Definately a bit of both. My problem at the moment is I'm too concise, which is generally a good skill but "in a phd every point has to be meticulously documented" (Slizor's Sup, 2010). Also, I'm in love with the hanging this.

Plus, however good of a writer you are, it is all about how people read it and so there will always be corrections....not all of them necessary positive changes.

My advice on how to get rid of bedbugs.
1. Get drunk
2. Kill every bedbug that you can find with a pen
3. Move out.
3.1 When you move out leave your bedclothes and anything you suspect of harbouring the little bastards behind
3.2 Wash all of your clothes (making sure no dirty clothes come into contact with clean) and keep these in plastic bin liners for a couple of weeks
3.3 Leave behind two things for the exterminators: a crushed bedbug nest (to show them that, despite what they said on their last visit, they were wrong) and a sign saying "Actually fucking sort it out this time."
4. Buy new clothes, new bedclothes, insecticide and a bottle of whiskey.
4.1 Check assiduously for bedbugs and signs of bedbugs over the next few weeks, give it an insecticide spray if you're not sure and keep your room super tidy.
5. Open the bottle of whiskey after two months of being bedbug-free in your new place and show fake regret of the bedbug-genocide that you are responsible for

Worked for me!
You may not need to be as extreme as this, but it was a reoccuring problem with me.........little blood-sucking bastards.

This may sound a bit snobbish and arrogant, but it's me so what do you expect? 8-)

My subject (politics) gets a fairly uniform response, the repetition of poorly thought out rants about whatever subject they saw in the news recently. I'm not sure that people get the difference between having a political opinion and knowing about politics, or even between having a political opinion and having read the paper.

One recent example that persisted just after the election was "Gordon Brown should resign, he's just hanging on to power - it's undemocratic," which is a glorious abuse of the concept of democracy (an unsurprisingly misunderstood term) and supreme ignorance of the procedures in place for a hung parliament.

Actually, I'll tell you what it's like - an avid football fan (again, me) and the World Cup. I'm not sure how many of you experienced it, but it is not enjoyable constantly talking to people about football when they don't understand the rules and don't know any of the players. It drove me mad this year hearing people parrot what they read in the paper or heard on tv because A) I probably saw the same thing and B) good football conversation is based on knowledge and individual analysis, not repetition of others' views.

Now that's off my chest....

I'm not sure if this counts as nocturnal working or not. I think the sun may rise soonish and I'm not even doing my own work. Oh well, it's been a very long day that is yet to finish.

I suggest Dropbox. It could take a 150MB file easily. In fact, it gives you 2gb of memory!



Great minds may think alike, but lesser minds plagiarise.

I put a joke into a footnote recently
"A drunk loses the keys to his house and is looking for them under a lamppost. A policeman comes over and asks what he’s doing.

“I’m looking for my keys” he says. “I lost them over there”.

The policeman looks puzzled. “Then why are you looking for them all the way over here?”

“Because the light is so much better”."

But, to be fair, I referenced about three books that used this joke for my subject area and I could have referenced a few more that said "looking under the lamppost".

I'm not sure if what you found means the same thing, but I always use "which" after a comma and "that" the rest of the time.

Nah, uni offices. They lock the main doors after 5 on weekdays but we can get in anytime and stay here as long as we like. Really quite nice when you can't be bothered to go home to sleep.

Anyhow, new announcement, JSTOR has just now changed the format of its site. I just opened a JSTOR page that had the new format and refreshed a two hour old one that, magically, changed to the new format!

I say it looks too modern.

Four tomoatoes and two beers down....things are going well.

I'm starting to notice that my wordcount isn't going up, but things are getting a lot more to the point. Maybe drinking = editing mode.

I feel duty bound to mention the possibilities of subwardenships or residential tutorships. The terms of these vary between universities and I'm not sure if everywhere has them, but it's worth asking about because it can save you a lot in accomodation costs/bills/food. Plus it's simple, tell undergrads off for being undergrads and waking you up.

Does drinking in the office while trying to work on a Saturday night help or hinder matters?

This is my research question and damnit, I'm doing the fieldwork right now. So far, results are good. 8-)

Algae: How do you manage 15 tomatoes? After ten my brain stops working unless I have had a significant (!) break in the middle. It then takes me a while to coax it back into action for reasonable human conversation.

I agree Stressed, it's not the driving force in the world today. However, we are not all the same and it is a driving force for many; particularly those in HE who went through the sacrifice of doing a PhD (on top of a Masters, Degree, A-Levels, GCSEs.) Furthermore, it's important to fight for the way in which the higher education system is viewed. If we let people continue to think that the purpose of University is to churn out people ideal for graduate jobs then that is what University will become; and that's when, as is already happening, fields of knowledge are judged "worthy" or not on the basis of how economically productive they are......hence all this talk of STEM and ringfencing money. It's all the legacy of Thatcher and her evil ways.

A116: It's not so much that increasing someone's job prospects is a bad thing, particularly in the current climate. However, it is very much a question of degree and procedure. I doubt many academics would disagree with the existence of a Careers Department and the potential to help people who request help, but if the idea is to make it integral to courses then I doubt many would agree. Furthermore, the continued push by the CBI, media and government don't seem to be going for increasing awareness of transferable skills but for the teaching of more skills.

Because the purpose of university is education, not subsidising private companies' training costs. This is a point that a lot of this post-Thatcherite society fails to grasp; for supporters of this dominant creed the only thing that is worthwhile is that which can be measured in monetary terms and on an individual level.

Talking of Uni in terms of how much more money an individual with a degree makes, as the media often does as it justifies hiking tution fees, is yet another case of people knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.