My supervisor told me I should look at completed PhD's at my faculty which I did. I was shocked to see the quality of some of those guys who had other supervisors. Mine is just difficult and he is pushing me over the edge. Each mark up and or comment in red makes me physically sick. I am working on my second last chapter and sit with corrections from Chapter 1 to Chapter 4. I am wondering should I complete 5 and 6 and then tackle 1-4 which might turn out to be 1-6 in the end or shall I just start working on the corrections. I try to see corrections as positive input because these gaps are the ones we will have to defend if we don't correct it, but then again, the pile of work lying ahead just with corrections makes me sick. Is there anyone out there who is feeling the same?

If they are really improving your thesis and are not going in circles (you make a correction and next time he wants you to correct it back to the original state), I would personally bite the bullet and do them.

Perhaps its easier for you if its not one or the other. Try to make the corrections in blocks (tomatoes work well for this because its a fixed, short amount of time) and reward yourself with working on a new chapter (or something differently, whatever works for your) inbetween.

Works at least for me when I have to do tedious tasks. 2 tomatoes of corrections, 5 minutes pause to browse the forum ;-).

I felt like that a bit at the beginning, but I am just so used to it now. My last piece of work I got back had 48 comments! And that was a later draft but sent to a different supervisor and he had different standards to the other one. You don't need to accept every comment if you genuinely disagree, but if you accept that they are making your work better just do them, they won't take long once you get into it. I have the fun of three supervisors that disagree on certain things so the parts they disagree on I make my decision based one which one I agree with most as it's my thesis in the end =)

Hi Caro, I am in the same boat. Two supervisors, a different set of comments/suggestions. I don't know whom to follow what seemed right for the one, is now questionable to the other. I am procrastinating, biting my nails watch online movies and do a lot of other things but focussing with the task at hand. I started at least now with Chapter 2' correction but it is going slowly :(

It's great that you have a supervisor that's so helpful. Everyone goes through this sort of procress writing (whether for PhD or for journals), so the important thing is not to let it discourage you.

Lindall, I think it's really common to have supervisors disagree! Better that than your supervisors totally going one way, and then your examiners disagreeing at the viva, at least you will have thought about the possibilities and have your reasons for doing it they way you have. Go with what makes the most sense to you, that's what I'm trying to do, I get annoyed at comments to start with, but then when I think about it most of them do make sense. The ones I disagree with I talk over with my supervisors or someone else, it just helps clear it up in my head so that if I don't do what they have asked I will be able to defend my reasons why later. I do mine slowly too, I get distracted far too easily, I have come to putting my headphones on with just background noise (like rainfall or something) and doing the pomadoro technique (search tomato timer online there are websites that help with this) which is 25 mins working, 5 minutes break and I don't let myself check emails or anything until the 5 minutes break. It's the only way I can motivate myself to do computer work!

Blooming PostGrad forums, eh! ;)