Don't get too disheartend. Don't forget that a large proportion of PhD interviews you go to, there will have already been an internal candidate lined up, so a lot of it is just procedure. I know its annoying, but realistically its true. There hasn't been a single vacancy in my department that hasn't gone to somebody who was already known to the department e.g ex student, ex-employee.

What kind of things do they ask you about in the interviews?

Today, I have a man-flu victim staying off work, and have already spent most of the morning faffing about getting the right screwdrivers to fix the kitchen doors on :-s

If I am to write results and discussion up tomorrow and through the weekend I need the introduction to this paper done today! I did a little bit last night, so todays mission...

- smooth out intro section of introduction
- fill out sections on the key areas that have been looked at
- critique what has been done.

oh my god, I would love to be 8 stone! The only way I will ever get there is to cut off a limb. God if my hubby said that to me, I would start running in the morning and then come back with stories about my 'amazing male running buddy who is super-athletic and really muscly' and see how he likes it, cheeky git!

I'm always told I am a bit strict with marking. What I would say is that apparently if you have only just finished a course yourself you do have the 'well I managed to do it better than that' attitude. I also think that other markers - especially if they are involved with the budget of the course are under a lot of pressure to pass everyone. Failing people means more work = more ££ off of the budget.

having said '30 mins' though - it depends how you work. If you want to put a day in to it, then do! tbh, I hate conferences so put little effort into submissions in the hope I can say to my supervisor that I wasn't accepted. Although, maybe I should write my thesis in 30 mins cos I always get in :-s

he's gone -we have a sink! and a dishwasher plumbed in! I'm off for pancakes mmmmmm

Welcome back jinkim!

I have done that first paragraph. I'm really hungry and I want pancakes for lunch but my father in law is in my kitchen fitting the sink and I don't want to look like a pig :$ so waiting until he is gone and consequently getting distracted from work by hunger :-(

I did a 350 one last week - it took me 30 mins but I did steal most of the content from work I had already written up.

I think that if when reading it it is accessible and clear then it should be fine. Some people are just really picky. I handed a piece of work to my non-academic supervisor (who is my age and less qualified), I just wanted a comment about the CONTENT and she red-penned it all! but her changes were ridiculous, just changing the order of the sentence e.g. "theory x suggests that this happens, however, theory y says..." to "Whereas theory y says this, theory x suggests.." The changes were often much worse.

On a separate occassion I also had a piece of writing that went into the press, and the press officer at uni tried to re-write it! I had tried to write it so it was easy to read for laymen, BUT if an academic had a look through, it had appropriate use of terms. She had changed all these terms e.g. she changed 'people in powerful positions' (power being the appropriate academic term) to 'people in senior positions' - NOT THE SAME THING!

I did contemplate it, I did some preliminary analysis and had a nice little significant result after 100 particpants. THen another stupid annoying 100 participants did my survey and it turned very non-significant - stupid participants! :-s I did think of just saying I only had a sample of 100 but I just wouldn't dare - I would assume someone one day would want the original data or something and it would all come crumbling down like a house of cards around me!

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I did see a programme the other day on an archeologist who claimed to have found the 'missing link' - this was back before good dating techniques I assume. He made loads of cash I think and kept on 'finding' these things. They later found out that the skull he found was quite 'young' and definitely not cave man era, all the 'findings' were also in a large circle around his home!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/archaeology/excavations_techniques/piltdown_man_01.shtml

In reply to my own questions.

No and No, I don't think so. -my research area is something that could potentially help a large proportion of society, and there is very little on it, so if my research does end up forming the foundations of a new research area, I don't want to be the person that leads everyone up the wrong path!

I was speaking to a friend of mine who is about to publish some work. She admitted that she had in her words 'tweaked' the results - not in a major way, but using some 'creative' stats e.g. taking out a few too many outliers etc. she had got a result that meant the work would be 'more interesting and publishable'.

My questions are...

have you done this?
would you consider doing it if your PhD results were non-existent?

ok, yesterday was the WORST DAY EVER. I spent all of it trying to track down a book, which I still haven't got and did no writing at all. Today...

Before lunch
- do paragraph I was supposed to get sorted yesterday
- read through all the papers in my area (about 13) and decide where to speak about each.

After lunch
- start padding out the individual sections - do as much on this as possible before evening

I think there must have been a period when a lot of people did PhDs - like a fad or something, because my parents know a lot of people their age that had career breaks and went and did PhDs and 90% of those people didn't get it finished, and just went on to other things, so maybe there is a generation of people who have seen a lot of people never complete?

I can't stand it when my parents give me advice about my PhD, they haven't even got degrees and they phone up and say "you should do your writing on the train" - and when I point out that I need a PC, endnote, hard copies of journals, internet access etc. to do writing, they just say "oh stop making excuses"! - like writing a thesis is like knitting or something, you can do it in your spare 5 mins throughout the day! GRRR.