Yep, I think pretty much everyone here is on strike too. What do you think of this? I don't know why the strike has been called other than 'they want more money', but it doesn't really impress me much. The fact that a group of people can exercise what power they have to get 'justice' obviously isn't a bad thing, but what about oppressed INDIVIDUALS? I've been 'going off on one' about this recently because we've just had a 2 1/2 week postal strike too. What bothers me is the fact that large groups of people with a common aim have a type of power that individuals who can't find anyone to join their cause don't.

yeah, just hang on...

We've had snow every day since Tuesday now, and it has lain for quite a few hours sometimes. It's so much nicer than rain!!

Yeah, I think they do. Don't think I've registered for it yet though. Thanks for your help.

Thanks Ann, I wouldn't have put your name in the thread title but it was asking me for 'more words to describe your topic' and you're probably the only person on the forum who has gone through the viva.

I think this would really help me - I've noticed that I can talk much more freely about my research with people other than my supervisor, but wouldn't it go down really badly? I guess I could ask my supervisor nicely not to be there...

My viva is still quite a few months off, but I have two worries in particular about it. Who will my external examiner be??? I don't like having to rely on my supervisor to sort this out (it is totally their responsibility, right?) and I worry that I'll get someone without sufficient knowledge in my field (I feel very isolated academically, we don't have contacts in the field - I really wish I had a Prof. supervisor!) Sometimes I think I'd like my viva to be a 'chat' with a leader in the field, but that would involve contacting someone we don't already have contact with (!) Would they come? There's someone in particular I'd really like to have, who is supervising an almost identical project to the one I'm working on, but they're in Italy! I've seen external examiners giving talks quite often in our department - is that how to lure them to your viva? Who pays to fly them here? Secondly, I saw a section in our university's PhD regulations that said a student could request not to have their supervisor present at the viva.

reply number one

...is being doubled up on the thread list?

The angelfish is really pretty, I've only seen the shark. Don't like the man though...

Yeah, books can be really powerful things. There are some that I'm too scared to buy/read. I really enjoyed reading J.L. Carr's 'A Month in the Country', or (the only book I've read twice - for pleasure, not study) Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy).

Start reading lots of non-science books, never finish them. Play music - what piano exam DanB? Do you get really shaky hands at your exams? It's amazing how you can carry on and give a passable performance when your hands, not to mention legs (I'm not a pianist so I always had to stand) are shaking like crazy...

oh, and men pee is really more smelly (because it contains testosterone)

I'm in a similar situation - smelly men toilets at the end of the corridor, female toilets along long corridor and two floors up. But I was told it makes sense because there are only four girls down here, up to thirteen blokes. They don't lock mine though. I once timed how long it took me to get up there and back down again - 8 minutes!

I don't think compound names should count as 'words' - unless they're in standard dictionaries. I always thought the longest word was antidisestablishmentarianism (28) but Matthew82's word beats that by one letter...