hi all,

i've been lurking on this forum for the past few months and i just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the sharing of stories. doing a phd is so isolating and it's so good to know of others going through the same experiences.

i am due to submit on friday but i am still making last-minute changes. i will be getting the thesis bound on friday morning, and i can see myself working all night thursday to get it done. i am currently rereading the thing for about the 5th time in the past week and a bit, and i have alternated from thinking it's not bad at all to thinking it is complete crap (which is my current mood). i just can't be objective about it at this late stage.

i started this phd 10 years ago but quit due to immaturity and exhaustion. a year and half ago i went back to complete it, thinking i could use my old notes, but finding that i had to rewrite and research everything from scratch. so, basically i have researched and written the entire thesis in the past 15 months. i am completely exhausted and can't wait for it to be over, and i just wanted to say that at times the only thing that got me through was reading stories on this forum.

so thanks and cheers and best of luck to everyone with their work!

(up)

I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been doing mine for 10 years and am now in the resubmit phase (the viva was fine but my thesis was sadly lacking in the lit review). I think for many PhD students the process is very isolating particularly for part-timers. This forum has been great though and has stopped me from feeling as if the world was against me. I realised I wasn't the only person to have cr*p supervisors and although I'm still very angry about the way I was treated, I think it's a problem with the UK system. I have had two supervisory meetings in ten years unless you count the odd 'How's it going?' conversation in the corridor!

Well done for finishing and the very best of luck with the viva. :-)