Rubyw is excited to notice she's being watched by a sparrow perched on the window ledge. She is hoping it will come back, as she's never seen one of them around here before. :-)

Hi Lara,

Thanks for posting an update, I was thinking about you earlier and wondering how it was going. At least you know where you are now, and it's good he said nice things about your actual data and experiments. Impressive if your 2nd supervisor is using some of it to apply for future funding too - shows your ideas and data aren't crap, doesn't it! Do you reckon some of the problem is with actually structuring and writing the analysis, combined with not enough time to think about what you're writing and letting it simmer in your mind? Because it doesn't sound like you're a bad scientist, from those comments. Hope you can manage to carry on for a bit longer to submit anyway. Probably so very tedious now, but if you can force yourself, at least you won't have given up at the last hurdle so to speak. Sometimes when I've been really sick of it, I have the occasional vague fantasy about what it would be like to just leave it, but then I get annoyed at all the time I've spent on it and think no way will I waste all that effort - if you drop it at this stage, you might as well have had a life for the last x number of years, had a proper social life and been earning money somewhere. Gets me back into it usually... but I hate not seeing things through anyway.

btw absolutely not impressive for me working last night, more like panic! I did that thing over the weekend of telling people, 'oh sorry, can't meet you, I'm working all weekend', or 'oh can I ring you back I'm working' and it all sounded very worthy, but in the end I spent ages doing other stuff like thinking about winter clothes. Working strange hours doesn't suit me as I feel like a zombie the next day, so am back at it now, to prevent another nocturnal session. Though actually it is so peaceful working in the middle of the night, I'd be tempted to do that a bit more often if I didn't have to go to work!

Good luck with your corrections though!

(up)

I couldn't sleep so I thought I'd get up and do some work, I may produce total and utter crap at this time of night, but it's better than laying in bed worrying about it. I am the only registered user online! :-) Oh dear, that seems a bit sad doesn't it, but there you go. It's a PhD thing, so fairly understandable.

Lara, I'm sorry you've had a bad day, not surprising in the circumstances though. It is a good idea to speak to your supervisor about it. You get so sick of the whole thing sometimes, it is really hard to care what happens with it and turning your back on it all seems very enticing occasionally. I sort of understand what you mean about being put out if your misery. Hopefully your supervisor will find a way through this without wasting all the work you've done so far, it would be a shame to stop now at this stage, vile though it all seems at the moment.

Hope you feel better tomorrow. I'd better do some work as I've allegedly got up to do that, probably guilt-induced after yesterday's abysmally slow afternoon...:$

Good luck with your viva K (up)

That's true.... and if you add in all those hours spent during our undergrad degrees and masters, maybe we're all well on the way to success.

Hello!

Lara, that mixed up message is very weird!
You got a lot finished yesterday, well done, all on schedule then for the end of Sunday!

Armendaf, hope your day was productive. Thanks for the ideas about helping with the images, I will bear them in mind. I decided not to touch them yesterday as the restructuring and rewriting was my main worry and seemed to be going ok. I thought it was more important at the moment to get the writing done, as pics can be done when I'm half asleep, but I wasted quite a bit of time this week on feeling ill so am behind with my writing. I have to email text only versions of 4 chapters to my supervisor by the 31st Oct, but the entire hardcopy of the thesis is due in Nov, so theoretically I've got a bit more time for the images.

I ended up restructuring this chapter and starting on the corrections yesterday, seems ok so far, having just read it through ... It will be nice to get it done, but when I stop and think about it, this seems such a deadly boring way to live at the moment....the whole thesis just hangs over my head all the time.... *groan*... Must just keep thinking about finishing bits, one after another, and when it's all done it will be such a relief. I want to get this chapter done by tonight, so I'd better get stuck in, I suppose. :-s

See you later.

I thought that too!

Maybe it'll end up in the removed threads section first thing on Monday morning...

Hi Lara,

That feedback all sounds great!!! (up)
Making bits more concise or explaining them more clearly is SO much better at this stage than having not enough data or a really dodgy structure or flaky argument!! *phew*... I was starting to get worried on your behalf! Recording the conversation was a good idea, conversations like that go in one ear and straight out the other sometimes with me, even though I know they're important. Trying to decipher one's own writing and notes is a bit of challenge at times, I have found...

I'm ok, still feeling a bit coldy though. I realised it was a waste of time yesterday trying to do any major restructuring on this pesky old chapter as my thinking was really fuzzy, and I didn't dare send any important emails either, in case it was badly worded rubbish when I re-read them. I tried to do the illustrations for this chapter and spent quite a bit of time trying to get stills from a TV advert I'd been writing about, but it didn't work in the end - the advertising company saved it as a certain type of video file so you can't easily edit it and save stills in the normal way, so I played it in on the computer and kept pausing it, doing screen grabs and pasting them into Photoshop, they all looked ok as a storyboard until I closed the videoplayer and the Photoshop files all went black. SO annoying!! I think you can download some decoder to save it as another file type, so you can edit it properly, but I can't bear the thought of that, so I'll probably try to take photos of the screen freeze frames with a camera today and see how that goes. That should do for the thesis, doesn't have to be great image quality. I suppose it will have to be done properly one day though, so I can use it in a Powerpoint presentation.... it all takes so much time.

So yes, I am around today! Doing that rewrite of chapter 5. It would be very nice to finish it by the end of today, though by the end of tomorrow seems more likely, which is also fine.

See you later! (up)

Hi Armendaf,

Hope you did make it to work ok today! Sounds like you're making good progress, at least that problem chapter is out of the way now and all your current amendments are targeted towards incorporating your supervisor's feedback.
Good luck with the next chapter, I'm sure you'll do it in time. (up)

I'm just plodding on with one of my chapters, still feeling a bit manky though with quite a fuzzy mind, it doesn't exactly help with incisive intellectual analysis (!!!) but can't be helped! Officially on schedule so far, but would be best if it could be done a *lot* faster so I can revisit a dodgy chapter...

I did two book reviews a couple of years ago, that I got through my respective supervisors. Both related directly to my PhD area and were books I would have had to read anyway. I was several years into my research by then, so was able to do critical reviews as I knew the area and could see the strengths and weaknesses of the work, to some extent. Critiquing someone else's work did make me a bit nervous though, particularly as they were for the major journals in my field and my supervisors are on the respective editorial boards, so I spent far too long on them, which took time away from my PhD.

I wouldn't do them unless it was specifically related to 'my' topic and I felt I had something academically valid to contribute to any review (as opposed to a summary). I think it does help to publicly locate you within a particular field to some extent, perhaps that's partly why supervisors give this type of work to their students, though it would obviously have to be followed up with more robust authored publications in the future. A trivial thing, but it's nice to get free copies of books, especially when they're ridiculously expensive hardbacks ;-)

I was 40%, although I am a Londoner! In true cultural theory fashion, I'm afraid I would have to question their definitions of Britishness...;-)

Can I still come? I voted, but either day is ok really.

Hi Lara,

I'm really sorry you're not well, I bet the stress isn't helping at all. Why don't you just leave it for today, or at least have an early night? Clock off at teatime and watch some crap TV or something lovely!! I think you'd be best getting over your cold instead of forcing yourself to work today, you'll be far more productive if you feel a bit healthier. Then you'll be ready to tackle the corrections when they come in. It's good that you can get some of the feedback tomorrow, at least that should let you spread your workload a bit more, instead of getting all the corrections back in one go.

I don't blame you for feeling nervous about the whole situation, it is a bit scary *having* to submit - I will be in that position in Feb, and find it makes me panic even now, while there's still time for me, so it's completely understandable for you. Try not to worry, I know it's a cliche, but wait till you've got the feedback and then do what you can up until the last day. As long as you submit when you have to, realistically what is the worst case scenario for possible outcomes? You'll still be alive, you'll still have family and friends that care about you! You might have to do minor corrections, or you might have to do major ones, but that happens to other people too. I'm sure you'll see it through, but look after yourself healthwise, it's really important right now.

Ooh Lara, that all sounds ok doesn't it? If it was really bad, they wouldn't be letting you submit, would they? Good plan to do the other bits that you can actually save time with though. I hope you feel better soon, all this work and stress is rather physically and mentally depleting, I think. I'll be working on my draft until November, so will be around quite a bit on here, I imagine.

That thread was to do with another forum for postgrads that we got told about at college, though it looked a bit dull actually but there you go, mustn't mention it again or they'll strip me of my stars or something drastic! I've got another hour or so then can go home (yay!!!), just some stuff to finish off first. We are all ill here at the moment (down)

Look after yourself!

The actual percentages of postgrad students giving feedback at our uni have been so small that they are statistically rather unrepresentative. As new students keep on applying, they presumably base their decisions on factors other than league tables and student surveys.