I agree with Sneaks something non-PhD related would be great, like a day or even a half day at a spa!

When I read your thread, I thought how lucky your sister is to have you. I am also at the end stages of thesis writing. My sister sent me a card with a picture that closely resembled my home place [I also live away from my home country] and the front of the card had words of encouragement. I would appreciate, a framed poem or a photo/painting that reminded me of good times or times to look forward, post PhD. To make my office inviting I sometimes use candles and like to have relaxing background music. A hand cream with relaxing scents or a book with phrases and quotes to inspire. Hope this may help.

I managed to meet my goal yesterday of getting started...Today - try to finish as much as possible of the introduction section to my data chapter. Good luck everyone with their goals for today. Here's to lots of tomatoes!

This is a great idea for a thread, can I join too. I've always wanted to join an accountability thread or create one of my own but I've never been brave enough! Here's my goal for the rest of the day - get started on writing a second draft of my data chapter.

Congratulations Dr BilboBaggins, I remember seeing your posts when you were getting ready to hand in your thesis not so long ago. Well done and thanks for all your encouraging and inspiring posts.

I think it's a good idea Mathkitty and we can all strive to make it to this very thread.

Congratulations BilboBaggins, it's a great evening for you just those last finishing touches. Well done and I hope to be close to the stage you are now in the not so too distant future, many thanks for words of encouragement. (up)

Hi Mlis really sorry to read what a hard time you are having right now. When I read your post the first thing that came to my mind is that your supervisor is gone, and now it's really important for your to focus on communicating with your university. I can't believe the counsellor you had, was the counsellor connected to your uni? to say put things behind you and then ask you to bring in your thesis??? main thing is you left this counsellor. You are doing the right thing to see your doctor who maybe can help you to get another counsellor. I assume your doctor knows your history and should be able to write out a letter to support you. If you can talk to the uni with the support of your doctors letter, transfer to part-time, then you can focus on exactly on the work you have to complete. It's hard to focus right now when you have not been allocated a new supervisor. I can see it's tough for you now, but main thing is to talk with the university and to see what ways your doctor will be able to help you. Hope it all goes well for you and that you get good support.

Hello to all the nocturnal workers, since I have been staying up and working through the night I thought I would join in on this thread. It's great to see that some of the posters here are well through their PhD and about to submit. Best of luck with it i know it must be really tough the last stages but great to be almost there. I am struggling with the write-up and feeling really down on how I will make it. I am making small steps every day but I just need to take bigger ones to feel I am getting somewhere! I plan to write untill about 3am and then hopefully feel I have made some progress.

Meant to say try this one!

This this one

http://www.healthtalkonline.org/

Yesterday evening I went through my Nvivo codes [DONE], think I will be able to move to the next stage soon of creating tree nodes.
Work on Transcription [not done]
Looked at another thesis for ideas on methodology chapter, read a methodology chapter [DONE]

For the rest of the evening - work on transcription ----

Hi Karl, I am also doing analysis of data but really sorry I can't help because I also have no theory to guide me. I am doing a thematic analysis and am guided only by the type of questions I asked my interviewees. I would also appreciate what other have to say on this. I do know a student who recently submitted her thesis and she told me about a book where the recommendation was to avoid using theory. I need to look this up to find the author.

Hi Lostinoz, really sorry to hear what happened. I have a very bad supervision meeting recently where I wanted to run out of the meeting and not come back again. Even when supervisors are supportive it doesn't make it any easier when things get tough. I think supervisors who are overly critical don't really know the damage they are doing. I often wonder about the management training that academics gets. My partner (who works in a business environment) has had some really good managers who know the principles of motivating people not pushing them into the ground. Some really have no idea how to manage and nurture people. I can't say whether its a good thing to quit, some people do and never look back finding other PhD programmes or moving out of academia completely. I do think is understandable that you acted on your emotion and how you were feeling, and I think you shouldn't worry about that because you acted on how you felt at the moment, completed pushed to the limit. Amazing how quickly your supervisor was able to turn things around. As for staying on a working at the uni, you don't know if that's what you would want at the end and I would be surprised by any supervisor who never felt like quitting maybe their their memory must be short. I think for most there is always that thought of want to throw in the towel at some stage or another.