I went to two bog-standard comprehensives. I went to an all-girls high school (1500 girls - eugh!) until the end of GCSE. I utterly hated it; they were not supportive of anything anybody did unless it was music or dancing. I won a national competition to get a place on a chemistry school, and the head of science didn't even know, let alone the head.

After GCSE I went to another comp down the road for A-Levels; all-boys this time (1450 of them, 10 girls in 6th Form). I had a whale of a time, grades dropped a bit, but I was a senior prefect, I had contemporaries who didn't pick on me because I was good at science; I was supported for all my science and maths activities by the school.

I was encouraged to go to uni, and helped with my applications. To an extent, I think school is what you make of it, as neither of my secondary schools were much cop academically but I got to PhD level so I must've drawn something from them!

p.s. My primary school was a lot worse; 1000 children to cope with so anyone bright was beaten down!

Thanks everyone for their replies.

Claudia, I wrote like you have for a while; I found myself watching a lot of daytime telly and faffing about! Then again, I've been at uni non-stop for 7 years and worked every holiday, so maybe I needed the rest!

I'm hoping that when my house is done I'll be able to knuckle down to it; luckily I have no children/pets to worry about, and my husband is very supportive and he has helped me with some of my programming stuff (I write in a mark-up language called LaTeX rather than Word) when I've been ready to smash my laptop because it won't compile!

I haven't done the sort of PhD that would let me write as I went along either, which might have helped. My history PhD friend has done 3/4 of his because he publishes his chapters as he goes along, but I did Physics and you can't do that!

I was wondering if there was anyone else in the same situation as me, my EPSRC funding ran out in October, I wrote (and was skint) for a few months, then started a job in January, bought a house, am doing the house up....and have done absolutely no thesis since the house stuff started. I really want to get rid of it! I'm uninspired to write anything, I get no support or interest from my supervisors and I haven't got any spare time. How on Earth can I motivate myself?!! It doesn't help that I commute for an hour each way to the job.

Is anyone else juggling a full time job and PhD?

If I used Word there'd be no viva, just a firing squad!

I use a document markup language in a typesetting program called LaTeX. It does all the work for you; it isn't WYSIWYG and you must compile to look at a PDF of your document. They don't half look professional though, even if it takes a bit of getting used to.

You use Word to write your thesis in?!

I don't think it's going to be very high; there's been a guy in my lab who never finished, but usually if you're doing sloppy work they'll try to give you a MPhil and push you out after 2 years. It looks bad if the PhD students don't pass!

Arrgh Marmite is Satan's spunk - nasty yeast poo, in effect. Peanut butter is much nicer for toast!

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In answer to that question:

Twitter is sh*tter

I am such a poet. Who says scientists haven't got the imagination..?!

Oh the productivity of you all! I'm jealous!

Today I have tidied the downstairs of my house, cleaned the kitchen, stuck in a load of washing and watched Star Trek Voyager. I did FA yesterday too. I can't motivate myself to write anything as whatever I do, my supervisor just adds more and more irrelevant crap to it. The other supervisor is off on a fancy jaunt abroad so I can't pester him. I went on my lab group's xmas dinner the other day; that wasted an afternoon.

This is an excellent suggestion for a replacement viva format; I'm no contemporary dancer but I could sing it and then cry. Oh wait, I probably will cry in the viva anyway...

This is a good question - all my holidays for 3 years, bar my honeymoon 2 years ago and a week in Crete this July, have been conferences. I worked every weekend and each year I've been in at Xmas too. If you're running a cryostat, someone's got to keep an eye on it. Last Xmas I went in on Xmas day. I'm on writing up stage at the mo, and I'm planning to enjoy some time off with my husband, as he's a teacher so he gets good hols. I always found it pretty cheeky of other students in my group to go disappearing off for 3 weeks at Xmas like a flaming undergraduate; we work as a team so we ought to pull together and share out the weekends and holidays.

Yes, I can make ice-cream in about 20 seconds with liquid nitrogen! There's no way I could dance my PhD either hahaha!

Watching Star Trek Voyager and some terrible soap called Everwood. These have become my guilty little afternoon TV viewings. My husband laughed his head off when he saw how many I've recorded on our digibox. I look at newspaper websites, the BBC, forums (I can type loads on forums but not on my thesis!), listen to Planet Rock, walk pointlessly into town, read, clean, and I'm beginning to drink close to 10 cups of tea a day, when previously I drank two or three at most.

Wayne's World 1 and 2. I know, incredibly low-brow, but so funny.


I really liked Watchmen too.

I hated that book!! I bought it not long ago and had to abandon reading it. However, I will happily join the accountability group as I'm not having the most yummy time writing up; I feel so lazy and unmotivated stuck at home on my own.