I don't think you need to worry at all about your A levels now you have your 2:1 degree. I failed most of my A levels and just don't bother putting those on any applications. The higher the qualifications you get the less relevant the previous ones become. I'd just leave it off and don't worry about it at all.

Not for long. Ha ha!

Pamplemousse, I'd like to apologise if I came across as harsh in my post yesterday. I can see that even though it appears you have a large amount of money to put down on a house, if you can't get a mortgage then you are still in the same position as anybody else who is trying to use their PhD stipend as income. It really does show how bad the financial world is at the moment. Good luck and I hope you do manage to get a mortgage or a loan of some sort.

I don't see what your problem is or have you been turned down for a £30K mortgage already. With such a massive deposit I can't see why this would be the case. Compared to most people - students or otherwise you seem to be in an extremely good position and I'm sure you don't mean to do this but for those of us who are struggling to pay rent or trying to get a mortgage for the cheapest house possible, your question comes across as rather arrogant.
If you have been turned down for a mortgage or loan for £30k then there is absolutely no hope for anyone else.

Ironic, isn't it that most time management courses are usually a waste of time!

I will be in exactly the same situation at the same time and have planned just to carry on with the lender's variable rate when the fixed rate finishes. If interest rates stay pretty much the same, then this should actually reduce the mortgage payments. I will have officially finished my funded Phd by then but I don't expect to have a high paid job by then as will still be writing up, so I probably would not have much chance of getting a different mortgage from another provider. Plus my ex-husband still owns half the house and I don't think he could be bothered to have to deal with all the hassle again, especially as we aren't together.

My faculty offers training courses on time management but they are not compulsory. It is 'compulsory' to do a certain amount of hours of training of various types each year but no-one bothers to check up and when I presented my training diary at my first panel they weren't bothered!
I did attend time management but it was pretty useless as we discussed basic things such as don't spend time on the internet etc etc, all the stuff that you know but still find it hard to do.

I'm in humanities and my results need to be presented statistically but as they are basic - ie how many of a certain thing over a certain time period etc, I am just using graphs, pie charts and tables. I had considered using something more complicated but then decided it would not add anything the information I wanted to present. If this is all you need to show your results then stick to something simple, I say.

I would be interested in this if I am in the North West when anything is arranged. I'm based elsewhere over much of the summer but will be back regularly in the North West from September.

There have been quite a few previous posts on this so have a search through them. However the situation has probably changed since then. I had a lot of trouble getting a mortgage but eventually did. My husband had a 'proper' job but it took ages to find someone who would accept my income as real. We only had a 5% deposit so I think we were lucky to get a mortgage in the end and I think we would have no chance if we were doing it now.
I would suggest that you go to a different financial advisor. The fact that you have £50k deposit should be a big plus. I know when we were looking there were some lenders who would accept PhD stipends - Godiva (part of Coventry), Lloyds, and some others who I can't remember. Good luck with it.

I moved 150 miles away from my university to live with my partner and I commute once a week during semester time and stay with family for a few days so I can spend time seeing my supervisor, using the library and teaching. Luckily I did my masters there and started my PhD while I was living nearby so knew a lot of people anyway and meet up with them whenever I am up there. But if you are making a new start at the uni and will only be able to go in occasionally then you may feel more isolated. I find the travelling quite tiring but it can be done. If you enjoy your work and it is the only place that you can do the research you want, and you have good support at home then it can be done. During holidays I don't go up very much at all and only plan to go in once or twice between now and October so you don't have to be there that often. But you should find out whether you can use the library facilities at a university near where you live (where you did your masters?) as it's a pain when you realise you need certain books but weren't planning to travel to your uni for a while, and I have just had an e-mail saying an inter-library loan book is ready for me to collect, but I'm not going there for a month.

I was at a workshop on publishing yesterday and as the others have said, this is a big no no. The reason is that you will piss people off no end because of the time and effort they have spent liaising with you and sending it out to reviewers etc, and this could have an adverse affect on your future career. I was told that when submitting an article aim for the most prestigious journal you can then if it is rejected send it to the next one on your list and so on. But only send it to one at a time. If however you are kept waiting for a long time, you can then contact the editor and say you want to withdraw your article. This could have one of two results - if they do want your article then they will probably try to reassure you so you don't withdraw, otherwise you can withdraw and then send it to another journal.

Thanks for your replies. I feel better about things now. I'm only going part-time for my last six months to give me some breathing space (see previous posts about my erratic and complicated life!!!). But it will also give me a longer period to write up after funding runs out so I think a four day a week job and three days for PhD and other things sounds OK.

I'm sure this has been asked before but when I search it comes up with about 100 posts which have the words part-time in, many not relevant. Anyway the question is if you are part-time with paid employment as well, how many hours do people work on both? I am waiting to hear if I can go part-time from July and I have a part-time job lined up which means I will be working four days on this and have three left for PhD work (and me-time!). Does this sound do-able? I know there must be people working full-time and doing a PhD so even though I was initially worried about the hours of my job, maybe it won't be as bad as I thought.

I feel exactly the same and I wonder what I have been doing for the past two years! I think if you have fieldwork to do the stages of work are sometimes different to those who don't. Most of my colleagues are looking at texts so all their evidence is already there and they seem to have written loads. But like you I had fieldwork to do to collect my evidence. It's only now that I am analysing it all and this is going to take ages. I don't seem to have written much - a lit review that will need completely changing, some bits of the methodology chapter, and one of the main chapters. But it's all in my head so it is just a case of getting on with it. Even though people I know seem to have written a lot earlier than I have they are still taking four years to submit, or a bit longer in some cases. Do you have to submit in three years (I take it that by your final year you mean third?) I'm actually hoping to go part time in July to finish off so I have some breathing space but I still think I will take the extra time allowed for writing up.
I think taking each day as it comes and getting on with it is a good strategy. And as I'm sure others will point out, comparing yourself to other PhD students is fatal! Every PhD is individual. If your supervisor is happy with you, then don't worry.