Overview of pm133

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Citing Authors I haven't read
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You cannot cite papers you have not even read. Neither should a professional researcher (even at PhD level) be simply taking their supervisor's word for anything like that. At this level you are supposed to be critically evaluating everything you read and hear and making your own mind up about things. You run the risk of being questioned on that reference during your viva.

No supervisor should be behaving the way yours is but it no longer surprises me to hear about this sort of thing.

You should try using an Inter Library Loan if possible.

PhD writing advice
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Quote From AmlTAA:
Hi everyone,
I am new here. I am a phd student in my final year. I have extended for the second time. I have to submit in November, I do not know if anyone have the same issue or is it just me. Every time I wake up with the intention to do some work I free I literally free and I do not want to do anything. I know what I should do it it not easy but it is pretty straightforward but I do not why I panic and I feel like a total loser. any advice?

Amal


The truth is that you simply need to get moving on this,
I started my thesis by writing down all of the headings and sub headings of the things I wanted to write about. From then on I knew I only needed about 3 pages per sub heading. That allowed me to break down the problem into manageable chunks, keep to the overall flow of the story of the thesis and make progress. I ticked off each sub heading once I had written the core of it. That allowed me to see how things were progressing immediately, helping with my motivation and belief.
I have never had a panic attack over work so I have no idea how to advise you on how to calm down and get motivated. Someone else may be able to help there but honestly if you have already had two extensions and to harbour any ambition to finish, you are bang out of time for doing anything other than getting started right now.

Any disadvantage to encrypting personal laptop?
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Quote From Tudor_Queen:
For anyone else interested, I've now looked into this quite a bit, and there doesn't seem to be any con to encryption. : )


With modern PCs you are probably correct here. The problem is slower access to your hard disk but if you have enough RAM (which you probably will have) then once the encrypted file is copied to RAM (presumably a one-off activity for the most part) and decrypted you should experience no further slow down. I would probably be a little concerned about performance using things like Word which has been notoriously bad for memory usage for decades. In the old days this used to require a lot of paging to and from the hard disk because so little RAM was left free.

Writing Literature Review
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This is excellent news. Congratulations.
It can be difficult to have someone tell you that your work is below the level it needs to be at.
Not taking that personally and simply focussing on what is required to improve yourself is part and parcel of not just getting a PhD but maturing as a successful adult.

How to deal with lack of attendance (lecturing)
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Quote From butterfly20:
Thank you so much for the advice. Teaddict, luckily the student evaluations were before this started happening. The students who have been attending were the only ones who filled them out. So they were sparse but positive :) I've gone with Tudor queen and psych 1's advice and made contact with the cohort as a whole and arrangements to have a drop in.

The lack of attendance started in week one. So I'm not sure how this could be down to my teaching style or how I have blamed the students. It is a compulsory module which might have something to do with it.


Were you getting 25% attendances in week one???

Is a pursuing a PhD programme a realistic option for me?
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Quote From cmc5223:
Quote From laebae:
They matter a little, but not as much as the master's. I'm applying for PhDs this year and have been told outright that my 2.1 means I've ranked lower for funding than I otherwise would've, even with a distinction in my MSc. But nothing to be done about it now, so no use worrying about it!



Makes sense! Thank you :) Anyone else with some feedback? Also, how much does your dissertation grade strengthen your application?


With a 2:1 you are always at risk of losing out on funding and PhD places regardless of your dissertation result. On the other hand, so few people apply for PhD positions that absolutely loads of people with 2:1 degrees manage to secure a place. Whether you get something you actually want is another matter and you'll only find that out when you start applying.

Which school would be best choice for a financial analyst or manager?
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Quote From DavidMike:
I want to be someone who evaluates the profitability of the business, how they are spending money and how they could reduce costs, what investments they should make, financial plans Ext.

I can either go to UIUC for around $120k at the most for living + education without any scholarships and major in Accounting/Finance and minor in Econ. Then go get a MBA at a top 10 school for $120k without any scholarships and not accounting for living expenses.

Or go to a more competitive school like Northwestern/Berkeley/New York for Undergrad and major in economics and finance for $300k.

I have no idea which choice would provide the better overall education for my career choice which is probably most important. But also the former would take 6 years while the latter would only take 4. Although I could get a MBA at a later point in my life I would be losing 2 years of salary at some point.



I have a suggestion - you may not like it though.
I am not persuaded that you need a degree at all for this type of work.
You could spend a year or two reading the myriad of financial accounting books out there and start working your way through publicly available company accounts. You could identify potential savings and contact the company directly offering highly paid consultancy services.

Tables help in Latex
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You are missing a qualifer before {2 cm} and {8cm}.

I have used 'p' but 'm' also works. You'll need to play around with this because I don't really understand the formatting and frankly the latex documentation is dreadful.
The following will get your code to compile and display the table as a first step though.

\begin{table}[h]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{||p{2 cm}||p{8 cm}||}
\hline
\multicolumn{2}{|c|}{Internal Combustion Engine Operating Speeds} \\
\hline
Number of Cylinders & Engine Speed\\
\hline
1 & 2500 rev/min \\
\hline
$>$ 1 & 1500 rev/min \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Internal Combustion Engine Operating Speeds. }
\label{tab:Engine}
\end{table}

Moving all deadlines to a future date...
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Quote From Tudor_Queen:
I think there is a misunderstanding here. Deadlines can be set for you - or imposed (in addition to the things you describe pm133, a micro-manager might also do this or it may simply depend on the level of responsibility you have in your job). Deadlines can also be jointly negotiated. Mine were jointly negotiated to enable me to get timely feedback from my supervisors who are all very busy. Without deadlines (set for you or jointly set), the world would probably fall apart!


To be fair there is no misunderstanding on my part at all TQ. This thread has been a classic case of someone jumping all over my posts without having the decency to actually properly read what i posted before doing so.
This was never a discussion about whether deadlines were necessary. At no point did I say they were not needed.
It was about who was the appropriate person to set them.
I say it must be you at this stage of your career but clearly you are welcome to reject that advice without offence on my part.

Anyway, my advice is as above. It's maybe time to move on.

How to deal with lack of attendance (lecturing)
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When 75% of students are not attending lectures I don't think it is good enough to simply blame them for not being motivated.
It happens in so many subjetcs at so many universities that it is clearly indicative of a problem of current teaching methods.
I think the problem is more general than just butterfly's case and stems from the fact that so much teaching is designed to make the learning process completely passive.

Obviously in this specific instance I don't know what the exact problem is but instantly blaming the students is a huge red flag.

butterfly, how much of your teaching is passive and how much is driven by the students? I always found that attending lectures was a total waste of time. The lecturer would have been bettr putting the notes online and running problem solving workshops instead. Interestingly, the majority of students come to life when you give them things like posters to create or to design experiments. Having them sit in lectures for an hour at a time kills the spirit of even the most motivated students.
In too many cases, teaching at universities has not progressed very much from thirty years ago when I did my first degree. This is seriously bad news.

Moving all deadlines to a future date...
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Quote From Jamie_Wizard:

In TudorQueen's case we are neither talking about hard 4 year deadlines nor deadlines for funding applications.
We were talking about general deadlines during a PhD.
Context is everything.

..


Let's leave aside the condescending "lol" and the "real world" nonsense. There really is no place for it in a discussion amongst grown adults, especially when we are both trying to help someone else.

Ever since I entered the workplace in 1990 I have never had a deadline imposed on me by anyone and my colleagues through the years generally haven't either.
Our bosses always asked us to set our own deadlines. The job of the boss is then to facilitate whatever we need to allow those deadlines to be met. We are the technical experts. Who else is better placed to know how long something will take us if not ourselves? That was the philosophy of every company I ever worked for from the most junior member of staff to the most senior. I have worked in some of the biggest companies in the world, some of the smallest and a range in between, both as an employee and a freelance expert and the same picture has been present in all of them.

The sole exceptions were those who could not be trusted to either meet their own deadlines or complete their work to a satisfactory standard. The rule of thumb was that having your deadlines set for you was a clear signal that you were underperforming and untrustworthy. Those were the people who were at great risk of redundancy.

If you are still having your deadlines set for you as a postdoc then you really should be concerned. At the very least you should be questioning why you are not trusted to set your own.

Moving all deadlines to a future date...
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Quote From Jamie_Wizard:
Quote From pm133:
So long as it is Tudor who is setting and controlling those deadlines then that is fine.
The problem would be if the deadlines were being set by the supervisors.


That's ludicrous. Deadlines are a part of life! Sure, it's her own PhD and should be able to negotiate deadlines and milestones, but to say that they can't be suggested or imposed from the outside is unpractical and just not how life works! What if one were to have that attitude towards the 4 year hard deadline for full-time students that the universities stipulate? how far would that get them? (rhetorical). What about deadlines for funding applications?


In TudorQueen's case we are neither talking about hard 4 year deadlines nor deadlines for funding applications.
We were talking about general deadlines during a PhD.
Context is everything.

Moving all deadlines to a future date...
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So long as it is Tudor who is setting and controlling those deadlines then that is fine.
The problem would be if the deadlines were being set by the supervisors.

How many emails to potential postdoc advisor?
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Quote From lucedan:
Hi all.
I am trying to find a postdoc position, and the first step is to get in touch with somebody. And it happened with a few universities that no staff that I contacted multiple times (at distance of 1-2 weeks from one mail to another) have replied. Somebody tells me to continue contacting them, as they are busy, etc. But many times I just feel like molesting people that do not want to be contacted, and "I should understand myself to quit it". I have tried with different methods: short email of interest, long email, short email with cover letter + attachments. Now, I have three questions:

1) What is the temporal interval I should let pass in between two emails?
2) When should I give up - if I should?
3) Sometimes I am attracted by some universities because the potential mentor has just similar interests to mine (broad), sometimes because the university specialises in my field (narrow) but I feel just complementary to their program as nobody there has my exact interests. Is there anything better between these two options?


They would get one email. If they are the sort of person to ignore my email then I wouldnt want to work with them.

Moving all deadlines to a future date...
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Nothing wrong with having your own deadlines for your own benefit but you definitely do not want to be telling your supervisors about them. If they specifically ask for them I would be very cagey about it, couch my words in very vague terms and probably double the times I had estimated myself and I would make it clear that those were soft targets rather than deadlines, very likely to change. In fairness though it really is none of their business because it's your PhD.

Good luck for Monday. Let us know how you get on.