haha, I *think* she's running a course that I'm going to, and I jsut got an email from someone I think is her, but too scared to email the person back in case it isn't! I'm 99% sure though as I knew which uni she was going to and I know she's involved on the courses.

i think I'm meeting Charls on Monday, not sure she knows it yet :-)

I started a part time RA role with my supervisor in november. Since then I've done nothing on my PhD. I only do the PT role 3 days a week, but she's actually asking more like 4 and a half days of work from me and won't accept 'well I've done my hours' as an answer - she wants results.

She hasn't spoken to me about my PhD for months and now she suddenly wants to know when my submission date is - erm hello, I have no date! I'm nowhere near finished, I need to write the whole thesis!

So I'm really tired when I finish my RA work, lost on my PhD work. every time I have an 'output' for my PhD it gets left on her desk for months without feedback, so I haven't got any section finished or even drafted well which is so demoralising.

Gah!

Sorry for the rant :-(

has anyone got any tips for actually just getting on and writing sections, I feel so lost at the mo.

the location thing is hard for me. At the mo I'm having loads of people tell me 'there's a job going in Scotland' - yes, that's great, but I own a house in the south, so I'd need to spend £10k on moving, I'd also then have to uproot hubby from a reliable well paid job, so I can go and work on an 18 month contract?? where I'll have to move again, and pay out another £10k to move house in over a year!??? No thanks!

and that's the reason I probably won't be able to make it to the top in academia because I'm not willing to travel like that.

erm, do you mean 'statistically significant'?? you have to take into account what you're comparing it against - is 4.08 might be a high score in one population, but might be a really low score in another.

I did have a cd program thingy (in the days we called them cd roms? I think!) that had a program on, I'm sure there must be free versions available. I think it started off with doing f and j without looking - I got bored after that! Maybe try download.com?

you could check twitter or something?? God I feel so old!

thats funny Wal - in my field its perfectly acceptable to tread 1-5 likert scales as scale data in spss and use means and SDs. As long as you could consider the jump between each category as equal.

I think its the short-term contract nature of academia. I'd love to get a lectureship and be employed on a never ending contract with a university. but they're hard to get in my field, and if I don't get one I'll be stuck on a life of 18-24 month contract jobs (IF they're available)- and having to explain publishing gaps on my cv because I went off and had a kid or something.

And now I'm scared having watched the new today :-(

I'd suggest transcribing 40 1 hour long interviews - you'll be touch typing in no time :-)

I went to a focus group type event at a conference recently with BIG names from my field - from around the world and two of them had edited all the top level journals in my field at some point.

THey all agreed that you can definitely copy from your thesis to publications. BUT you cannot copy word for word across different publications. YOu can use similar intro/lit review/methods, but you must re-word things.

ah Batfink we sound very similar. I watched 5 mins of catchphrase last night and me and hubs were laughing away (at his rude suggestions of what the catchphrase might be) and we suddenly remembered that we used to sit around all day every day when we were undergrads doing that - it was great!

I'm very very tempted to get out of academia, problem is once you're out its almost impossible to get back in so it has to be a definite decision and I'm not sure I'm there yet.

I'm constantly thinking this in my head. I seem to have this problem of pushing myself to do things that actually, I don't want to do - I just feel I *should* do them. Hard to explain.

Anyway, as a 26 year old, I'm starting to think how on earth I can have a family, be there for my family as much as I want to be (I don't want a random with poor grammar looking after my kids!) AND be in a good job (whether that be academic or not).

I recently set myself the mental goal of becoming a professor at oxbridge - why!?? I don't WANT to do that, I just feel like I should be pushing myself. argh!

I sometimes think being a ploddy along worker in a company would be so much easier. I mean, can you be an academic without pushing yourself constantly?

ooh I didn't realise that - I think hubs has got me one for xmas :-) (he's not very subtle)

can you use kindle to go on the internet?