I have an RA job too so I know how you feel - my supervisor is the same for both and she pushes the RA work a lot more and assumes I'll be staying up til 2am doing the PhD after 'work hours'. I also have a husband who doesn't think I should work after 5pm so this makes things difficult!

All I can say is use every single minute you have free - I'm working days of 6.30am - 10.30pm at the mo, but its a mix of RA and PhD work. I find that 'mytomatoes' helps you focus - which is a time management tool. It also helps to have clear lists for your RA work and clear lists for your PhD.

I think its tempting to think 'I'll put my PhD off until my RA work is finished in April" but I think you need to come up with a list of things for your PhD that must be done before then - so you don't just abandon it.

I find doing menial PhD tasks e.g. sorting out endnote, creating the tables I want etc. are good uses of the time when your brain hurts!

argh nooooooooooo!

I'm on my lit review now (sounds stupid to do it like that but I have) - luckily (well, perhaps) I've written about 45000 words of literature,but now have to slim it down to 10-12.

ooh lala!

oh and just to say thank you to everyone - I wrote the chapter and sent it off to sup and she said it was really good (and she'd never heard of anything I'd discussed so it was good learning for her) - Its also with Wal though so I'm waiting for his damning review - probably saying I've completely missed the point of it all *shakes in boots*

lalalalala *puts fingers in ears*

I've written my section now so am going to refrain from checking your paper haha! I may have already read it though (hopefully!) - I've had to faff about with endnote and mendeley this week so will be putting in the references later this week. Maybe I can crowbar it in :p

I know what you mean, my post probably makes it sound easy, but I'm STILL reworking the findings section -I think I'm on about my 20th re-write of it!

my goal is to try and slim 7000 words down to 2000 *good* words with a proper argument. ARGH!

I have 40 interviews to present. I've done my 'themes' in a table and then discussed each major theme in my 'findings' section - with quotes to make the points clearer.

I found the best way was to trawl journal articles in my discipline using the same technique and look at how it had been presented - and then hopefully it will be in a 'correct' format that the examiners will be familiar with.

I've just been told off for saying "this programme of research" with the comment "you can talk about it like its YOUR thesis you know!?" from my sup - but don't know what she means. i can't just a have a 'my' in the middle of it all being not I/me etc. ???

I *think* she means use 'this thesis' ??? not sure

this is weird because I was using the same terminology has her previous supervisee, she's obviously decided its now a problem. hmmm.

For those of you who DON'T use "I" how do you refer to the thesis. Is it just "this thesis..." or "the thesis...."?

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the statistics fast stream (civil service i.e. ONS) is open NOW for the next week or so - it closes very quickly so I'd urge you to apply very soon if you're interested.

Try the www.psychapp.org.uk website - the one linked to BPS (although you need to be a member or find a member who will let you look)

err have no idea - just try googling "fleiss SPSS" :-)

I'm social sciences - in my field we are beginning to steal a bit from sociology, but not (as yet) go as far as "I" - I put "we" in publications, but somehow "I" in my thesis just seems so wrong. I've just learnt all about epistemology - well not 'all about' I've learnt the vague ideas and it seems because my field is very positivist we all use "it" or "this research" rather than we/I.

However, at the end of my thesis I am planning to do a reflexive section where I talk about my experiences of the research (and I'm dreading it)

I've used kappa for inter rater reliability - you do it through the crosstabs function http://www.hss.bond.edu.au/stats/public_html/reliability/Kappa.htm

whenever I've used opera it always comes up with pages that you can't see on that browser which is irritating