Sorry you're having a bad time with that student, some are very 'challenging' to work with. You may already be doing this anyway, but cover your own back with paperwork and records of tutorials with her. If she turns out to be below PhD standard somewhere in the future, at least it will be documented and you won't be at fault personally. Depends a bit on what stage she's at in her studies - is she likely to fail her upgrade (or whatever they're called in your institution)? I was wondering whether there might be a chance the college might decide to get rid of her at some point if she's not up to it academically and that would be a good point to do it, and you would have supporting evidence.

If you're stuck with her, can you identify her academic deficiencies through tutorials, all documented through paperwork, and send her on a course or something? Or get her to sit in on Masters course sessions maybe? Because it shouldn't just be your problem, unless you recruited her solely on your own, it should be an institutional problem too, as well as hers, if it's her PhD. If she's a real pain and is also annoying the other students too, could you pass it up the hierarchy to whoever has overall responsibility for PhD students in your dept and get them to speak to her? Someone very senior might have the authority to get through to her, there must be someone who can!

Anyway, you probably know all that stuff, but I was just thinking about truly dreadful students at my uni who had to be dealt with further up the academic chain and were discussed at committee level. It's interesting how there is the odd student who everyone finds problematic and breathes a sigh of relief when they're gone, or drop out in the early stages. Hope you find another way to deal with it beyond gritting your teeth!

Ooh hello there Lara!! Well done on getting decluttered - it takes AGES doesn't it, especially with paper. Umm... you're starting viva prep by reading a book on how to read a book, lol??! That should ease you back into it gently! :p Sounds like you've got loads of time though.

I just got my second supervisor's feedback today on my big draft, and a very helpful phonecall from him too as I was reading his email. He's sort of set my mind at rest as he said it'll be a 'very interesting and original' thesis, but omg there is so much work to be done - the corrections are the equivalent of having teacher's red pens all over your essay at school. All good valid comments and lots of grammar typos/ clumsy writing corrections etc, so ok, but so much work to do ....*sigh*.... My other sup is back on Monday so I'll speak to her then and maybe print out the whole lot on the colour printer at college, so it's easier to see what they're up to with my text! I don't like the way the track changes thing prints out in newer Word, the text bubbles are too small and pink to read properly.

He's kindly offered me a book review to do for his journal which is great as I have to read it for my thesis and it's just come out and is a £50 one, so I'll have a freebie plus something small to occupy me right after submission! Oh well, I suppose I could make a plan of action for doing my corrections now, if I get the re-jigging of chapter order done and the 4 problem chapters rewritten by mid Jan when I have to go back to work that would be great. Maybe I could even get all the figs renumbered and do the corrections on the other chapters too by the end of Jan, which would give me time for even more corrections and proofreading for mid-late Feb submission. Ulp. I think it's do-able, so will make a start now.

ps Lara, did you see a thread by Tractorgirl elsewhere, telling us that she passed her viva and is now Dr TG ? Really great news!

If you've already decided on Strathclyde, you should check with them what their start date and application procedures are. As for ideas about topics, I doubt whether anyone can help you with that - a PhD is individual and original research, so it's got to be your own work. If anyone has a great idea for research topics, they're more likely to keep it for themselves in the current highly competitive market. Perhaps you should do a masters first, if you haven't already - it might help you work out where your interests lie and develop your ideas. It is also a smaller commitment in time and money than a PhD if you are also working.

As for your other questions, you do seem to keep asking the same things in your previous threads, so why not go back and re-read the replies, or just browse through the forum - others often ask the same questions, so you are likely to get good advice from them too. Good luck!

Very true Phdbug! Or they will now LSE's knocked Oxbridge off the top of some of the RAE league tables ;-)

Overeducated... you could always look at an international league table of uni's to see if Warwick's there, assuming you've got any faith in these ranking systems post-RAE. I guess that would show how popular it is internationally (or not). I think I saw something like that a few weeks ago in the THE or Guardian or something. Alternatively, if you're already happily enrolled there, why worry?

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Unless this is any use, Coastman? This 'table of excellence' was in today's THE, with breakdowns for subject and institution, but it's not inter-departmental. (It's really all one link, but it's too long to post properly and went a bit odd)

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/Journals/THE/THE/18_December_2008/attachments/
RAE_2008_THE_RESULTS.pdf

It is good! I like Tim Burton's 'Nightmare before Christmas' too, it does have a happy festive ending, despite the title!!

Coastman, I'm not sure that level of detail will be posted on the RAE site. You could either wait for the internal 'post-mortem' that 'drills down' into the results for internal consumption and sniff around to see what people are saying, or wait till the individual results are on the RAE site and try to work out what people's possible rating was from their 4 outputs, using the RAE assessment guidelines on their site.

PS mild apologies for using the new RAE analysis jargon I learnt today, nowhere else to try it out at the moment.

Yep, I always feel guilty when I take chunks of time off, even when I'm obviously slowly grinding to a halt and being not very productive. The only way I can deal with it at the moment is to not have more than a day off at a time, as I've found recently that I completely lose the thread of what I'm doing if I leave it for too long. Having little but quite frequent breaks *seems* to be working, but having said, that will I end up submitting ok in Feb??!! hhmm I shall see...

Tricky, sounds like you need a proper break though if you're about to explode (well, just your head, though that's bad enough!). Hope you have a good rest and try not to worry about your PhD, September really is a long way off and you'll probably work twice as well when you're back on the case after a rest.

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That analysis in The Independent doesn't include specialist universities so we're not even in it, but in yet another version which I've already forgotten, we are supposed to be top in the 'power rankings' for our subject area, so I'd definitely agree about taking it all with a pinch of salt!

We did worse than last time and have had various different accounts of how we apparently did. It's been quite interesting trying to work out how people got those interpretations. We've come to the conclusion that you can be your own spin doctor and make even fairly dodgy results seem surprisingly positive if you juggle them around in enough variations. It's really weird after all that time and angst that no-one knows how badly/well we actually did. Maybe tomorrow we'll get another version...

It's not impossible - my employer has paid for my fees throughout my PhD, albeit part-time. You'd have to put together a good proposal that shows how they would benefit from you doing the PhD you've got in mind, as I doubt pure altruism would be a motive for them to sponsor you. Think about what they'd get out of it and why they should sponsor you - would it enhance the way you do your current job, or would it open up future potential business prospects for them? How will it impact on the time you spend in your present job - they won't want to lose out, either with your ability to do your current job, or too much financially. Can you negotiate a drop in days that you work maybe, to allow you to study? Or will it be so potentially useful to them to sponsor you that they would fund you full-time to do the PhD? Also, it's a long haul doing a PhD, so can you demonstrate in concrete terms that you've got the determination to see it through and not waste their money?

Why don't you think about it from their point of view, the pros and cons for them as a business, and maybe mention it to your manager or someone else appropriate, maybe in human resources, to sound them out? It probably sounds a bit cynical, but in asking for funding from an employer, the bottom line is always what's in it for them, particularly in the current economic climate. It's definitely worth exploring though, if that's what you want to do.

Tractorgirl - woohooo, congratulations!!! (up) That is excellent news, and how brilliant to get it out of the way before Christmas! I hope you have a lovely break now and have instructed everyone to address all Xmas cards to Dr Tractorgirl, to help it sink in! And watch DM completely guilt-free from now on!

btw your writing up stint over on the accountability thread is still helping me with mine at the moment, so thank you!! :-)

Maggie, I think you can work out to some extent how individuals were rated, though the inner workings are a bit mysterious, as Coastman says! If the official uni dept submission omitted people who are employed on permanent academic contracts with a research remit, theoretically they should be doing research and potentially included. If they're not included, this will be obvious when the details are published on the RAE website and they won't be there, so not deemed up to scratch by their senior uni staff, for some reason. I'd have thought that any bitchiness and back biting depends on the internal politics of one's workplace!

You can get an idea of how strong the research is from those included if you plough through the RAE guidelines on how individual work is assessed and rated, I think this might be on their site. It's also likely each uni produces its own guidance for staff on how work is assessed, possibly sent out by the research dept or staff running the RAE data collection at that uni - ours did, it simplifies the RAE guidance to some extent. It varies slightly for different disciplines.

What you'd not see, unless you knew the individuals involved, is how many pieces of research each person actually submitted to their uni for scrutiny in the early stages of the data collection period. I'm in the arts, so an example would be a prolific artist that may have had work exhibited in major galleries across the world, in prestigious shows and represented his country, so the best 4 were chosen from maybe 15 high profile pieces of work. Someone else, not well known in their work, may have shown in 3 small galleries around the UK, maybe also have done a one-off performance at a little gallery in an obscure part of London, published on the internet on their own site instead of with a catalogue with an ISSN number or in a journal, no reviews in the arts press so little impact in the wider art world in comparison. They might still have 4 pieces in the uni's RAE submission, but you can work out that they would be lower rated that the other person due to the official criteria used for assessing work.

That's a huge simplification btw, but just to show how it's a different way of assessing work compared with the journal/citation method that Coastman mentioned for the sciences. I think that the subjective nature of the assessment for the arts/humanities and its inherent problems is one of the things they are grappling with for the new system that will replace the RAE. I do find it interesting though, and it's so useful to learn about at this early stage of our careers.

Absolutely agree Sleepyhead. Am wondering what the repercussions might be for 'underperforming' existing staff at all levels at my place, who might be actually really good course directors or teachers with brilliant students, but with no time or inclination for research, as I suppose I'll be plunged into that job market next year. We've got an all staff meeting on Friday and Xmas party, which might be interesting when people have had a few festive drinks.