my spelling has gone to pot. I think I'm going to give it 1hr max and give up. I am just not productive at night! or in the morning actually - I think my best time is 2.30-3.30pm every day :$

My main aim for tonight is to get the lit review finished - sup said its "too much what, not enough why" so I took a look at someone in my departments recent (successful) thesis and basically copied what they had done :$

It doesn't quite work with mine, so I've tweaked it a little, but essentially I've added a whole 'critique of the literature' section and then 'how this study sorts all those limitations out' section -obviously with different titles!

hopefully that will sort it!

My eyes are getting tired though! I have also just worked out if I pay for posh expensive post, then I can send it saturday at the latest. :p

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my submission date (ETA - draft submission that is) is the end of the week - BUT I have to post the draft submission and my printer pretty much burnt out printing off a copy for me this morning, plus I have no car and I have a hospital appointment on thus afternoon. SO I reckon I actually need the draft printed on thus morning (may pop down to staples) and then I'll have to walk to the post office (about 30 min walk) and then walk back and then walk to the hospital. :-s

I need to get my lit review done tonight though! omg, its 9.15 - where did the time go?????

I use....

- word, excel for writing and working stuff out ;-)

- mendeley for reference management (after my endnote wouldn't work with office 2010 and I couldn't afford to buy a new version).

- SPSS and AMOS for stats, I'm trained in Mplus but my uni won't buy it (would have been far more useful for my thesis though!)

- Dropbox - I did switch to sugarsync for a while because I think its got better editing functions when you can't access your actual folder, but I found that it really slowed my computer down when starting up, so I switched back to dropbox.

I think the way things are going (i.e. student satisfaction surveys) I think teaching skills are going to be more and more valued so I don't think doing a year or two teaching is a bad thing. I do think though, that you should make sure, during that time that you push out at least 1-2 papers to demonstrate that you're still research active.

thank you! I've pmd you both the name just in case you've heard of them. eeeeek!

Thanks Olivia, your post was informative, yet also made me think "sh!!!!!!t" - after i've done my work today, I'll go and look up his papers etc. I've analysed my interviews using 2 types of qualitative analysis. I think I've paper-trailed them ok. eeeeek!

I'm apparently a pragmatist though and also using quantitative stats etc in two of my studies - do you reckon that will cause problems?

My sup doesn't really know him either and only selected him cos it was a politically good move for her :-s

My internal examiner (who I've never met) is an expert on discourse analysis. I've not used this, but have used qualitative interviews and thematic analysis.

What should I know about how he may pick apart my work?

are there any 'things' that discourse analysis highlights as important that he may be obsessed about?

hmm, my hubby had them in his, but mainly cos it allowed a few extra 100 words (it was short!) and allowed the whole thesis to be tied together e.g. chapter two addresses research question 3...

I only really have 2 - is that enough? argh! They're also really vague,but I guess that's what research questions are?

Walminski said I should have them as I'm supposedly a pragmatist and am therefore driven by the research qs rather than anything else.

Ok - so typing that made me realise I need them - but where to put them, end of the intro? end of the lit review?

So far today I have
- read lit review through
- changed entire section of lit review because I realised I'd just copied and pasted it from my chapter and left it in both sections :$

Next goal is to change another entire section that I did the same with another chapter :$

PM me your email. Also, this website is good if you're doing qual work http://onlineqda.hud.ac.uk/methodologies.php

I seem to have 2 main probs with my lit review.

1) I don't have research questions - do I need them? I'm assuming I do? - I obviously have 'the aim of this thesis...' but not specifically 'research question 1 = ....'

2) I'm finding it hard to work out whether its rubbish or good. Sup 'read' (i.e. flicked through to see what each title was) the lit review 2 months ago and all she said was "there's a lot of what, but not enough why" - great. So I'm obviously going to add a whole section on the end, but not sure what else needs changing.

Also, I'm having an issue with my neighbours bamboo - I've decided that rather than wait for her to cut it, I'm going to go on a midnight round-up raid and weed killer it all without her realising and then blame the scorching sun when it all starts going brown. mwahahaha - now my brain is full of evil genuis plans about how to kill off her tree that's blocking out the light to my kitchen and not about my thesis :-s (the plan so far is to put copper nails in it - my dad said it would kill it off)

This is the week for panic!

My first draft is due in on friday. So by the end of the week I need to..

- read and re-write bits of lit review
- do changes to the method recommended by walminiski
- add any changes I've noted down to the other chapters
- draft out a discussion chapter (sup only wants bullet points, but I'm tempted to write more because I reckon this is the only time when she'll read the entire thesis in one go, so want to make sure she thinks I'm pulling out the right stuff).
- get my formatting as good as possible.

So first goal today:

- read lit review and note down anything that springs to mind.

I think it can be really useful. I used it for all those times where I read something and thought "ooh that's relevant to study 3 but I've not quite got onto that yet" - so I had tabs in the notebook for each study. You can also add screen shots, good for when you've found a useful page in google books.

However, I wished I'd used it more consistently. I have a few notes in it, but I think you have to get into the habit of using it daily.

This worked :-) thank you! I can now just look at the references i've cited rather than trawling through hundreds to make sure they're formatted properly (up)

If I remember rightly, Sue was the queen of mytomatoes, I think she said her record was about 26? but she usually did about 20 a day!!!

She used a chatroom called phinnished I think though - I used it once and I think it wouldbe quite useful, they basically all work together on their 25 mins and then chat in the 5 mins off.