If you could ask ONE thing, and one thing only, to make your PhD life happy and comfy, what would it be?

Mine, retrospectively, would have been funding (how stupid am I?).

Furry is here to listen to ONE wish only!

Fire away!

I am very tempted to say a decent supervisor as it would have been sooooooo much better and not so much of a struggle! They were more of a hindrance than help apart from some pearls of wisdom. Subsequent help was like looking for gold dust! I was not worthy! But that's life! What's more important is that I surivived with the battle scars to prove it! The whole process was character building!!!! ;-)8-):p(up)

Health. I was fighting a progressive neurological disease during both my full-time science PhD (which I had to leave cos of the illness developing) and my part-time history PhD (which I completed). People often take their health for granted, but if you lose it like I did things are far more of a struggle than they should be.

Being close to my department as I have felt isolated from the community that is springing up there. But if I left I would lose my fab flat and miss my life at home terribly. I wish to have both at the same time - so loads more money for travelling and staying over night in my uni town is my wish... Thank you furry godmother I wll await your granting of my wish X

Well I'm through the other end of it but the one thing I would have wished for during mine was a partner who truly understood the demands of a PhD (working from home does not mean I'm sat watching daytime TV!)

Obviously win the lottery.

Mine would be either forcing my sup to check out the PhD-by-publication rules for our uni, OR just focus on the thesis and get it done -I basically spent at least 18 months trying to get publications up together which have gone backwards and forwards editing by sup and then she gets bored and they have never been submitted anywhere - feels like a lot of wasted time :-(

This is lovely! Wiping my anti-stat wand furiously :-)

Right now I'd like more time. I'm up against a Sept deadline and am slightly panicked about how I'm gonna get it all done.

I'd quite like to go back a few months and give myself what is now written and a big kick up the back side to get on with it!

There's not much I'd change, but it would be nice if my supervisor had lost the ability to tut, sigh, and roll her eyes before I started my PhD! KB

Reliable childcare by which I mean a nursery that I can afford, rather than a babysitter who comes round to our house (which we did this year and it didn't really work as I work from home) and that I am 100% happy with so I am not thinking about them and worrying all the time. Also one that covers all the hours I need to work so that I don't have to catch up at night. But we haven't managed to get a nursery place for next year either so it's just a dream....:-(

Now post viva, I would like to complete my corrections asap (but need the formal paperwork through the post for this) with a little inspiration which I am lacking as the tiredness of the last few months has just hit me!!

A bubble to work in, in which outside influences cannot affect you!