My hubby did this - he started working 9-5 and it completely took it out of him, especially in the first 6 months. he had to get up at 6.30 so we were going to sleep at 9-10. I obviously need less sleep than him, because I was getting up, taking him to the station, dog walk, clean house, do a full day of PhD etc but then I'd lie awake for hours at night while he was snoring away :-s

I think you just have to treat them like toddlers, they need their nap :p

I find I can only sleep when I'm warm and dark - I have blackout blinds and curtains :-)

Hey Teek! :-)

Ok I'm in a bit of a bad mood for 2 reasons. 1) my hubs submitted yesterday - but his sup literally couldn't be bothered to read the thesis - he'd read 30 pages out of 200, during hubs' whole time at PhD. He's more than happy for hubs to submit, he just literally couldn't be bothered to read it :-s so hubs is worried that he won't pass, but after 5 years he just wants it over with now. and 2) I've been told to do a stupid menial job for another student which I'm a bit peed off by and I feel like a lackey/mug :-(

So goal 1: get stupid task over and done with

:-) thanks wal, although I don't think I was ever much help :$ do stay around though - I selfishly need your pragmatist brain on hand!

eeek Wal, I'm so pleased for you, congratulations! You so deserve this :-)

Congratulations!

I got married in my 2nd year and me and hubs (who's also doing a PhD) both had our supervisors and other colleagues there - as we invited other people in our departments it would have been weird not having our sups there too. - we did put them all together so they could talk shop if they wanted and not freak out the other guests though. My hubby's family are typical honest-tradesmen types, they talk football or swap offensive jokes, so we tried to keep the two groups separate :$

sorry, yes I've just realised this haha! In endnote the process is much more slow and clicky, so I didn't expect to just change it :$

Just trying to work out if mendeley will do everything I need :-)

Can you put prefix thingies in citations?? I want to put an "e.g." in

(e.g. Smith, 2011)

yep, so both groups have the same major themes, but the specific ways they manifest are different for each group, so I discuss the differences when I talk about each theme. I also present the themes in a big table with 1 group's themes on the left and one of the right to compare. Some people might do some kind of quantitative comparison (e.g. by counting occurrences in the text of each theme) but that wasn't the way I went with it - its purely qualitative.

hey dafydd - walminski is like the kind of mixed methods research and advice :-)

But just to add my experience - I think I've done a study that sounds similar. I interviewed 2 groups of participants. I used the literature review to primarily guide my analysis of those interviews, but was also interested to see whether there was anything that was there that hadn't been included in the literature. I used template analysis, using the literature as my core themes, but then ditched them/adapted them and added to them as I read through the transcripts. I developed 2 templates (one for each group) - both using the same process.

hey Pineapple, as others have said, I'm sure its not the quality of your thesis that is the problem - its probably that your external just hasn't got time at the mo (or maybe they didn't feel expert enough to examine it!)

I've had several people in my department hand in long, long theses - the guideline in my area is about 3 studies, some people have handed in 6-7 studies. And because of the quantity of work those people have passed with no amendments - all of them! I think its not only the quality of the work, but because of the length it is clear to the examiners that 'this is a PhD' - the quantity of work makes it impossible for them to say anything less i.e. like its an MPhil or anything. Which is why I'm a bit scared because I feel like I've done 2.5 studies!

I have one but I refuse to use it for PhD work - its for my supposed down-time and therefore has teenage vampire fiction on it and nothing else :$ I think if I start putting journals on it it will become just another way for the PhD to enter all aspects of my life :-s

Thanks for the suggestions, I played around with excel for a while, but decided to create a notebook on onenote - with sections for each of the smaller groups and then pages for each individual. That way i can copy and paste in all the email contact and notes from meetings about each individual (we have to log all our contact with them to make sure they all get equal amount)

I'm supervising about 10 dissertations and think I need a way - better than just having folders for each person - to keep on top of what each person is doing/should be doing/has done.

Any ideas for suitable (hopefully free) software? or any way I can get my existing stuff (e.g. excel, word, one note) to do something useful?

Sorry Wal - I so wanted to find this for you after all the help you've been reading my chapter, but alas, my university has no access :-(

omg, well I'm in uni, and I was going to get a load of my lit review finalised today. But my office-mate WILL NOT SHUT UP! he's actually narrating things as he does it on his pc e.g. "I'm going to click on this, then highlight that.." :-s