oops, hit enter too soon.

more seriously, i meant to say -
yes it does sound like a nasty ex-supervisor. but i am wondering why you are so concerned. she thinks you are not independent enough and haven't read enough. so what? does it matter? you know better, no? and so does your current supervisor?
(not to say... when someone once told me "well a PhD is about being independent, you know" i got terribly upset. especially if you have a history of high independence which has not quite been acknowledged, such remarks can really hurt!)

your question is odd - unhelpful sup OR normal situation? shouldn't it be AND normal situation?

yes they do teach econometrics. see here:
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/economics/For-Students/pgcourses.html

i suppose you could just go through the course contents to see if what they offer interests you.

you could also take a more refined look at the league tables: not just the overall rank, but see what they are strong or weak on. for example, one of the unis might be strong in research output, the other might be strong in graduate careers - giving them the overall similar ranking. but then you can decide on the basis of what is more important to you.

oh and do make sure you have excluded outside reasons. like, if you are suffering from hayfever or asthma, that can stop you from going to sleep. noise and light, as mentioned. pain. uncomfortable bed.

perhaps remove sources of electromagnetic fields, such as cellphones, cable-less other phones, wireless access points, computers, ... or turn them off at night. for certain, don't have any of those closer than 1m to your bed!

being able to sleep just like that is such a luxury which you only become aware of when it doesn't work any more. i used to always be able to sleep. not any more! thus evenings are now times when i need to consciously get ready for sleep.

- if you find you still aren't sleeping after half an hour (some say earlier): get up, move around a bit, make yourself another cup of tea, review the day, write down the thing that has been bothering you (sometimes i can't sleep because i have this "brilliant" idea, and want to remember it in the morning - you can torture yourself the whole night or you can get up, write it down, and sleep peacefully).

- i've tried herbal medicines and biomedical sleeping pills. didn't notice much effect from the first, unless i did my whole ritual anyway. the latter worked well for me in crisis times. but they are highly addictive, and they need prescriptions. you need to try them out - i only used half a pill per night; some people react conversely (the pills keep them VERY awake); you need to see how they make you feel the next day. so if a time/situation is coming up where you think you will need them, you need to try them out beforehand!

- keep the temperature in your bedroom low. get rid of noise (husband snoring is as bad for sleep as aircraft noise)
- get some "go to sleep" music or a CD with nature sounds, such as water for example, and put it on when you go to bed.
- to get your mind off your PhD, give it something else to do("counting sheep" method). for a while, i would lie in bed, eyes closed, and list all words i could come up with that start with "bl.." pointless, but worked for me!

- make a ritual out of "going to bed". give yourself at least half an hour to go to bed - start with tea, install the CD, warm the "hot pillow", burn the incense, do all the stuff you normally do like brushing your teeth, shower your legs cold, tuck in, listen to the music/sounds, start thinking of words with bl...

- before you go to bed, cool down your legs (shower them with cold water). when going to sleep, the body cools down the legs&feet, and it works the other way round, too.
- i've got a whole selection of teas, that is, herbal infusions, that help go to sleep. camomile, lavender, orange blossoms, lemon verbena, or "calming" and "night" mixtures. hot milk with honey works too. avoid mint and ginger as both act much like coffee. dito for black and green tea. same for vitamin C - keeps you awake.
- a few drops of lavender oil on your pillow. or some lavender oil in an incense burner.
- get one of those pillows with grains in them that can be heated (add lavender oil if you like). wrap it around your back.
- no TV 3 hours before you go to bed.
- go for a walk/exercise 4 hours before you go to bed.

i'd opt for royal holloway. but that's just me. i know someone who teaches on that MSc. so if you have any specific questions, just ask!

i totally agree with jouri and leone about having your partner involved. either way - doing a PhD or not - he will have to be part of your family plans!

as to my plans, i'm doing fieldwork soon, and having a child before that is out of the question due to the nature of my fieldwork. after that, we'll stop contraception. i'll be in my third year by then and mostly "writing up". if i get pregnant immediately, the baby would be born end of third year - it's more likely to be sometime in the fourth year. that would be around submitting/viva, or after that.

partner would reduce work load and i would too. we'd try to find childcare for maybe 2 days/week. we live literally 5 minutes from partner's uni and they provide on-site childcare so that sounds promising. (his job to pick up baby in the evening )

hey aloevera, this is getting more and more complex! as you asked, i'm 32 now, started my PhD at age 30. actually, i moved to a different country to start my PhD and thus obviously put family plans on hold. we had a distance relationship for a year and 4 months, and now he has moved over to join me (including a good job). actually the distance relationship was not too bad - we talked/skyped EVERY day for an hour or so, and i just spent 30 weeks of the year (term times) here and went back for the rest. also, we visited often - 3 times per term. so in fact, there were 4 terms of 10 weeks each in which we only saw each other every 2-3 weeks. just saying - doing a PhD can in some cases offer the flexibility of making a distance relationship workable. but it is of course still a tough choice.

i heard that the key is change. alternating between several bad positions is a lot better than staying in one good position all day long.

so, ideally, you would find a way to have rotating writing positions. lie on the couch, sit at the desk, sit at the kitchen table, lie/sit in bed, and just move around through those positions. or more professionally, have a table that you can lift so that you can write standing, or have a chair that offers different sitting positions at your desk.

alternatively, break up your sitting sessions with other positions frequently. a brief walk around the office, a trip to the coffee machine, to a friend's desk for a chat, to the window, ... don't sit in your breaks!

hey leone, i love your comparison to chess. being a chessplayer myself it totally clicks with me. i'm not doing a "creative" PhD but i think it works for other PhDs as well. i think i will try conceiving of my PhD as a game of chess from now on - cause although you need a big picture and a strategy of where you are going, for every individual single move you need to consider the current situation and two or three moves ahead, and that is much more manageable - you can never see ahead as far as the end of the game! unless you are nearly there.
and although there is always some insecurity - just because you can't see the end - you still need to make a move. you need to keep going. and the good thing is, you don't "lose" in your PhD - unlike in chess, if really necessary, you can go back and correct your moves!

i've reached the point where i avoid crap food, but what i eat instead, is more often than not, simply "nothing". thanks to living with my partner i get a good healthy breakfast and a reasonably good healthy dinner every day. sometimes i just don't eat in the middle, rather than eating crap food. i sit there at my desk feeling "i'm hungry" but i don't want crap food but crap food is what i'm hungry for. so i resist, stay at my desk, and if i'm lucky i brought an apple or banana from home...
happens to work quite well for losing/keeping your weight... although i'm sure it's not healthy.
BUT i have concerns about the healthyness of diets. i'm stressed enough as is, if i start stressing about what i eat, too, i'll get a heart attack by the time i'm 40...

good luck tomorrow, jojo! don't let them get you down

hm... i guess it's just that i get lonely when i work too much from home. i would not think of going to someone's place, partner or not, to work if that other person were not working, too... but on those occasions when both me and my partner are at home and working, i do enjoy it a lot. small things like when i go to make myself a cup of tea, there is someone i can ask if he wants one too, or when suddenly said cup of tea appears at my desk because i completely forgot about it after asking... for me they can take the stress out of things. and when i'm struggling to start work due to being demotivated (as in other thread), it can help so much to have someone around who is also working. so sometimes i DO get disappointed when he leaves for uni when he could just as well work from home that day.