Congrats, Batfink! Take a good break, have a nice and relax weekend.

If you find PhD is not for you, then it's best you make a decision in the early stage possible. However, if the reasons for your quitting is external environment, then I would agree with Escoppycoppy to talk to someone before you make this decision. After all,you must have done a lot of work to have a PhD studentship with a funding. Sorry,you didn't ask for advice on whether to quit or not, just thought it's worth sharing the thoughts.

As for the money, I would imagine you will be required to give a report to explain things. I don't think you would be asked to give money back though.

I've edited only a section of the chapter.I am doing referencing at the same time so the progress is really slow.

Well done to achieve two of your goals already, Batfink!
Skig, it's ok,job hunting will give you motivation to get the thesis done, so you did still have thesis-related progress made this morning.Hope you focus well in the afternoon.

Good Morning! Hope everyone wake up to a productive day.

Instead of focusing on amending chapter 4, I spent most of time restructuring other 3 core chapters yesterday.
So today's goal:
(1) finish revising chapter 4
(2) start working on chapter 6

@Batfink27, I admire your strength to carry on when you are ill. I had a similar experience. I was unwell for 3 months (in the writing up stage) and got very stressful for not being able to make any progress. My supervisor advised me to make this known to the registry. His reason was that they might not be able to do anything for me now, but if I have problem extending my registration in the future, it will be a helpful record. I am sure your can submit in time for the viva to take place. But just for the unlikely case that you need to reschedule the viva, it will be helpful that your supervisor is aware of the slow progress caused by ill-heath. Hope you feel better soon.

Good Morning!

I am feeling more positive today.

@ Sneaks, don't know what the good news is, about the job maybe? Whatever is it, Congrats!! Good luck with getting the LR done today.

Goal for today:
Finish revising chapter 4

======= Date Modified 06 Sep 2011 18:41:03 =======

Wow, looks like we all have a long list of remaining to do tasks. Best of luck to us all.

@ Skig, I had a cry yesterday too but not a little one, a big one. Had a row with my partner together with the stress I am under, I had a breakdown. One of my supervisors once told me similar thing like yours. I told him I am so stressful and can’t stop thinking about the thesis and even dream about it. He said that means you are in the right place now, it’s a good sign. Since they both said the same thing, it might be true. So maybe we can be glad that we feel so overwhelming and stressful because this means we are in the right place.......

@ Sneaks, my partner did offer to help but who is an expert on procrastination. I gave her my files 3 months ago but I don’t think she has even opened any of them. I think reply on myself would be a safer bet. Getting the first year to do it is a clever idea but I am not sure if they would be convinced :-)

======= Date Modified 06 Sep 2011 15:51:18 =======
Thanks, everyone for the kind replies. I haven’t been able to make any progress today and have just gone and had a nap, hoping I would feel refresh after a break. But there was no escape, I dreamt about discussing the thesis with my friends and telling them I really want to get this thesis submitted and be free this Christmas :-(

An overview of the stage I am in:
Introduction and conclusion: revised.
Literature reviews and methodology: Supervisors haven’t given feedbacks on these two chapters but said there shouldn’t be too much to do on these two.
Chapter 3: revised on first draft and submitted to supervisors. Have a meeting this week to discuss this chapter, but supervisor already told me there is more works needed to done on the revised version.
Chapter 4-6: In the process of revising, need to (1) make connections with other chapters. For example, applying theoretical framework from LR and statistical evidences to these chapters (2) reconstruct these 3 chapters to make the main themes flow better (3) each chapter has a couple of points to be clarified further, footnote or sections adding needed (4) Reference and data source information (5) polish the English: as you probably have already guessed, English is not my first language. So there are tones of grammar mistakes or inaccurate words needed to be corrected. I will have the final version professionally proofread but not on these drafts, the cost is too high.
Also I haven’t done abstract, formatting, bibliography, table list …….

Deadline:
End of September is not an absolute deadline but I really want to get this out of the way and move on with my life. I can’t believe I've been doing this single task for 7 years and still feel so far away from completing. I think about the thesis all the time and dream about it often too.

Thanks again for the warm welcome and being patient with my English. I will try and get focus now. My goal for the remaining afternoon: re-draft 15 pages of Chapter 4.

Thank you, Delta :-)

I have two supervisors. I learned that if I don't set a specific period for feedbacks, they will never get back to me. So whenever I submit writings to them, I would say I will be in touch, for example in 3 weeks time, to arrange a meeting with them for their feedbacks and ask if the time schedule is good for them. Then, 2 week after, I would send them a reminder about our meeting the week after. In a way, I am reminding them to read my stuff because there has been times when I wrote to them in the week we were suppose to meet, they said they forgot about it and asked to reschedule the meeting.

Hi!

I am new here, I am also aiming to submit in one or two month time.I have been following this thread, everyone here is so supportive. When I was down and felt so alone,reading your posts often made me feel better by knowing that there is hope and I am not doing this alone.

I handed the first completed draft to supervisors early August. Have done revisions for Introduction, conclusion and one chapter. Still have 5 chapters to revise.I try to stay positive but I am scare of the amount of work ahead. I am so frustrated how come I spent so much time on this project, writing up alone took me 1.5 year, but there are still so much to revise and restructure. It seems a never ending task. I was aiming to submit by end of September but now doubt if this is a realistic deadline.

Sorry for the negative post, I am feeling a little bit down today (weather is not helping). Hope you guys are having a better day than me.