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Hello there :-)

It sounds really funny the way you've written it Lara, but I'm very glad you managed to crack open your thesis! I can't imagine what it must be like to *have* to read it through in immense detail for weeks and weeks, but it doesn't sound very enticing after the stress of submitting. Paragraph 2 next then eh, now the fear has been diminished?! I am enjoying reading your posts again, I know I've said it before but you're great at talking to yourself on here! :-)

I had a good talk with my supervisor today, which allayed my fears a bit about the methodology problems I was having. It's weird but I'd been agonising over it for ages, but something just clicked after I'd read some articles the other day and it all made more sense. I've gone round in a circle with it and made it loads more complicated than I needed to, but maybe that was necessary - it had to get complicated so it could be simplified. I'll try to write it all up tomorrow and see if it still makes sense.

I found out that I'd been selected for the research degree bit of the college annual 'recruit new students' showcase exhibition!! :-) They're using that old thing I did for the one last autumn, but nice to be picked again - it's good to be included with all the BA and MA practice based work too. It's really nice when people tell you they like your work completely out of the blue, especially when it's people that you don't normally deal with. A couple of course directors, nothing to do with my subject apart from being 3D design, said they like my project and I didn't think I was even a blip on their radar, so it was a very nice surprise! I don't know whether it's a PhD thing, but I get so used to working on my own in this writing-up bubble that I never really get any feedback from other people, apart from the sups. It's different when you're at an earlier stage and do conferences because then you're part of a bigger thing and speak to other people about your work, but comments like that sort of remind me that people see what I'm doing and talk about it and I'm not just some invisible hermit in a parallel world. I think it's nicer to get comments like that when you're not one for blowing your own trumpet, as I've never been any good at that. hehe, it's really perked me up in this bleak deadline hellhole I'm in!!!!!:-)

How did your viva go Sarah?

That's a bit cheeky on their part - it's their mistake, not yours. Get them to post it to you by recorded delivery or something, our dept have done that in the past when staff can't come in for good reason. And suggest they take a photocopy of it first, in case they mess that up too ;-)

I hope you get the results you want from the biopsies too.

hehe, I had that last year. Timetable plus deadlines 'set in stone' for monitoring by the research degrees committee, so no worming out of that one! Sending in a chapter a month was hell, but it got done in the end. I really struggled with a couple of them, and sent in ones that weren't exactly polished, but I put in footnotes and comments so my sup would see that I knew what had to go there. It seemed better than her thinking I was in blissful ignorance about what I was writing - it's worth doing when you're pushed for time and it's not the Ultimate Deadline. If you lose time on some chapters, you might be able to claw it back on others so the overall timetable for submission isn't messed up. Don't freak out if you can help it, as you end up doing nothing and wasting time, trust me, I am an expert at doing this these days! Good luck with it !! (up)

Hi Lara

Yes that CSI review was a bit harsh! She's really not popular for some reason, especially over at a TV CSI forum I looked at last year when she was leaving. She seems fairly harmless to me....

I've got a cold now and didn't finish my chapters last night either - must have been the cold virus gripping me and my brain, before my nose started streaming. Ugh. Must ring sup and be at work for a while, so see you soon - good luck with your reading and thinking today! (up)

Well, IMO it would look like you hadn't really thought properly about what you wanted to do and couldn't make your mind up if you applied for several different courses at the same uni. This may also give the impression to staff who would be recruiting you that you are likely to either drop out completely, or want to change courses - neither is great for the uni completion statistics. I'd give it some more thought before applying, if I were you!

Have you looked at the AHRC website for funding opportunities? They fund individual research projects in the arts, including early career type things, so any ideas you've got might fit into a proposal for them.

Are there any research centres or projects in your current uni that you might link into, either as a postdoc research fellow for an existing centre, or maybe get yourself written into a funding proposal for a new project that an established researcher might be working on? Or do you know of any research centres at other unis where your research would develop whatever area they're interested in?

To be honest, it is all a bit mysterious as you say, and I'm in the arts and work in a research dept too, so it shouldn't be!! I haven't got a hope in hell of seeing any formal postdoc job advertised as my area's so obscure, so I'm assuming anything will happen largely through who I know. I'm submitting in the next month and I'm intending to get advice from my supervisors, both of whom are part of research centres and know what relevant collaborative research projects are in the planning stages that I might be part of, or what I should do otherwise. Also, I need to speak to our senior research people, as they allocate all research funds and work on large collaborative funding bids. And perhaps talk to people that run a couple of the research centres with small projects I'm interested in doing that fit their remit, in case funds are available. I think 'networking' is important for all this, at least in my area, so getting more teaching should be useful too, to see what else is going on and who's doing what.

That's probably all a bit woolly and informal, so possibly not very relevant for you though!! Have you asked your supervisors or research dept about this stuff? They should help you with postdoc opportunities to some extent, or at least advise what's possible.

Hi Lara,

That makes more sense, yeah, thank you!!

Yep, new season CSI Las Vegas on 5, just started!! They caught Warrick's killer last week (or was it the week before??), it was that slimy corrupt cop that shot him. A very sad episode, I like that cast. Anyway, my coffee's done so will get started now (I really will this time), see you later. (up)

Hi, all on here.

A late start for me today unfortunately, I slept really badly and it's taken a morning of housework etc to wake me up enough to think in a reasonably academic way. Maybe the zen-like seeping of my reading into my brain went a bit wonky last night, as I woke up at 2.30am thinking about exactly what I had to write in this chapter. Right thoughts, dreadful timing! Didn't know whether to get up and write down my ideas for references etc or go back to sleep, but I suppose I must have fallen asleep again as there aren't any genius additions to this section that I can see right now. Hopefully I'll remember them today.

Sarah, thanks, and good luck with your viva on Thursday, I will be thinking of you too. You'll be so much more prepared than the first time and will really know what you've written and why, so I think you'll be fine too. (up) How brilliant it will be to finally see the back of it!!

Lara, that bit in your book sounds worrying, that they're offering suggestions for how to to not contradict your examiners... ok to contradict them if you know what you're saying and are confident though, surely?

I'd better get on with this writing now: abstract, intro and 2 chapters, all freshly amended and sent off by the time new CSI starts at 9pm is my aim for today. Good luck with your work too!

Hhmm, a heavy workload....

Re your presentation - I did a conf paper really early on in my PhD, felt like an absolute novice, a complete bag of nerves and was a bit starstruck by the number of academics in the audience whose books I'd read. In the end, they were really interested in what I was doing because it was a new angle on the subject to them, as your PhD topic probably is too. They know you're in the early stages of a PhD and should make allowances for that, we're learning and they're well established academics, so no way can we know everything. Good luck with it, but don't make yourself ill in the process, we're human, not robots. (up)

It's great that you've found something you're enthusiastic about, but it might be best to get your first degree wrapped up first. It is good to have ambitions and plans, but the reality is that these things take time (years) and developing your academic skills and knowledge is a continuous process that you constantly refine as part of the work. I don't think there are any short cuts really, or if there were then I missed them! Learning to be more patient has been part of the deal with doing a PhD for me, but it's been interesting doing it.

Your tutor obviously thinks a lot of your work, so it looks like you're on course for doing your MA and Phd, but maybe concentrate on the present situation at the moment and get a really good grade in your BA. You have to do this before you can move onto the next things, it's the first stage. I'd say actually don't pursue this teaching thing too much at the moment with all your tutors, it's a long way off and you're likely to be offered teaching anyway during your PhD, but there's a limit to what you can do right now at this point in your academic career. Well done on finding something you love doing though - it will all be worth it, I'm sure!

That's quite soon, yeah, chase them up next week when they said they'll know! If it's accepted, you have to plan as you say and write the paper. I didn't mind being messed around early in the year for an autumn conf when there was loads of time, but yours is nearer. Hope you get accepted!

Bug, you're not screwed!! It's the hard reality that sometimes things take longer than you think they're going to, and you don't get everything you'd like done for deadlines. I only did recorded interviews for a couple of my chapters, but got pushed for time with the transcribing when I was supposed to be analysing it. I ended up just listening to the rest and taking notes while I listened, as it was quicker to get the gist of what was being said than transcribing the whole lot. It gave me enough data to get my chapter drafts done for a deadline. Can you do that before your supervision meeting, so at least you'll have a mix of actual transcripts plus an overview of the rest of the data, so you've got a broad idea for your sup of where you're going with it?

If the deadline was the 15th, that's also likely to be the first proper week back for many uni people, then they'll be sorting through all the submissions...I think emailing them at the end of next week to see what's going on would be the very earliest, I'd say. I think I've waited for at least a month after submission deadlines to chase them up in the past, I just assumed they had other workloads on top of the conference admin. Or the organisers might not be as organised as you'd like! How long is it until the actual conference?

Hi Lara,

Thanks so much for your sensible comments, you are right of course about just doing what I can and getting the damn thing in. Yeah, it certainly is like being in a hellhole sometimes and it's nice to have some company on the train to deadsville, as you called it once, lol! Oh yes.

I'm sorry you're feeling crap, this whole thing really messes with your confidence and I think it might be like this until the very end, when they actually award you the thing. It's really hard squashing the negative thoughts sometimes and it must be difficult when you're planning for something that's not likely to be exactly fun. Like having an appointment to have something unpleasant done to you, that you have to plan in advance for, but it will be fine afterwards - that is the thing to focus on - you will get through it one way or another and have a life again eventually. It will be SO nice to have finished with the whole PhD thing for ever. You're doing what you can, thinking of questions is good, then you'll know how to answer them.

It's quite funny that your dad told you to stop faffing about, as my mum did that yesterday too. I was moaning as I was really struggling to get into this vile methodology chapter I've been grappling with for ages and she said well, that's no good is it? You haven't got time to be fed up so you'd better get on with it. She was right though, and I did get on with an easier one for the rest of the day, it seemed better to do something (anything!!) than nothing at all. Today I've just been reading various theory articles for it and it makes more sense today, though I've still done no writing on the computer, just rough notes.... ah well, maybe tomorrow....I'll have to by then. I'll fiddle with it till 9, then that's my lot for tonight as it's the second part of that detective thing on BBC1.

Hope you got enough reading finished today.

Armendaf, how's it been getting back into work after such a long hol?