Hey guys, apologies for the long-winded title. Have just finished writing a chapter and have emailed it to my supervisor. It will probably be a week or so before he gets the chance to read it, after which we will have to meet up to discuss the next step.

What do i do until then? I need to speak to him before i start thinking about other chapters/themes as i'm having a few problems with this. I feel so guilty just sitting around....is it common to wait arund like this?

Thanks

Hi
I normally give myself a couple of days off to relax, meet friends, give the flat a decent clean and then look again at the chapter, identify what I see as weaknesses etc so when I meet my supervisor I 1) expect his criticisms and 2) demonstrate that I can think critically even about my own work and help make independent decisions about the direction of the work

Hope this helps!

it sure does! thanks ever so much sleepyhead, i appreciate it. guess i'm just gonna have to be brave and read my chapter (i have a fear of reading my own work, all i tend to see are mistakes, i just cringe!).

Hi again Angie

Its horrible looking at your own work, especially if you've spent ages on it. But now being on my second supervisor I've noticed that supervisors don't like having to tell you what to do. Although they have their own clear ideas about your work it is easier for you and them if you yourself can see where you need to make changes. It also reflects better on you as a researcher. Its short-term pain (having to re-read the damn thing) for long term gain (better relationship with supervisor; easier PhD planning).

Just make sure you do have a couple of days off too!

To be honest, I start writing the next chapter. If you have a few problems with one, you might answer them by writing something slightly different, but you're still mulling it over in the back of your mind. Take a break too though!

I just keep going. Last time I submitted a chapter not only had he not read it - he had lost it. If I waited for feedback my PhD would probably take about 20-50 years.......

I have a question! How many versions does a chapter go through in all usually? And does your sup read every version?

Can I ask guys, are you all writing chapters as you progress or have you waited until the end and now writing up

I'm currently working on my 4th version of some chapters, and my thesis is probably going to be deemed to be too short, so I may need a 5th version before I finish.

My original supervisor has read all the versions. My new joint one has just read the recent ones.

And for the other questioner: I wrote chapters from the start, but much of what I wrote early on has had to be chucked totally out of the window and I've started writing from scratch much later.

another question- how long does a chapter generally have to be? I heard it was 20,000. the chapter i just handed in was around 16,000-are they quite strict with the word count?

Examiners tend to be strict about total thesis word counts, both upper word counts, and lower limits. My university/department recommends a total of 80,000-100,000 words. I'm struggling to reach that, coming in at about 70,000 words for the moment. I don't want to pad the rest. It may be ok (I'm seeking advice about this currently), but my supervisor has advised me that being vastly too long in a thesis is much worse than too short.

As for how long each chapter should be, that should be work-out-able from your total goal and the number of chapters you have. For humanities and social science students Dunleavy in his "Authoring a PhD thesis" book recommends chapters of about 10,000 words. Much longer than that and he doesn't think it's possible to structure an argument properly over a longer length. Much shorter and the chapter is probably inadequate.

I have 7 chapters, and most of them are about 10,000 words, though some are much shorter and a few longer. But to reach 80,000 words my average will have to be over 10,000 - which requires a bit of work.

How many chapters are you aiming at and what guidelines has your department given on upper and lower limits to the thesis? Or have they just recommended a target total amount?

hi there bilbobaggins. they just recommended a total target amount. I had a look at someone's thesis, which got published in the end, and he had (excluding intro and concluson) 6 chapters so what you are saying makes sense. trouble is i can only find four issues and maybe dedicate a chapter to each of them- that's why i thought 20,000 would have to be a target of mine. but i find that to be kind of impossible, even by the time i had reached 16,000 i was kind of losing my train of thought and going off in different directions- so you are right, it does need to be shorter and to the point. only problem is i don't have enough material/evidence to that ...this is not gonna be fun:-(

I heard a quote from an examiner that they look at the relative lengths of each data chapter (in the sciences) - if one is particularly short then that highlights something...

Chapter length (and number) is really a project-specific thing - my limit is 60 000 words but I have 9 chapters. My office mate only has 6.

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I've got quite a disparate range of chapter lengths (arts and humanities), though overall size of thesis is about 80,000 words. Several are around 6,500 while the longest is 14,500. I had to justify in my methodology why they varied, but I explained it in terms of how they related to the research questions and the range of data available. It worked ok, I think.... I'll find out in the viva, I suppose.