I am curious about the experience of other "mature" students, in socialising, or no, with the ( would it be immature??! ) other students in their department?

Sometimes I feel like I am being anti social, but drinking too much late at night just holds no thrall anymore.

At lunch, I have to run across the campus and drop off some form or other, and then ( if it is not raining) will dash around and try to have another look at the Roman wall remains!

The "student" social life, such as it seems to be, seems to consist of bouts of people going out at late evening hours and drinking copious amounts of alcohol, in strangely named nightclubs. Mind, I had my day, some decades past, doing the student drinking thing, but it just holds no attraction these days.

Yesterday I went on the most fantastic guided walk, looking at several medieval churches ( just the outsides)and whipped by some old Roman wall ruins. It was a great break from the PhD work, and gave me some more insight on the history literally under my nose. There are more guided walks available, and they are very reasonable in price, even on an impoverished student budget! I love British history, and so find all of this very fascinating, even though I was the only person on the walk who was not a pensioner!

I think that you run into two kinds of academics at conferences---the truly skilled and so forth tend to be humble and unassuming, I have met some of the "big names" but you would never guess from meeting them that they are the "big name" just in that they are very gracious, down to earth, not attention seeking, etc. Then there are others who are more competitive, attention seeking, sometimes down right rude....in my estimation, these are people with self-esteem problems who are horribly conscious of having not yet "arrived" and somehow think the way to get there is by being as horrible as possible to those around them!

I hope you will enjoy the conference!

not that you do not take it seriously, but you approach it with an open, uncluttered mind, that there is a certain amount of enjoyment and exploration in the work, a certain amount of freedom to tumble to your rear end and get up again, and keep going. Children learn by playing after all, play IS how they learn--and it is an effective mindset to take into a learning process.

There are those pieces of PhD work that are as fun as putting your eye out with a stick--like editing footnotes--but the rest of it should have some enjoyable elements in it!

My other observation is that people seem to spend a lot of time sort of "psyching themselves out" about the whole PhD process and feeling very anxious and depressed as a result. I think that there is intrinsic value in just getting on with something, because when you see progress, no matter how small, it does a lot to ease anxiety over the work and expectations.

NO doubt there are people that disagree with me, but I think that to the extent possible, the research should be approached in the spirit that we approach "play."

By that I mean...

Writing is just writing...again, I think it is critical to have a structure where by you draft, edit, etc. in a certain process to aid your writing. I do not see how you can write without going mad without this!

Some of the writing expectation might have to do with what field of study you are in? I think the most important thing is to be very clear about what your supervisor expects and then just start to deliver. Me--I was asked to do a literature review right away, and did so. Naturally, it was not a great piece of work, but it got me started and that was the point of it all.

I am locked out of the law building.

I agree with the advise that rjb has given--I think it is helpful to have a smart appearance--so often you can spot the student by their more casual wear--though not always. I think that your supervisor will give you the cues on socializing with him--you might ask him if you could meet him for coffee part way through or something, and ask him if there are any sessions in particular he thinks that you should attend--if you have not already sorted these. Mostly just relax, enjoy! Sometimes conferences can also be incredibly BORING depending on the quality of the presenters.

And I know some people think its rubbish, but really, really, really, the Flowers Paradigm ( or ANYTHING that gives you structure to move through creative free flow drafting to final edits) is valuable. If you try to edit yourself as you write your first draft, you are doomed to endless frustration. JUST WRITE! You can save the big footnote clean up until the Judge ( or final stage) kicks in...so while I am a proponent of the Flowers Paradigm, really whatever works, works--but its impossible to write and edit if you do not have a structure of some sort to use...doing one step at a time, not merely churning out draft after draft.

I think sometimes just making any progress at all can get you unstuck and unpanicked, and moving forward again. That is why something like, "write 500 words on x," as a daily target can be motivating. 500 words is easy, once you get going you might do more, but even if you only did 500 words a day, you could have 15,000 or so at the end of a month! That is a chapter more or less! And on those hard days, just stop after 500 words. Its done. You can always go back to the writing and edit it the next day.

Offer "incentives"? Is this permitted? Such as a snack, or a free pen or a token worth a discount at some sort of shop?

But Baz was in luck---for just at a critical moment, the Evil Fuzzy entered the tavern, and the French rogues paused, knives poised in mid air. "What, what, what!" sputtered the Evil Fuzzy in complete disguist! "No, no, no" and sent the plate of soon to be filleted ferret flying forward for four seconds. The plate hit the wall, and Baz the Pirate Urban Ferret scurried into a dark corner to await an opportune moment to flee.

"You will never ever establish culinary hegemony" spat and sprayed the Evil Fuzzy, " by serving rodents! Its FISH! Not cod, not haddock, not even gold fish. You must FIND the mouth breather trout, or our plans for worldwide cultural domination are doomed!"