Hello everyone! I'm in the 'time running out' stage of my PhD, this week is the last week I can work full-time on it as I start my new job next week (EEK!) then I will have the odd weekend but basically need to get everything together for supervisors to check by the end of this week!

Anyone else in a similar position?

So far I have an intro which needs comments addressing still
Site description chapter which needs a quick read over
First data chapter - extensive comments still need addressed
Second data chapter - still finalising discussion
Third data chapter ready to go
Fourth data chapter - still have comments left to address
Discussion...not even started.

Then all the formatting/table of contents/splicing together to do

I can do all that in 5 days yeah....fun fun!

I guess I just need to know it's not impossible =)

Well, most of it seems achievable, depending on how long your general discussion is. Mine was 17 pages 1.5 spaced and took about 35-40 hours.

It's definitely not impossible - keep going, you're nearly there!

Thanks ToL! I've been reading other theses in my field and most discussions seem to be about 10 pages double spaced so that's what I was going to aim for. My findings are quite straight forward and the chapters link together easily it'll be the suggesting other work etc that will need a bit of thinking but I'm actually really excited to write the discussion so I'm saving it for when I have gotten through all the boring editing I have to do the next day or so as a kind of reward!

Hey Caro,

Good luck for this week and the mad rush! What you have left to do sounds doable - I'm also in a similar position, although I have this week and next full time on the thesis, followed by odd days here and there. At the moment I have:
- an intro that needs major revisions and sections that still need to be added
- a complete methods chapter
- two complete results chapters
- two more results chapters with revisions to make
- half a discussion chapter to write then edit

Best of luck for the new job next week! I'm sure we will both get there with the thesis, at least you know you're not alone! I'm really excited today because I received a job offer yesterday, so just waiting to hear back about the start date etc :) I'm hoping once I know the details I can relax a bit and find some motivation to get the last bits written. Wishing you a productive day!

All the best,
Tulip

Hi Tulip, good to hear from someone else in the same position.

I finished my draft of one of the chapters but it needs a proper read over. I'm working on comments on another one now...the comments are from my second supervisor (although technically he is my first supervisor as my other one doesn't work at the university) and the comments are so petty and disheartening. In fact when my first supervisor saw what he wrote to me he was so angry (he said some things I would never repeat about said supervisor) and told me to choose the bits that help (because some bits do!) and ignore the petty rubbish. But that is just taking forever as he re-wrote so much of my introduction to this data chapter I can't even work out what I wanted to say anymore! I'll just keep plugging along...

Hi Caro and Tulip

First post from a long-time lurker. Just wanted to let you know that you're not alone and I'm struggling away too with a deadline of Monday for my second draft.

My first (incomplete) draft went to my first supervisor and the comments were as brutal as expected. Harsh but fair. I find my second supervisor terrifying so it's been a real block to get the thesis done. I keep re-planning and re-writing my literature review chapter as it was most heavily commented on in the earlier draft. I also have to further edit the discussion, method, and conclusion chapters. All are written but are not as good as they could be...

Well done Caro on finishing the draft of one your chapters already. Congratulations Tulip on the job offer. Hope you're both feeling the positive push of momentum today!

Must keep plodding on. I was hoping the anxiety of the deadline would push me on but it doesn't seem to be working today.

That's great news about the job Tulip, well done! Is it a postdoc?

Thanks JoyofX, sounds like you are getting similar tough feedback as I am! I was mega productive last week until I got that draft back from my supervisor and it totally disheartened me. He has only looked at three of my chapters so when I send the full thing a lot of it will be new to him and I feel like he is going to say it's all crap and there is no point in submitting (he almost said that in his email returning my draft of one chapter last week). Luckily my first supervisor knows him well and said he does this to all his students and to ignore him..I hope he is right!

Oh and well done Tulip! Super exciting that you have a job! Sorry I forgot to say that earlier I'm not quite functioning as a human being at the moment! :D

Word has just undone all my changes to my document from the entire day...I was working on comments and accepting/rejecting comments, saving regularly when suddenly the whole document reverted back to the original before I had started working on the comments. No idea how it...and no idea if there is even a way to fix it. I think I just lost 8 hours of work...

Not necessarilly- what version of word are you using? You should be able to recover a previous / unsaved version.

Sorry Caro, I can only sympathise. That happened to me on more than one occasion. It sucks. I didn't find a way to fix it. Check to see if there are other versions of it? Sometimes there is autobackup copies that you can revert back to, but there wasn't in my case.

It's word 2013, I checked the unsaved documents folder and there is nothing in there. The current file says I last saved at about half 3 when I think it was actually half 4 so I should have lost an hours work max, but it's gone back to what it was at about 10 this morning. Weird and incredibly frustrating!

Try users>[you]>appdata>local>microsoft>office>unsaved files perhaps?

That's different to me then, with my issue it didn't have a record of saving that day at all. Are you sure the changes aren't just masked somehow?