goal for today: proof read the final chapter and write the methodology on a paper for a conference!

A student at my university wanted to change to part time and is on a Tier 4 visa. The answer was no.

Hi Lost,

Sounds like you got some good advice from people in your department. Listen to them, as they are the people who have succeeded in your field. You are always welcome to rant on this forum! That’s what it is here for and you might find it cheaper than a therapist. LOL

Potatoes

well done, good to see that there is someone who can get no corrections! Gives us hope.

Hi trapped,

I dont think that you can do CFA on interview data. But I could be wrong as this is not my expertise. I think that you need questionnaire items to do CFA. I guess the question you ask yourself, is does CFA help you answer your research question and contribute to your findings. If no, then forget about it. If yes, pursue it further.

A method of pursuing it further is to find an author who has done it, and email them. They will probably be happy that you are doing this and give references or advice. Hope that helps.

Potatoes.:-)

Did you get any closure lost final year?

In terms of approaching them, I think supervisors are happy to get new PhD students who are willing to write literature and do research in a topic they are interested in. So I think that you should always approach them. I kind of went about this in a different way. I had a PhD topic that I was interested in, I identified possible supervisors and then slightly changed my research topic so that it was interest to them.

HTH,

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Goal for today, draft practical implications of my findings!  Think this wont take too long...

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Hi Vthebee,

When doing qualitative you can expect that your research question will change.  As you read more literature and when you start analysing your data, the question you first thought was important may not be as important. Or something may come out of the data that you didnt expect to find.  It is still worth while having a few research questions written down. This will give you  a reason and focus for reading the literature and developing a methodology. Its also a different type of research question, maybe including 'how' or 'why'. 

A question you should be asking yourself is how you are going to get access to data? Getting access is difficult! Its best to start thinking about that at 10 months in! Good luck with the PhD. 


Cheers,

Hi Vthebee,

I wouldn't pay any attention to the person who is writing chapters 3 months in.  That sounds like they have already done work before they started the PhD, or what they are writing is not really chapters. The key aspect at your stage is that you have a research question!  This has to add to knowledge and do-able!). With your literature review, dont just review but find a gap in the literature that your research question answers.  By doable I mean you can answer it with your data. For example, you could research CEO's of top organisations but these people are very hard to get in touch with.  So you cant really answer your question.

It would also help to have an idea of your general methodology. Are you doing qualitative or quantitative? 

Potatoes

Hi Wolfie,

I want to get submitted asap.  I aim to get it done by March 15th. This gives 1.5 months to wrap it up.  Fingers crossed (up). In regards to your supervisors reading your Thesis, here is the approach I used.  I asked my supervisors how long they need to read my thesis. Once they have answered that, I then said I would submit on date x and have a meeting on date x.  And asked them if that was OK? When they said yes, they had kind of bought into the idea of reading my thesis and put time aside to do it.  This worked better than emailing them the thesis and asking them to read it.

Interdisciplinary work is hard.  I thought it would be really cool to have two different perspectives on an issue, but really its just hard. I had to do one literature review for one field, then another literature review for another field.  Also I had to do two different findings chapters and making it all tie together at the end is causing me problems. Also, its hard to find an external examiner who has a foot in both fields.  Are criminology and history linked at all? Have you sorted out examiners? Sounds like you have a good relationship with your supervisors.  This is a good relationship to keep in the final stages.

I have an external examiner lined up and waiting to find out their availability.  The internal examiner I have no idea about and it will depend on the external examiners availability. Right, I better get back to work now,
:-)

I took a couple of weeks off after submitting my thesis to have a break.  It was good to have a break but I got really sick (from the flu), so spent 7 days feeling miserable.  The break helped me gain a bit more insight.  The final chapter is still proving hard to write as you really need distance from your research to do it. So, I have been reading other PhDs to see how they frame the final chapter and this has also helped.  The questions, "so what?" and "what does it all mean?" are hard to answer.

You are over the word limit!  I have the opposite problem.  I got too straight to the point that my supervisors said that some things were not clear and I assumed too much knowledge on behalf of the reader. They did say that a one good aspect of my thesis is the length, it isn't too long. 

My discipline is business and I am doing a mixture of finance and psychology.  My funding has also run out and my job outlook is still mixed.  In the short term, I have a contract to teach for 2.5 months starting May.  This will take the financial pressure off but it is not permanent.  I really don't want to work as a post doc, I have already done a bit of that whilst studying, so I am currently looking outside of academia. However, I think I would like working as a lecturer as I enjoy teaching and contemplating.  So not sure.  Going to worry about that in April.

The feedback I got from my supervisors was excellent.  When you present them with a finished draft and book a 3 hour meeting, they think "hang on this student is going to finish". So they spent a lot of time writing comments and questioning my arguments.  I cant complain about that all.

I wouldn't feel bad about finishing after 3 years. At my Uni, no one had finished within 3 years since I have been there.  One student who was ahead of all of us is going to submit in Feb. This is 3 years and 5 months.  So I don't feel bad for a second. I would have appreciated funding for longer, but I feel like they take it away to make students finish or move on.  To motivate us, I think they should offer a bonus for finishing on time.

What discipline are you in?  When are you hoping to have the first draft done? Are you on good terms with your supervisors?

Hi Wolfie,

You said exactly what I am thinking!! I am at the same stage as you, 3 years and 4 months. I gave a first draft to my supervisors and had a meeting. They said it was good, near complete and I only have 1 month more ... if I work really hard. They then seemed to pile up a very large list of critiques of my work which seemed like it would take 3 months to fix.

I tried to start working on it again but I am so sick of it!! (Thus, I am on this forum than at my thesis). I guess this final push is the difference between minor and major corrections. How are you getting on with it now?