Brilliant! I'm really happy someone found that, it was bugging me! Ignore my previous posts and do what frogprincess says :-)

It took 6 months (yes half a year!) for my University to sort out the correct pay for me (I'm technically staff and get a wage and tax etc). In the mean time I was on a variety of contracts that were for either one or two months, completely screwing up my tax (I was on the wrong tax band too) and everything. So eventually they sorted it out. Six months later and I'm due an increment increase in wage (I had to force them to write into my contract that I got this in October as they didn't have me registered till the six month mark and so I would only have got it six months late). It didn't turn up in my pay cheque and so I am having to chase them AGAIN. Happily in my case my wife is employed too and I still got money each month so I was able to get by. It was still exceptionally annoying and I thought at the time "If this was a private company like the ones I used to work for, there is no way this would be happening like this for so long!".

In short, I am not at all surprised that you are having problems because university HR seems to me to be completely useless. Coupled with this are academics who seem to have no idea about the realities facing employees and students and who are overworked so they get things wrong then don't have time to correct them.

You almost certainly will get the money your supervisor has said you will recently, but it will be late, maybe VERY late. Keep hassling the right people (find out who in the HR department is in charge of it).

As for the £1000 every year increase - where was this written down and have you signed a contract yet? If it was explicitly stated in writing and you haven't signed anything yet, don't sign anything yet and get some advice from someone who knows about employment law. I suspect you've got no chance of getting it, but I'm not a solicitor so don't take my word for it.

Note: All my opinion, I'll be happily corrected if any of it is wrong!

======= Date Modified 15 Nov 2011 14:05:18 =======
======= Date Modified 15 Nov 2011 13:56:29 =======
Go to insert object then select powerpoint presentation, then the right one.

There you go, I knew you could do it easily...

Edit: ooh err, it's not quite that simple - I really want to work it out now though, give me a 10 minutes

Edit2: Ok, best I can do is: In Powerpoint, Print to PDF ONE PAGE AT A TIME. Then, in Word, insert object - pdf - select page one. Repeat for page 2 etc. There must be an easier way, but this does at least work. I'll let you know if I come up with anything better.

I can think of a cheating way of doing this, but I'm sure there's a proper way, so only do this if you really have to (it's long winded and ridiculous). Print to pdf, then view the pafe on screen and take a screen shot, then add to the word document as a picture. I'll have a quick look, I'm SURE there will be a better way to do it, but if you're in a rush then just do that. I expect IT people are groaning right now...

Have a look at the flipped classroom (google it) it basically advocates doing things exactly how you did. Seems to make sense.

Maybe, I suppose Engineering is somewhat different to humanities, but I still think many of them will just be doing the minimum so that they can get it done. You must have done that before surely?

To be fair, do you not remember being an undergrad? Get the work done ASAP to a reasonable but probably not anywhere near excellent standard and you can get to the pub. That's what I was like anyway. Of course they haven't done a load of extra reading to find a good case study! At least half of them don't care about that module much and prefer other areas of the subject and of the few that do care - well they still want to finish the assignment quickly. I did very little reading outside of the lectures in my degree (MEng Mechanical Engineering) and I passed quite easily with a 2:1. I also rarely went to a lecturer's office, I went to my friends on the course first and it was only if we were all stumped that we descended on the lecturer! Turn out for tutorials was always about half the students (well it was for the half I went to). I often think that maybe I should have applied myself more, like I would if I was doing it now, but then I remember how much fun I had and decide the minimum effort was actually a good choice...

I appreciate it doesn't make it any more fun to read the same essay 30 times though! I've happily avoided any marking so far (despite it being in my contract as an RA) and I plan to keep it that way :-)

Don't worry, I felt like I was doing nothing nothing for the first 6 months or so, then gradually felt I was doing more. I'm now a year in and I feel like I've done loads if I think about what I knew at the beginning. I'm working as an RA whilst I do my PhD (it's the same thing, my RA work is my PhD work) and for the first 6 months it felt like they were basically paying me to browse the internet! I think most people feel that they're not doing much for the first few months (except a lucky few!). Eventually you'll get into the swing of things and you'll wish you had the spare time you had before.

Lots of spam recently and I'm just wondering exactly what it is that they're offering? I obviously have no intention of using their "service" but I honestly have no idea what it's on about any way. I long for the good old days of Nigerian princes and cheap Viagra as the scam adverts of choice, at least they gave you a good giggle...

I think I am starting to side with the idea that if they can communicate effectively with their research group then their language skills are good enough. I tend to agree that virtually no one can submit a paper without it being looked over by someone else for the spelling and grammar. I suppose a good question is - how do you decide the level of language ability required? What is the level of "able to communicate with research group for instance". It would be interesting to see how this varied from nation to nation too. One thing I do know is that I have a lot of admiration for people who manage it, especially if they learnt the new language later in life.

======= Date Modified 08 Nov 2011 08:33:36 =======
Hi All,

I work in an office with a high number of overseas students (in this case non-UK is overseas) many (pretty much all) of whom have English as their second language. I often help to correct their written work when they ask me too and have no problem with doing so, most of them then take my corrections on board and I can tell they are improving with their English. I am not a naturally talented linguist and the idea of a PhD in a foreign language would for me be nigh on impossible.

Is there a point though where students should be producing work without it all being read through and being corrected by a native speaker? I am undecided on this and thought it would make a good discussion. Not the two arguments that follow are not my view (I am undecided) they are to give two sides to the debate and get discussion started. I suppose this also applies to native speakers with poor skills in their own language.

One argument is that if you receive a PhD from a UK university and it goes on your CV, a future employer would expect for you to be able to complete written (in the language of the country the PhD is taken in) reports to a high standard. Is this ability to communicate not a requirement for a PhD? If you can't write to a fairly high standard then you do not deserve the PhD.

The other argument is that the PhD is awarded for the critical thinking behind it. So long as you can put your views across in a broadly understandable way (after say heavy correction by a native/better local language speaker) then it doesn't matter.

What does everyone think? How good/bad should the language abilities of a PhD student have to be?

IQ tests are designed to be as "education" free as possible (i.e. someone uneducated but equally intelligent should do just as well as an equally intelligent educated person). I think in general they give a good guide, but they're not the be all and end all. After all, how do you define intelligence in the first place etc etc. They actually split the result into different types of intelligence too (my scores were all fairly good except in processing speed for example - basically I'm clever but slow!). I wouldn't read to much into stuff like the Warhol info. For a start I doubt he did have an IQ of 84 - that's special needs level.

To get back to the original post, I don't feel intimidated by high achievers, probably partly because I'm not that ambitious. I don't mind others doing better than me if they are obviously good - it's when people get places whilst still being rubbish that I get annoyed! Also, other people's projects will always appear to be going better than yours because people will tend to talk about what they did well rather than what went wrong.

======= Date Modified 04 Nov 2011 09:53:54 =======
Delta,

Base intelligence or IQ is not supposed to be affected by education. I guarantee that you will be in the top 10% of IQ, probably top 5% and maybe top 2%. My wife is a clinical psychologist and I've done the test. I genuinely think that most people doing a doctorate will be in the top 10% of intelligence. You have to remember that you interact daily mainly with people over 120 IQ, so your view of average is skewed upwards. I'm not saying everyone doing PhDs are genius, and I think hard work plays a massive part in achieving the result, but I think almost every PhD student is above "average" simply because average is surprisingly low (surprising to those who mix mainly with more intelligent people). I don't think you need to be massively clever though. Remember there are an awful lot of people in the top 10% - over 6 million in the UK alone.

The average IQ is 100. Most people (if not all) on this forum have an undergraduate degree. the average IQ for a graduate is 120. Hence the average on this forum is quite high. Also, most people who have a higher than average IQ tend to be friends with people with a similar level of IQ, hence intelligent people tend to think the "average" IQ is higher than it is. I doubt many people with average intelligence, that is 100 IQ would be able to complete a PhD. I do think however that most graduates could if they put their mind to it.

Note that these are averages, so not all people with a degree are IQ120 for instance. Also, people can be very clever and without many qualifications at all (e.g. Richard Branson). My point is that most people's view of average is skewed towards their own intelligence.

I'm honestly not that bothered in terms of getting my PhD, it's not going to make much difference, it's just irritating when a company have already done the work but simply not published it because they don't want anyone else to know how they did it.