Good advice, thanks. I'm getting on with coding right now! Thanks again for the chat - feel a lot better for venting a bit and hearing other stories.

"Are you procrastinating at all though - I mean how long will the model take if you really concentrate on it without any distractions? do you need more guidance from a supervisor?"

I'm being pulled different ways: supervisors want me to just write up - I think I need to actually get the model, you know, producing some results! Otherwise what do I have to write up? So I'm not sure whether to trust myself on that. At the end of the day, we're responsible for our PhDs and have to make our own choices, and from the feedback I've got, I don't have great confidence my supervisors know enough about what I'm doing to make correct judgements. Ultimately, again, my fault for not finding people who know about the stuff I've done.

Full time work AND PhD?? Wow. Again: I'm humbled. That's pretty impressive. We managed to make a plan that's allowed me to carry on with the PhD full-time. I should stop whingeing!

Catalinbond: "My plan is to keep plodding on and hope I have something coherent to hand in at the end of September. "

Yes, it's the only real plan that's gonna work, isn't it? Carry on and hope! Good luck.

Beajay: cheers for the offer, but I'll pass. It's not the writing I'm struggling with, it's the getting-model-finished and actually still trying to understand some of the underlying economics! Woohoo. But thank you.

Sneaks: hope they don't cut your head off. It's a real comfort anyway to come here and find it isn't just me! So - you and your husband were doing PhDs at the same time?? Wow. That's impressive, getting through that! I'm amazed reading some of the stories here of how people have got PhDs.

ESRC - though of course no money for the past year...

Thanks for the reply. I have an amazing partner who's been through the PhD wringer before me: would already have given up otherwise. She's my best supervisor by a long way! It's very good hearing stories exactly like yours: seemed impossible, wasn't. You must have both been pretty spectacularly relieved afterwards.

I've got 40,000 words, some coherent, some very notey. For the kind of thesis I'm doing, I could get away with maybe 60,000, if it ticks all the boxes. Not sure it will. A large chunk of it is coding a model: this is the hard part. It isn't where it should be by now, and I don't have time for getting it there, so I'm trying to write up how it is now. Except then, older words were written based on it being further along! So I'm swinging between trying to hammer the code more or just writing and hoping for the best. The model part not being finished is mostly what tells me I'm kinda stuffed - that and me feeling that I haven't fully understood what I've tried to do (bad, bad over-reach on my part - should have narrowed down waaay earlier.)

If it were a `proper' lab-based PhD and experiments hadn't worked, I would still have to write it up (something my partner pointed out), so that's how I'm trying to treat it. Ultimately I guess there's no way to know if it's impossible other than to carry on and try to get it done...

Sorry, not a cheery thread! I'm in my 4th year, have to hand in by the end of September. Looking at what I have to do, and what's done, I just can't see how it's possible. Supervisors know I think this, but we seem to be just cruising along as if everything's OK. (I can't go past 4 years: those days are over now - it's hand in or goodbye.)

I'm so stressed I can't tell whether I'm even able to judge correctly. I have no idea if I should be asking anyone for help - ultimately it's down to me to write the thing, what help could I get? It's not been for lack of work either: it's just that along the way I've managed to do pretty much everything that the "how-to" books say not to: spread out too widely, changed direction, didn't do something my supervisors really know anything about (or often that I knew anything about!). The result is where I am now, and it's looking like I can't do it.

It's very hard to believe four years of work (five with the MA before) could just crash, but I guess it's entirely possible - thwump, end of career before it started. Some part of my brain is trying to prepare me for that, but I'm also trying to carry on fighting.

Just wondering if anyone else has any experiences to share / any advice? I'm imagining thinking you're staring failure in the face is pretty normal for PhD students. But of course, it could be because it's true!

Apologies for the whingeing...

Good advice, thanks! I'll start with supervisors...

Hello, first post!

I'm (hopefully) 8 months from finishing my thesis. My partner is moving with her lab to another uni, I'm a geographer, a completely different discipline to her. As it happens, where she's going is pretty much perfect for the kind of stuff I want to do, and I've found a few potential researchers and profs to approach.

So, question: has anyone got suggestions on how I should approach them to ask about work opportunities / putting in for funding together? Some things I'm mulling over: should I wait until I have at least a working paper completed? (None done yet!) Is is reasonable to be honest and say that the move is due to my partner? Should I just generally be very enthusiastic, include a CV etc? (Luckily I am very enthusiastic about what I'm doing!) Is it OK just to drop in an email to ask some initial questions and say who I am?

So yes: any ideas anyone has on approaching this would be hugely appreciated!

Thanks...