I had taken paid work proof-reading master's theses before (for students who are not native English speaker - so it's mainly to check grammars and academic writing style) but I don't know anyone who uses professional proof-reading service for their PhD thesis. I know it's pretty common for people to ask their boyfriends/girlfriends/parents to proof read for them (i.e. someone not in the discipline - just to check clarity of writing etc). I wouldn't worry about giving your supervisor "unedited" writing to read. It's their job!! And your thesis needs to be rewritten and rewritten before it's ready to submit anyway. As long as it's not written like under an hour and you know for sure is absolute rubbish I wouldn't feel guilty about it at all. I can understand where you're coming from though - I was, and still am, a bit of a perfectionist. At the start of my PhD I tended to take very long time to get any piece of writing done, because I wanted them to be good. Soon after I was advised that that's the wrong way to go about it, because it's your supervisor's job to help you improve and edit your writing (both in terms of content and writing style) so you can make much better and quicker progress. I must admit this is still something that I have to struggle with constantly, but I try my best not to let the perfectionist in me get the best of me!

Good luck with your PhD!

======= Date Modified 13 Apr 2010 21:42:34 =======
Sorry - double post!

I can understand that it's very easy to let your PhD take over your life: we don't have formal office hours, we are in a sense our own boss, there's always the possibility to read more etc. But I'd say it's v important to have a life outside your PhD too. Work-life balance (buzz word!) is surely important to your physical and mental health. But your future employer(s) (academics or not) would like to see that you can manage multiple projects/priorities. So try to build up other experience if you haven't yet, things like getting on committee on societies (e.g. sports or other fun things), volunteering etc would help you develop skills that your PhD probably can't give you. Also, as the others have said, you don't wanna burn out. Doing a PhD is a marathon, not a sprint! I'm in my final months of my PhD so unfortunately I now work in the evenings and sometimes in the weekends also. However in the past years I rarely worked in the weekend and my weekday evenings were mostly spent socializing/relaxing. I was also on the committee of a society, which I've been told is a very good thing for my CV because employers (especially non-academics) tend to think PhDs don't have good team-working skill, but having been on a committee of some sort shows that you can work in a team.

Good luck with your PhD!

Congratulations Dr! Well done! You must be so proud :)

Hi all,

I'm due to submit my thesis in a few months, and would like to stay in academic research. I'm looking out for post doc jobs, but ideally I would like to have a grant to extend my PhD work. I know there are such grant/fellowships available and as they all require a more experienced PI(s) I was just wondering if anyone had experience of/advice on how to approach them and come up with a joint proposal??

I've been to many conferences but unfortunately have not met anyone in my area. I am aware of a few academics whose work I really like and would like to perhaps work with one day, but without actually having met them I am not sure what the etiquette is in approaching them? I could always email to say I find their work interesting and introduce myself but not sure how to go about bringing up the fact that I'm looking for a job and wondering about the possibility of working with them one day. I do have some vague ideas about further research from my own PhD work, but they aren't concrete enough, and I don't have any publications to show people my PhD work (my supervisor advised that I should submit the thesis before submitting to journals). And as I'm so busy writing up now I don't have much time to develop these ideas. So it's not as if I can email them a proposal and ask if they'd like to work with me. I don't even know how likely it is that I could get a grant, I know they are highly competitive (but so is the post doc job market). But obviously the starting point will be to actually identify someone that's prepared to work with me.

Any comments/advice appreciated! Many thanks in advance!

I think it really depends on the job itself. Some people I know applied early and it didn't work out for them because the employer/PI wanted them to start the job almost immediately, but they still needed some time (months) to finish their PhD. Other people I know also applied early but it worked out for them because the jobs were to start later than PhD completion date. Personally I have chosen to keep an eye out for suitable jobs, and if I see suitable ones (interesting/relevant project and ok starting date) I may well apply for them. And if I don't get a job lined up in the final month or two of PhD I think I may have to be more flexible and apply for all remotely relevant jobs!

Good luck!

======= Date Modified 13 48 2010 15:48:23 =======
Hi all,

I'm due to submit my thesis in a few months and have recently started looking for work. I want to stay in academic research and if possible I would like to stay in the same (or highly related) area of my PhD. The problem is that my work is in a very very narrow area with very few people in it. I've kept my eye out for relevant post doc jobs for a little while and haven't come across anything remotely suitable/desirable. Ideally I would like to get my own grant (as in jointly with a more experienced PI) but am not sure how probable that is (will start another thread on this). Anyway I just came across an advert for a RA in a highly relevant area and the PI is someone that I'd really like to work with/write a grant with someday. But the fact that this job is a RA rather than a postdoc worries me a little (the job description says a PhD is desirable but not essential, i.e. it's clearly not designed to be a postdoc job). I don't know if I should apply for it? On one hand it'd be a really good opportunity to work with this PI and as the job only lasts for a year I could talk about possibilities of writing a grant with her when I'm there (that is if I get the job of cos!). On the other hand it's not a post doc job and I worry if it'd look bad on my CV/when I want to apply for grants in the future. I don't know if this is true but I have the impression that when people talk about postdoc experience it's not simply doing research after having a PhD, but more specifically working in a job that's designed for a person with a PhD?

Any thoughts/comments/advice would be appreciated!

Well I was sort of on the reserve list and I got the funding in the end. It was the ESRC +3 studentship that I applied for. After getting the whole application/proposal done my department told me there's a quota on how many applications each department can submit and they have already submitted 1 (or 2, can't remember, but basically they have submitted as many as was allowed). So the only thing they could do was to put me on the reserve list, and if other departments don't put in as many applications as they are allowed then they can submit mine. And that's what happened. Luckily I got funded (ironically enough as my proposal was given almost full mark!). I know my then situation is not exactly the same as you're in now but just wanna say that it could happen. The waiting bit is terrible I know! I don't know if there are still other funding opportunities for PhD starting this year but if there are I would apply for them if I were you. If not then there's nothing much you can do apart from concentrating on your Masters. If you get the PhD funding in the end that's great, if not having a good Masters will help you get it next time.

GOOD LUCK! Keep us posted.

Sorry to hear all the problems with thesis and about your grandmother. :( I could be wrong but I guess perhaps they ask for the revisions becos otherwise they may fail you/pass with major corrections at the Viva? In which case they have kinda allow you to save your thesis - fail/major corrections won't look v good on your CV...

As for needing to get so much done in little time, I agree that it should be helpful to list things/tasks you need to do and cross them off when you've got them done. Make the tasks small and (relatively) achievable. Then as you cross them off one by one, and at the end of each day you can see the progress you've made and feel good that you're getting closer and closer to getting everything done.

Good luck with the thesis and planning wedding!!

Have you try "mapping" out what you've learned so far from the existing literature in a spider diagram/mind map (looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map)? It helps organise your thoughts when you have read a lot, but not sure how to relate them to your thesis yet.

I'm not an expert in illness/psychosocial methodologies but one way of identifying gaps and absences may be to look at psychosocial methodologies used in other illnesses and discuss how they (or aspects of them) might be useful if applied in the illness of interest, but have not been done yet? I'd think you'd also be expected to criticise existing methodologies - why they aren't good enough and what are the issues that make designing the "perfect" methodologies difficult.

Good luck!

I spent mine on conferences and travel expenses for field work. Nothing else. I know friends that had bought books and laptops with their grant but every time I asked my supervisor about the possibility of using the grant for something (this included a stats course that he thought I didn't need) he said no...

Have you considered asking the ESRC directly?

Ok so I'm in the 4th year and I still haven't the vaguest idea about potential external examiners. I have two PhD help books but neither contains advice about choosing external examiners. My supervisor is distant and not particularly supportive (in fact I rarely see him...) so I think I best do some work on it myself. I was just wondering how you choose/chose yours? What's your criteria? And what's the etiquette? Do/did you contact them directly or did/do your supervisor do that for you?

Any advice appreciated!

Good luck Mathkitty! Glad this thread helps you too! To be honest I"m still a long way from where I want to be. I still haven't got a realistic timetable for when I'll finish and I still need to work on managing my supervisor. (I haven't had a meeting for almost 3 months and still haven't got feedbacks on work that I sent 3 months ago... but I'm working on this piece of work, and as soon as it's done I'll email it in and request a meeting and bug him about feedbacks for my previous work). And I can definitely be more productive. But I just have to stop beating myself up all the time (which itself contributes to my motivation problem) and stay positive. As I read on some productivity guru website: "aim for progress, not perfection".

Thanks Sue yes i guess it will get done one day afterall. I've recommended the tomato timer to friends and family too. Such simple concept and yet so useful.

Good luck!!!! Hope the lit review writing goes well and enjoy a big sleep in the weekend :)

======= Date Modified 22 Jan 2010 00:44:39 =======
Just thought I'd post a quick update to say I have read Joan Bolker's book now which I found helpful - thank you! Also Sue: thanks so much for recommending the tomato timer!! It does wonders! Not only does it help reduce the time I spend procrastinating I also really like the fact that I can see how much time I spend on certain tasks, and see that I've made some progress by seeing the list of tomatoes at the end of the day! (up) Since using the tomato timer I have managed to write two chapters in a couple of months - I know this isn't amazing progress but to me that's a lot of progress. I had spent a lot more time producing a lot less in the past.

I still have a lot of room to improve - in managing my time, my mood, and my supervisor. But I'm certainly in a better place than I was when I started this thread so thought would come back and say a big thank you to you all!(up)