Hi Eska - hmm toughie. Not similar, but I have a kind of similar situation with a dear friend of mine, about 10 years older than me who keeps advising me to consider 'other' guys than the one I am knd of besotted by at the moment. It wasn't bothering me till she started going on about - look at guy x, he took you for a walk, and you didnt even consider him, and more and more. She knows, I cannot conentrate on multiple fronts at once (She can, and does, and good for her), and she knows I am not really looking, and she knows I will never say anything to her. I feel our age gap is in the way, and she often criticises me for being dramatic, reactive, not vulnerable enough for men, etc, but hnestly, it is getting tiring.

As far as I am concerned, I am sh*t scared of confrontations, so I will let it go, but if you arent, I think you should let it come across and if she is mature enough she will handle it.

Completely stupid of me perhaps, but i am wondering, why, any PhD student, with tons of intellectual stuff to do and arguments to sort would want to go through all of this below with LaTex? Isn't MS Word just fine enough? Just a thought...

Awww thank you Stressed!! And thank you others!! I cant ever say when I will finish, cos som many variables, the biggest one being LIFE!

Bug

Just got some good news and wanted to share :-) I have just won a £4000 grant!! My sup had said it was very unlikley and that I should apply keeping that in mind (And she never says something like that), but yippee!! I got it! I cant stop smiling as this will greatly help me finish up in the year ahead (first draft submission this August so trying for the final submission in March,w hich will be about 2 yrs and 6 months total)..this might help me give up some of the jobs, and might help me spend a bit more on myself!

:-)

Bug

Hi Stressed,

I am also approaching the end of the last term of second year and have been writing a chapter a month since Jan (first draft due this year in 2 months!) Somehow, my original plan for the PhD and the chapters have not changed. I always knew I wanted a short PhD - 8 journal article length chapters. I also knew I do not have book ambitions for this, but rather would like to get a couple of the chapters published as articles.

But this below seemed to me to be a coherent way of thinking about my chapters - basically my empirical component is best on three pegs, which also coincide with the 3 pegs in my conceptual framework.

The chapters all have cool names :-) lol but I am for obvious reasons just writing their content below.


1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
3. Conceptual Framework
4. Methodology
5. Empirical Chapter: direction 1
6. Empirical Chapter: direction 2
7. Empirical chapter: direction 3
8. Conclusions

I am preparing 3 of these today and tomorrow for my end of second yr submission to my committee to read, and must give a one page summary of all chapters, so your query has come at a really god time for I must spend the rest of today on this!!

NB: Also note I am in a different field...

======= Date Modified 28 Jun 2010 07:32:04 =======
Dear KB,

Deep down inside, you know this will pass, don't you? Of course it will, girl. You are such a committed, dedicated, ambitious, focused, driven, methodical and sensible person K, if you do not deserve a week off who does? Why must you expect your body and brain to be at your beck and call all the time, when sometimes they do have the right to go on strike and just sit with their back to you, facing the wall and say "we won't work! we won't work!". Give them the break they deserve and have earned. The feedback - perhaps now is not the time to look at the paper. Everyone has different ways of showing that they care, and this is your sup's way. Some others will do it with kind and gentle words - people are so different!

So, your body has devised its own way of hitting you with an awful low when you don't need it. What's your strategy back? Let it be for a bit, perhaps. Let the hard working, committed and focused person rave and rant for a bit, and flutter around. Don't resist it. Go with the flow.

This too will pass, KB.

Huge hugs and love going your way. And I second Eska, you are one of the people on this forum, I would so dearly love to meet. I admire you so much.

I just tried translating slag into a couple of other languages, including my mother tongue (Which my mother doesnt read or write incidentally lol, anyway) and yes, I can see close friends, syaing it to me. And we'd laugh. But a stranger? NO. end of!

Hi Emmaki, what shall I say. See my htread on the nightmare. I am with you. It will pass...

:) It's close to Kuala Lumpur, Cambodia, Ang Kor Wat etc (guess!).... next stop is Glasgow, then Dublin and Braga, then Ljubljana.

hehe! should try to preserve what remains of my anonymity!

So, I was accepted to the biggest confernece in my field (ongoing). Tickets and hotel cost over £1200, saved for over a year, plus travel grant, and this is in Eastern most East Asia.

Now, the story began on Sunday:

1. Sittin gon runway in Lodnon for 5 hours, deplaned.
2. Flight cancelled
3. Alarmed, book new flight via a differnt East Asian city
4. New flight lands in destination to see baggage missing in *another* East Asian city
5. Baggage had 2.5 metres by 1 metre poster plus USB with presentation for the first paper
6. Reach hotel to discover booking has tripped owing to delay
7. Make new booking to realise VISA card not working
8. Spend all cash to pay for last night
9. oversleep woith exhaustion and jet lag and reach conference late
10, Do a mediocre talk - first paper first day first panel
11. COlleague pays room fee at cheap hotel so can stay till end of conference
12. 12 dollars in hand, no ATM, no shop accepting card, no money
13. Cereal bars, muesli in baggage to eat till Saturday
14. A teaching application to submit by tomorrow
15. Phone malfunctioned and cannot make calls
16. NO MONEY. Most people speak no English
17. Was my first of this conference - its THE thing in our field, and gave my first mediocre talk.
18. The room had all the important people in my field, including editors if a book in which sup and I will write a chapter.


Good bits

1. Not spending money as intended in the cheap malls in this lovely Asian shopping destination (can you hear me cry?)

2. Supervisor (who is involved at teh highest levels of this conference) fished me out near the loo, and offered me money (she is wonderful) although I am still hesitating and considering eating muesli till Saturday

3. This too will pass

lucky sim.

lucky you.

:)

lucky gal.

lucky sim.

lucky you.

:)

lucky gal.

today has not been a waste cos i got f***ing drunk.

cos i realise that that's the best thing ever

ok girls (and/or guys if you stop by)

I have a question. Monday - am organising a biggish student symposium - am organiser, a chair and am also the first presenter of the day. Day ends in the pub really, no dinner. Just a lunch and tea breaks in a packed programme.

Is it ok to wear a nice cotton dress (rather lacy in texture, if I am explaining myself), creamish in colour, ends about 2 inches above the knees with opaque black tights? It's a home symposium and purely student crowd. The dress is the fitted kind (not indecent or something, just somewhat contoured and very casual).

Other option - to go for jeans and top as is my usual but (:$) just wanted to dress up a bit...

Formals are out for this one, and I know cos it's the thrid year, and am organising this year, so I really know this thing..

Other info in case needed - am brown btw, black hair with fancy bangs etc.
8-)

Yeah, JC, there's been some discussion here earlier about why jeans should absolutely be out for things like these, for the reasons you give.

It's personal I guess. I keep traveling so much for these projects I work on, and that mixed with conferences means a trip every fortnight, and frankly I've found great responses to the stuff presented/new connections/networks and only positives, so I wouldn't say jeans are hindering me in any way at all. I dont know if I look young, but I am 25. And when I think of it, I think somewhere last yr, when starting out on this all, I decided at some sub conscious level that I would somehow go for the jeans mode.