Interrogate is my favourite!

Pint (yes please!)

Congratulations! I didn't do a Masters (I'm in the Sciences), and the first year was a very steep learning curve indeed, adn even now I'm finishing I'm still finding things that I could have done so much better with an extra year. Its also amazing how much your writing style and analytical skills develop in one year, so I'm sure an MSc would have been useful for me. However, work hard at it and you'll do fine :-)

My thesis structure is pretty much like yours, but I had subsections detailed as well in my thesis plan. It doesn't matter if you stick to them particularly, but its good to think about how each chapter will flow - just leaving it as one block in your thesis plan makes it a big block to fill later on! And a lot goes on within an individual chapter.

When I first sat down to do a plan, you're right you have no idea and you just have a blank document. But once you get going, it comes together pretty quickly (up)

In terms of deadlines and timetable, my literature review, methodology and regional background first drafts I did in a week or so each - very short timescale and very hard work, but they were mostly based on my 1st year report (though saying that, my lit. review had to be substantially revised) or I had been working on them on and off. The other chapters I'm leaving 3-4 weeks ish for as I was writing as I went along. Pretty tight though, and I expect to over run.

One thing, I'd leave more than 2 months for analysis? I suppose it depends on your field (I'm in the Sciences), but I have been analysing through out my PhD, and surely a PhD requires more than 2 months? It doesn't seem in proportion with the rest of the 3 years. You'll probably find you analyse alongside chapter writing too.

In fact, this brings me on to a wider point - for me it wasn't helpful to block my whole PhD into literature review, data collection, analysis, chapter writing. Because all of these tasks were naturally going on at the same time, and it would have hindered me if I'd split them up.

Hmmm sorry, this went on a bit...

Wow, I bet the postgrads in his Department are happy. Could you imagine if he was your supervisor? I hope he doesn't supervise...

Hmmm, mine said 0 so I clicked on it, and it still had 0 :-(

The tuition fee part you don't have to worry about, your University should have sorted that out already. I think that I had a form directly from my Research Council for bank details etc, and this was done before I started so I had my first instalment before I started. NERC has different student advisors for different Universities (one person covers Universities A-M for example) - I presume BBSRC have something similar if you check out their website.

H, mooncups made it onto the BBC news website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/

Join the club. It has been such an anticlimax.

Drum roll please...!

Nice one guys.

I just checked back on a thread and I did the post yesterday afternoon, so it would definately be this compuer with IE7. What further info do you need?

To clarify: that's a 'grrrr he's annoying', not like a 'grrr easy tiger' kinda way.

Grrr Al Gore...

Cite