yes exactly...200 page undergrad dissertation!? My PhD thesis is only 180 at the mo (without references and stuff, but even so!).

I've found that word is crashing when I put the entire thing together. So far its all got a separate word doc for each chapter. At some point this week I may combine them all, but not sure yet.

woooo congratulations!

Also you give me hope - 1 stone in 7 weeks! I'm hoping I go the same way and don't put on a stone (which is my usual reaction to stress)

well I don't know what's happened to me today, but I'm in a wonderful mood :-) I have no idea why. I haven't managed everything on my list but I have..

- finished my work portfolio AND followed the ridiculous bureaucratic rules about how to present it
- sorted out job situation (ish)
- got senior lecturer to look through a chapter I'm worried about
- got good news about a student who I'd thought had gone off the rails
- been offered more work :-)
- had a paper that I've been working on with sup submitted into the top journal in our field (fingers crossed!)

I'm going to take the evening off, the first evening in AGES! (up) I know it will all come crashing down tomorrow, but I'll enjoy it for now!

oh, that's a paper I cite frequently in my PhD on duck food and the nutrition of polar bears (they eat penguins apparently) and dog barking. My thesis title is "Polar bears eat penguins? You must be barking quackers!"

hmmm if it were me (bearing in mind my sup has just asked me to re-structure lol), I would do...

Methods chapter - which would include justification of mixed methods and the 2 contexts (i.e. organisations)
Study 1 in org 1
Study 2 in org 2
Study 3 - comparing methods.

Its a tricky one though!

well its not quite all there yet, but I've managed to strike a balance between Job A and Job B and not making the people associated with Job A peed off, could lead to Job C which is a full time lectureship (which I have an interview for already), so that's good, but also means that by not annoying people for Job B I have that as a back up. Following? anyway, I hate letting people down and potentiallu having to say no to Job A and then potentially lose even a chance at Job C and just generally being crappy by backing out of a previous agreement was really stressing me out. Once I commit I mean it, and if I'm forced to do otherwise it stresses me out beyond belief.

well I actually feel quite up beat. I've just looked back on the notes I took during my convo with sup and it looks like the ramblings of an insane sheep, so I'll be ignoring that until she's worked out what my thesis is about.

I've managed to sort out a job issue with a best case scenario really, and its a problem that has been twisting up my insides for a while, so that's good.

I'm also well on the way to finishing my portfolio.

I have also stuck to my diet today, which is a miracle as usually I would have dived into a pot of jaffa cakes.

look for multicollinearity by....

- checking correlation tables - look for high correlations between the IVs (e.g. r>.7)
- look at your VIF and tolerence stats. From memory I think you should have a VIF close to 1 and definitely not as high as 10, and tolerance shouldn't be below .2

And avoid using stepwise method

well she's still not read it - she's basically going on the titles of each section rather than the content. So I'm going to wait to see her in 2 weeks and go through it properly. There is no point, of re-structuring now and then having to re-do that in 2 weeks anyway.

From what she says, one thing I do agree is I change the order from X Y Z to Y X Z which makes sense to me and I was thinking about it as I put it all together anyway. But she wants me to pull out all of my theory from the method chapter and stick it in the lit review. I don't understand this as I've used the methods section to justify why I'm using a mixed methods approach (and therefore discussed how most people have approached the study of my area by looking at the theoretical approaches) to remove those theoretical approaches will leave that chapter just plain odd, and short - would result in a 20,000 word lit review and a 3,000 method??

I'm going to spend the next week sorting out references, which is something that needs to be done whenever, so its probably best I step away from the content, get the niggly little stuff done, like labelling tables etc and then return to it when she's actually read it.

CRASH - down to earth again. Just spoke to sup who thinks I need to re-structure the entire thesis. YAY.

I have lots of things to do today and if I finish before 5 I'm going to reward myself with reading the end of my book (fiction, not horrible academic book!)

Things to do...

- complete portfolio of work
- phone supervisor and discuss jobs (not looking forward to this!)
- write abstract for conference
- start sketching out a plan for a workshop I have to give.

my hubby works in government. For his interview I made him wear a full suit and tie, he only wears an open shirt and suit trousers to work as they're quite casual- actually he is, the rest of his team all wear ties, and also put on a jacket occassionally, he didn't even wear a tie to his promotion board, but it got commented on, much to his amusement, but I think its best to present yourself in the smartest way possible for an interview because it shows you've made an effort.

ah no, she's not at uni - she goes away from about May to October lol, so its better that way. In previous years she has also 'claimed' that she can't get the internet. Anyway, all done now. I just hope I can read the handwriting when it gets spat back at me! (and she tried using track changes once - was NOT good for morale as it came back completely red).

Unfortunately, I have a deadline for a different qualification on Monday, so I'm going to have the evening off and then its full steam ahead again this weekend.

all posted :-) although I got my printer working inthe end and its printed little dots all over each page, but I got so irritated by it, I've just it as is.

Also have a horrible job of emailing people about turning down work today. Not good.