The Stone Roses...

I do not believe that there is any PhD programme in any country where you 'have' to publish in a peer-reviewed journal. So by defauly you don't have to publish for any PhD. Obviously it will help if you are looking for a future job in academia etc.

I always seem to miss all the fun...

Afraid not carebear. (Anybody remember them?)

Welcome! There are some jolly nice British chaps here honest! You just have to look hard for them...

I need a wii wii (hehe!)

I would guess that a lot of people don't realise where they are going until the end of the 2nd year at least - I don't know about you guys, but my work has changed so much and so many times!

My supervisors take the view that I should concentrate on my PhD at the moment, and then publish like mad afterwards! I'm hoping to have some time after submission and before a post-doc etc to get into some paper stuff - which will be adapting the material I've already submitted, so I do kinda agree with them. So by the end of my PhD I'll only have a few conference proceedings, but enough material (hopefully) to kick start the whole process.

Don't underestimate the time it takes to write a paper!

Don't worry R, the twisted Geeky look is a good one! Well, it's the only thing that most of us have to hold on to...

Does your University have some sort of 'widening access' scheme with secondary schools you could help with?

Open Office (free to download) has a word processor that comes with an option to export to .PDF

That's grim (the afternoon meeting, not the photo! I haven't seen it but I'm sure it's lovely!)

Hola!

It's quite common in Engineering and Sciences and I'm under the impression it is a standard Masters - you just miss out the whole searching for a Masters step. In fact, there might even be some sort of internal reapplying step - I wouldn't assume you are guaranteed to get a Masters if you originally apply for a 3+1 course.

Congratulations for getting in the 2nd post of 2008.

Oh, and the viva too!