Hi everyone :)

Just wondered how many of you lovely folks have the joy of E-Prime (and/or MATLAB) programming in their lives...perhaps we can have this thread to share questions/answers or just vent about something not going right...

The bane of my research at the moment is image files not displaying properly in E-Prime...

The things we put up with for science!

M.

Does anyone have access to stereoscopic glasses (i.e. those with the mirrors which allow you to see depth in a 2D image my 'merging' two sides of the stimulus) and wouldn't mind looking through them at a stimulus I have to tell me whether it is constructed in a way that works?

Alternatively, how far apart should the two parts be in order for stereoscope to work, and are there any other things I should be considering?

Apologies for nonsense-question, - I am probably trying to get too much done at too late an hour in the day!!

M

What are your thoughts on this?

One of my supervisors has suggested that I do a poster for a intra-departmental (psychology) conference that they have every christmas (which initially I thought would be a good idea) but on reflection, there are three problems with this:

1. Deadline is (I think) in two weeks' time
2. I have never ever made a conference poster ever before
3. I have nothing to present.

Quite literally, the only research I have is my in-progress-lit-review, and the stuff I'm submitting to ethics and external committees...so I guess I could make a poster with the background to my study and diagrams of my stimuli etc (which, according to some people, is a thing that people sometimes do) but I do feel like most people would present an already carried out study with data and findings? There's no way I'll even have preliminary/pilot data before pancake day, let alone christmas...

I have a paper written in German (which unfortunately I can't read) that I really want to cite. I've read about the findings in other papers...but I of course have not read the original. Would I be ok to reference this as a secondary citation?

Thanks

M

My dept. has a system of allocating each new PhD student to an existing one as a kind of buddy/mentor for the first few months, i.e. as a 'friendly face' to ask where things are, how to do things like setting up email/access cards etc...but in my experience it doesn't really work!

Personally, my 'buddy' was absent on the actual induction morning...and I have only seen her in the office once since then! This seems to be an odd theme in that those who volunteer to be buddies are those who are least often in the office...what's the point in that?

Luckily there are others who are in almost every day and most of the day who are willing to help out with printing instructions, directions to the kitchen, and how to swap TA timeslots...

I tag along to my supervisor's lectures because they're relevant to the methods/equipment I'll be using which I hadn't used previous to starting my PhD. It takes 2 hours a week (4 in some weeks) to attend lectures and at least that much time again to read and do prep...but I don;t mind as I'm learning useful info by doing so.

Some people in my department are taking masters level statistics courses and such, some of which are repetition - especially one person who did her masters at the same university and is essentially repeating the module! I however, didn't do a masters but my supervisors are not asking me to attend any that I had not already indicated that I'd be interested in doing.

If it takes too much time then just talk to your supervisor and see whether they recommend you to continue or to work through on your own. This is what I intend to do with my second supervisor's programming workshops because I already know a different software and as far as I know I can do everything I need to do with that instead of spending a lot of time and effort grappling with one I'm less familiar with! Of course, if he still wants me to learn it for future studies then I guess I will still have to do it...though I skipped the first session so already it's a bit awkward...in my defence though, if he had shown up to my meeting the day before, I would have spoken to him about it first!

Depending on your university, disabled students services might include depression anxiety etc in their provisions and be able to help you out. Mine do, although I have been here several weeks and not received any tangible support yet (slow admin I guess). You may be able to get a series of recommendations written up - I have them (depression and anxiety related) including things like permission to audio-record meetings; leeway on deadlines (within reason); regular contact to keep up to date with scheduling and workload management...should be a great help for when my cognitive ability isn't up to scratch! Also depending on funding (ugh) I can get a mentor/support worker who is separate from my research and the academic faculty just to consult with to make sure things don't get too bad.

I was ridiculously nervous about others finding out as I've had bad experiences previously too - I even asked the disability people to slow down the part where they disclose to supervisors so that I'd have the chance to meet them and for them to get to know me a little before having that info....however with one of my supervisors in particular (I have three now!) I definitely needn't have worried - I had a complete panic-mode moment (well, more like an hour at least) in the staff kitchen and she came in for coffee, after some persuasion I told her a little about my situation and she says "you're actually shaking, work isn't worth this" and I said "it's worth everything to me" (because it is) and she just gives me a hug and tells me to go home for a bit!

Of course everyone's different but I think the one thing I've learnt is that there's always some people around who are willing to support you whatever irrational thing is going on in that moment!

Thanks people

I did send an email to the general office (main contacts are both on leave), although I've realised that it's bank holiday so definitely won't get a reply until at least Tuesday...
I do hope everything is fine!

Hi,

I sent off an acceptance form and a bank details thing over a week ago to accept an offer for a PhD studentship...and I've still not heard anything back, not even a "Cheers, we received your thing". I may be worrying about nothing but it is causing me stress because it's only a couple of weeks until my start date and I'm trying to find a flat to rent - all while not having heard a thing!

What do you think?

Hi

The situation - This morning I received a PhD studentship offer which I intended to accept. This afternoon I received an invitation to an interview for a different studentship at a different uni (which I didn't think I'd get because it's been quite a while since I applied). Long story short I'm not 100% sure which I'd take if I were to be offered both (might make another thread about pros/cons of them later) so was thinking I'd wait a little while to see whether I actually get an offer for the second, before accepting to the first...

But would it look bad if I took such a long time to respond (given that the other interview is scheduled 12 days from now and of course I wouldn't get their decision on the day)

I'm not sure if I'm getting a bit over-stressed about this at the moment but if anyone can share their thoughts on this I'd really appreciate.

:)

Hi

I put in an application for a one-year MRes course and have been offered funding (which I wouldn't be able to do the course without) - the catch is that I have to reply with a decision by tomorrow.

However, if I'm honest my main reason for doing a Masters was to increase my chances of getting funded for a PhD - and since applying to the MRes I've been verbally offered a fully funded PhD studentship elsewhere. (This is still dependent on them receiving my references, after which I've been told they'll send me a formal offer letter)

My initial logic then is to decline the MRes funding and go for the PhD (after all, I would prefer to be doing the PhD!). After speaking to my dad about this though, I now have concerns about whether something could go wrong with the PhD offer and I could end up with no offers and no funding...

Any thoughts/advice?

Does anyone have experience of this? Positive or negative?

A department I've interviewed as houses all of it'd PhD students on a hotdesking basis and I was wondering how well this works for people? To some extent I think I'd prefer to have a definite space of my own but then again I've never really worked in this kind of environment before.

Any thoughts?

Any advice on what is is best to bring?

None of my recent work is really in the same topic as the PhD I'm applying for but I'm currently trying to choose between two options:

- The first is a 4000 word research article-style report of my dissertation research project
- The other is a 2000 word grant proposal assignment which received a slightly higher mark (but is similar structure to the research proposal that I already submitted to get me the interview)

Any thoughts?

Magdatrix

Thanks for your replies. I'm still not 100% sure about this but am leaning more towards one than the other now...
I'm no longer considering applying to both simply because of time restrictions (the deadline seems to have sneaked up on me for this one!) and the 'go-to' person I would normally speak with on this kind of thing is away. As always in my life, I'm concerned about making a 'wrong' decision...but of course a decision is better than no decision (and I guess it isn't a committed decision unless they actually offered me a place)