out.

I know how hard it is though, you have my sympathies!

Hi Klim,

When I went for my studentship interview I asked my guidance tutor from my degree what kind of questions I might get asked and he said they'd be very broad: why did I want to do a PhD, why was I interested in this subject etc...Well, they weren't! Some of those kind of questions were asked but they also asked me what my thoughts were on a certain theory, what texts I was interested in looking at etc. So I would recommend looking back over your proposal and trying to be ready for any questions which might arise from that. They also asked me how I would structure my work and how I would make sure I could complete it within the 3 year time frame.

I floundered with some of these questions but still got the place so try not to worry too much. Enthusiasm is one of the most important things. Good luck!

Hi Larry,

Do you just mean journal articles? The obvious ones are JSTOR and LION, I prefer LION as I find JSTOR hard to search. It will depend on which journals your university is subscribed to as to which articles within those sites you can get access to, but both will bring up search results from across the board so you can then request articles at the library if needs be (Handily, you can also get these delivered to your house). You can also sign up to ZETOC which will alert you as to new publications in your subject area. I'm not really sure about others...I have a few I use which are specific to early modern/medieval literature which is what I study. Hopefully somebody will come along to help you a bit more.

Ahhh, just wrote a reply and it disappeared into cyberspace.

Anyway, thanks for the replies everybody and I'm glad to see that this seems to be the normal- perhaps even best!- appraoch to reading. Alpaca I feel that way too about my brain capacity. I can clean forget the name of an author I've read loads of times. So perhaps reading things all the way through wouldn't make much difference anyway!

Hello all,

Just musing. How thorough are you when reading papers/books/articles? Occasionally I will concentrate really hard and make loads of notes but most of the time I skim read and only concentrate on the bits that are essential. I very rarely read books all the way through (apart from fiction, as I study literature!). I also read as I write, so I'll think 'hmm, I 'll see if everyone's written anything about that', do a search and cherry-pick the bits that fit in with/contradict/inform what I'm writing at the time.
I sometimes worry that my general knowledge suffers because of this because I rarely remember author's names, or have a good general overview of individual works.
Over to you...

Hi Satchi, welcome on board.

I want to add one more thing to this weeks aims: back up work onto external hard drive. A boring but very useful present from my dad.

Did I really think I would do all this: