I've spent the last six weeks of school holiday getting to grips with my methodology. (everyone else is going to turn up all tanned, and its 'well I went to so and so, where did you go' and I say, well indoors mostly - boo!!!) Now I think its more or less there - at least for the moment, I'm about to send it off to my supervisor, but I'm hesitating a bit because I think there might be just one more bit, a couple more paragraphs ... etc. How do you make that final, right, I'm sending it decision? :$

You can add, edit, polish forever if you were so inclined and actually, if the fundamentals of the chapter are wrong, you could have wasted alot of time doing it. I've got past the stage of trying to impress by supervisors now, I just send them stuff and get a feel for whether it's good enough or not. Sounds a bit naff, I know, but if I carried on as I was doing, polishing and polishing, I'd never get the thing finished. Send it off and move onto the next!

I know some 'perfectionists' who are still working on their PhDs 10 years down the line - when the version after 3/4 years was fine - they just kept on re editing it and getting wound up in the detail. I say, send it off, get some feedback and move on!

I send my supervisor writing with notes in it like 'insert section about this here' and comment boxes saying "should I put this here - doesn't really make sense!"

I send it off when my deadline is seriously looming and I'm in danger of missing it, even if I know something's not quite finished. I really don't like missing deadlines arranged with my supervisor, so having loads of them is a good way to stop me endlessly extending or fiddling about with pieces of writing. That, plus the belated realisation that there will always be more work I can do on certain bits, but you have to draw a line somewhere. You can always extend some stuff as a post-doc project if you're still interested in it.

I know what you mean though, about the start of term when everyone looks rested and healthy, and asks what you did all summer!! Slaving away over a slightly hot computer might sound a strange use of holiday time to non-PhD people! :-)

Hi Joyce,

just send it off, it will come back anyway with remarks, thus no use to keep on changing it.

Look at the type of feedback you get: if it is about major principles, then address these and be happy that you have not wasted more time on finetuning minor details before sending it. If the feedback is only regarding minor issues, perhaps even style and grammar matters, then you know that you are on the right track, can quickly make changes and complete it.
:-)

Well I've just sent it off here's hoping he thinks its OK!

Good luck! I always feel rather a big sense of a relief when I send something off like that. Then the trepidation kicks in as I wonder if it was really finished and what the feedback will be!

Personally, I have to make sure that the spelling and grammar are perfect...they are the things that really make me cringe if I mess them up! My supervisor says that I write well so I am always paranoid that I am going to shatter that illusion she has. Obviously there are far more important things to stress over in the grand scheme of things, i.e. the actual content, but it's always the little things I like to stress over before I hand anything in! Maybe that's just me....KB

I completely agree! I just send stuff on when I'm more or less happy with it and know it's not perfect, but has the essence of what I need to say. I know they'll write all over it anyway and work will be redrafted and redrafted. They don't think I'm too sloppy doing things this way.

And can relate to your summer. It's just gone spring where I am, and have had to turn down an invitation to a barbecue in the lovely spring sunshine this week-end :-( It's going to be a long spring/summer for me!! Am already feeling like a martyr to this thesis!!!