Juno, have you ever done the MBTI? My MBTI scores show that I am someone who can never say no lol, and once I realised that I took a step back and saw how it affects me, it seems to be a never ending cycle of people asking me to do things resulting in my PhD ultimately suffering.

I have just started to decide which aspects are important and only take on certain things.

If you are having concerns about funding being withdrawn maybe you need a meeting with your academic supervisor and the industrial partners and work out some kind of agreement, e.g. amount of contact hours you have with them per week, what they expect from your work, what you expect from them. Then you will have something to back you up when they ask too much and it will let your supervisor know what;s going on, and also act as a useful bit of paper if they did try to withdraw funding.

I think part of the problem is that for the partner, it is basically very cheap consultancy - they don't need to be responsive cos they pay more to restock their stationary cupboard each week than it costs to sponsor a PhD.

I just get annoyed cos people in my department think I am on an easy option, cos all my data is 'there' but its not - I think it has taken as long as a non-collabotory PhD to get the partner to give me access to the information.

hmm seems familiar! I live away from my industrial partner and you can't access their online stuff e.g. email off site and they moan I don't go in enough - but I'm not paying £40 train fee to check email!

I didn't know what a jack - o - lantern was.

Seems far too American for me I'm afraid :p

I have an industrial partner and it was made clear at the beginning what was happening, I have to do reports for them to tell them what i have been doing and what the results are at the end of each study. They tried to get me to do some stuff other than that for them, which on the one side is great for experience, but on the other is annoying, so I told my uni supervisor and he stepped in saying that they funded me for the PhD work only.

The main problem I have with them is that my supervisor in the partner organisation tries to treat me like I work there and doesn't understand that I can't do theoretical writing/thinking in their office environment. he also does not understand that I have other jobs e.g. lab demonstrating/teaching and wants to approach my project like his 3 week projects he does at work. - quite irritating really but get good access to data.

:-s arrrrrrgh. most of my day gone cos of this and I have only clicked on the stupid ball about 10 times :-s

Sorry to hear your plight. My advice is to make friends with someone in finance and then they will push your stuff through first. The finance officers in my uni are all dreamy lol :-x

I think you can use 'briefcases' in vista so it syncs your work and updates it all - although not quite sure how it works, I think you jus put a briefcase on your usb and put all your files in it, then when you work on something at home, and take it to work, the file in the briefcase should update with your work one- you probable need someone more technically minded than me, but I know several people who use briefcases to sync work.

I'm research council funded and in London and my stipend is £18,700 or there abouts plus I earn about £5k tax free on demonstrator jobs and other work but most of my money does go on travelling in london

Most of my reading is available online, when I use stuff I have had to find in an actual book SHOCK HORROR! - I tend to scan it into a Pdf file, cos I lose everything in my desk at some point, so pdf versions are really handy!

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but just found great tip fo supervisor meetings - record them on a dictaphone! I struggled through my 1st year not understanding what my sup was on about and forgetting things he told me to do. Just recorded my last one and completely helped me and my PhD has moved on leaps and bounds! I am going to record everything from now on.

I just add notes to my endnote entries - I always add the abstract to endnote, so I can search for certain references easily (i.e. if the search word isn't in the title, it will prob be in the abstract). I then class my endnote entries into topics, so I label all the ones to do with XX and all the ones to do with YY.

I was told that you shouldn't think of anything you write in the 1st year as finished, as when you have an overview of the subject, i.e. in your 2nd/3rd year you will scrap everything anyway and re-write. This is why I was told to write little reviews of each subject. Basically it acts as a memory jogger for me and a starting point for my lit review which I am jus getting to now.

One of the reasons I was told to do this was mainly to get in the habit of writing as well. But I think it depends on your supervisor. Mine didn't ask for too much althoguh I think he assumed I was doing writing lol.