I think it can depend on what field you are in, but I would always advise leaving the introduction chapter til last. I am in the sciences, so it may be different in other disciplines, but I wrote all the results chapters and the conclusions first. Then it was easy to see what 'story' I was trying to create, so I could then go back and write my Introduction, as I knew exactly what message it needed to get across and which areas of the literature it needed to focus on in order to strongly relate it to my results and conclusions.
You could always write a rough outline of the Intro chapter before you start anything else, making note of important papers to include etc., just so that you have something down on paper. It should be a scene setter, so for me, I needed to include: background of the wider field (i.e. where did it start - my field is pharmacology so I started with the ancient Egyptians!), brief story of how it developed to present day, then the background of my specific field, important current/recent papers, then where my research fits, and where there may be gaps in the literature that my thesis will then go on to fill.
As a guide, my intro was about 8/9000 words out of a total of 55000.

If you think your previous education will hold you back (and I don't necessarily agree!) then there are a lot of things you can do now to really make you stand out. You have made a good start as you say already have a publication; you should focus on getting as many first author papers published as you can before you finish your PhD. Collaborate with top experts in your field wherever possible. Get your work seen at as many conferences as is humanly possibly, present posters, give oral presentations in the UK and abroad. Get some teaching under your belt. Is possible at your uni to supervise Masters students?
Basically, just do everything you can to make you look like an outstanding, hard working student and this will override the fact that you don't have a Masters or a degree from a top uni.

To be honest, she just sounds like a truly horrible person who doesn't deserve for you to waste any more time worrying about her! She should keep her (ill-informed) opinions to herself! I was a funded student, but I always had great admiration for those who were self-funded - to me, it shows an extra level of commitment and dedication. Putting yourself through a PhD takes a massive amount of strength, and to do it whilst also having to worry about funding it yourself just proves how much you really want it.

Please don't think that everyone feels the way she does - if I were you, I would tell her to stop being such a cow and then get on with your life, safe in the knowledge that you are a much nicer person! (Alternatively, if you really feel bullied, you could make a complaint about her, but personally I would just try and ignore her, as her bitching is obviously a sign of a deep-rooted insecurity she has about herself).

Everything you are feeling is totally normal, I remember all too well the complete blind panic I felt in the run up to my viva! It was over a year ago now and I still feel sick thinking about those last few weeks.

The Guardian article is right; the viva is not just a formality. However, it is extremely unlikely that your supervisors would have let you get to this stage if they thought your thesis wasn't up to standard, so you need to think of the viva as just the last little tick in the box. It's a way of proving that it is all your own work, and that you fully understand why you have done it and where it fits into the wider field of work that already exists.

For me, it helped to imagine the viva as a discussion of my work with some 'fellow experts' (try not to think of them as examiners, it makes it sound too scary!). They just want to know more about your work, and they are there to help you explain it fully to them, by asking you some questions. The answers are already there in your thesis, they just want to see how well you can knit those arguments together and show a full understanding of all the concepts/themes/experiments that you have written about.

If you search 'viva' on this forum you will find loads of encouraging and inspiring threads that will help with your preparation. And also some stories of people who have survived and emerged the other side :) Best of luck!

If you've attended 6 interviews/assessments then your CV must be attracting people. Therefore, it might be a good idea to try and brush up on your interview skills before rushing in to a Masters. Unless you are totally convinced that another Masters will massively improve your job prospects, it might just end up being a complete waste of time and money.
Have you only applied for the one PhD so far? If a PhD is what you want to do, then I would apply for a few more. You don't have to have a Masters to do a PhD, especially as you have a first at undergrad.

I think part of the problem is that there are just too many PhDs out there competing for so few jobs. 4 or 5 years ago when the economic downturn kicked in, I think a lot of people (and I sort of include myself in this) went for a PhD as it seemed a safer bet than trying to look for a job. Fast forward to now, and you have lots of people all finishing their PhD at the same time and all trying to get a job. In my lab at uni, there were probably around 10 PhD students at any one time, but only 2-3 postdocs, so there just aren't enough jobs to go around.
Have you got your heart set on academia? I didn't want to stay in academia so moved into industry, I still get to use all my skills as a research scientist and I got a job fairly easily. I didn't have to worry about publications - I only had one (first author) paper, which wouldn't have been enough to get a postdoc, but was more than enough for an industry job. Failing that, then as bewildered suggested, perhaps try looking abroad for other opportunities.

Hi,
I have to admit that I had never heard of the IGCSE so have just done some Googling. As I understand it, they are the equivalent of GCSEs, rather than A Levels.
A foundation year is usually an introductory year, prior to an undergraduate degree, and is often taken by people who are moving into a different subject area, or occasionally those with low grades/low standard of English, for example.
So I am not sure why the college has accepted you onto a foundation year without any A levels, as I thought they (or an equivalent, such as Scottish Highers/Baccalaureate) were a requirement for any foundation year/undergrad course. (Is it because of your high grades/large number of subjects covered?)
However, that being said, if you have done IGCSEs, then you do a foundation year, then a degree, then possibly a Masters, then I can't see that any university would care that you didn't have any A levels. If a college have decided that your IGCSEs are enough to qualify you for a foundation year, then I can't see it being a problem in the future. The degree/masters are the most important things, so if you get through those without any A levels then that would be the most important thing.
Hopefully someone with some personal experience will be along soon to give more advice!

In theory, yes you can. However, I see two main problems with this:

1) A conference is less likely to accept a paper that has no actual data in it, i.e. you are basically just reviewing the literature
2) If you do get to present, someone might steal your ideas and do the experiments before you do!

To be honest, I would advise against doing this. You are basically giving your ideas away, and you still don't know if they would actually work. You would be better waiting until you have at least some new data to present, so that even if someone else takes your idea you will be a few steps ahead of them. Alternatively, you could write a review style paper (for publication in a journal) that would neatly show where the gap in the field lies, and then you could go ahead and conduct your experiments, and write another paper that neatly fills that gap.

This feels to me more like the sort of thing you would present internally at your uni, rather than at an external conference.

It does depend slightly on which field your PhD is in, but no, this does not seem a normal way of doing a PhD. Obviously, there will be times when all you do is read and type, but this should be interspersed with other activities which are contributing to your skillset. These activities include presenting your work at conferences, attending workshops/training (either at your uni or sometimes externally), and teaching.

Just to give you a flavour of what you could be doing, I did the following during my time as a PhD student:
Year 1: multiple training courses at the uni, presented a poster at an internal uni mini-conference
Year 2: attended a UK conference to present a poster, gave a talk at another, presented my work multiple times within the department and for my industrial sponsor, 8-10 hr per week teaching
Year 3: attended a week-long training course in the US, presented at a UK conference, presented at a conference in Greece, presented multiple times internally/for my sponsor, approx 8 hr per week teaching

Of course, you have to work hard at doing a PhD and a hell of a lot of it is just solid hard work with no respite (a bit like the domestic service you mention!). However, other parts of it should be enjoyable, giving you the opportunity to put your work out there and get feedback from experts in your field, as well as learning new skills (presenting, teaching etc.) I wonder if there is someone other than your supervisor you could talk to, perhaps someone not attached to your project - at my uni we were assigned an advisor, who was an academic in another department who I could go to with any issues without fear of them telling my supervisor. Do you have anyone like this you can go to? I really think something will need to change, as the way you are working doesn't sound sustainable to me. Hopefully others will be along soon with some advice on how to deal with your supervisor.

I have to say I agree with Mackem_Beefy. It seems like madness to deliberately put yourself under so much pressure, and I really think you're going to have drop one otherwise you could end up with neither. As Mackem_Beefy rightly pointed out, the fact you are so close to the end of your PhD and are already failing at your Masters makes the PhD the more obvious choice to continue with, but you really have to think about which is going to help most in terms of career progression. I think you would have to work day and night to be able to achieve both, at the expense of your mental health. You also mentioned personal problems; all this is adding up to a recipe for disaster.
I know what you mean about not wanting to quit - I think most PhD candidates are perfectionists and would all feel the same way. However, I think that once you've made the decision everything will seem a lot more manageable and you will be able to get a firm grip on one project and do it well, rather than struggle through and risk failing both, which would be infinitely worse than quitting one project now.

I just logged straight in and posted a message without any problems, thanks for getting it fixed :)

In this type of situation, I would always advise that you go ahead and apply. Hopefully, they will see that as you are overqualified (i.e. you have a PhD, they are only asking for a Masters) that they will overlook your first degree and see the other relevant experience you have. There is no harm in trying, the worst that can happen is they reject your application. Nothing ventured nothing gained!

Firstly, everyone in the world feels bad about their thesis after submission! All you can see is the massive mistakes you have made all the way through (which in reality aren't massive at all and most wouldn't even be noticed by other people).

You say that 'the results should be released soon'. Does this mean that you won't have a viva? If you do, then do as suggested by psychresearcher and make a list of all the errors now. You can even start working through them, and then if the examiners mention them during the viva then you can say that you have already corrected them. This may help sway them towards minor rather than major corrections. However, DO NOT MENTION THE ERRORS UNLESS THEY DO! As they probably haven't even noticed half of them and you will just be pointing them out!

The difference between major and minor is usually to do with timing, i.e., how long they think you will take to complete them. You are usually given a month to correct minors and 3-6 months to correct majors, depending on your university. If you are on the border between minor and major, they may make a decision based upon your personal circumstances - for example, I have heard of people being given the verdict of 'major' even though they only had a few corrections to make, as they had a full time job and so the examiners wanted to make sure they had enough time to complete the corrections properly.

Finally, nearly everyone on this forum fears the worst whilst waiting for their results, but it very rarely happens. Have a look through the threads on here and read the stories - the vast majority of people are convinced theirs is the worst thesis ever and they will outright fail ( and I include myself in that!), and nearly every single one of them (yes, even me!) came out with minor corrections. The waiting is the worst bit. Best of luck :)

I would second all the advice from psychresearcher, that is almost exactly how I prepared for my viva (apart from the holiday, unfortunately!). I had about 6 weeks between submission and my viva, so for the first 2-3 weeks I didn't look at my thesis at all. This really helped to clear my head, so that when I did re-open it I was able to look at it objectively with a fresh pair of eyes, and spot things I hadn't thought of before. The last two weeks before my viva I really got stuck in, making a summary of each chapter, looking for new literature, and memorising properly the details of about 6 of the most important papers that I had cited in my thesis.

Waiting for the viva date is the hardest bit of the whole process I think, but they should give you about 2 weeks notice so even if you don't open the thesis again until you get given a date, you will still have time. Not looking at the thesis doesn't mean you aren't thinking about it!! Best of luck :)