The general rule for science PhDs (the thing that everyone seems to aim for) is introduction, methods, 3 results chapters, and discussion. That makes 6.

Definitely! As you said, you're not going to forget 3 years of work in one month, and you'll already have done all the reading that could possibly be required because you couldn't have written the thesis otherwise. Have fun and relax. When else are you going to have a chance to have such a long holiday?

This may sound obvious but have your pipettes been calibrated recently?

Congratulations on getting the offer. If this place think you are a good candidate then they should be happy to wait 2 weeks It would be really petty to say 'we'll only take you if we are your first choice'.

If they do decide to act childishly and demand a decision, then you can always say yes and then dump them if your first choice place make you an offer later on. It's not the ideal thing to do but making your own decision is more important than not upsetting them.

I just honestly couldn't think an example of how a woman changing her name to that of her partner's would cause an imbalance in the relationship, or really have very much impact on the relationship at all.

Unless, that is, the person whose name you are taking/not taking thinks either:
a) You took my name so I own you now, mwah ha ha (evil laugh)
or
b) If you don't take my name it means you don't really love me


Good point that divorce could be more detrimental if you've been publishing under your married name and now have to change again, but I doubt this would be great enough to influence anyone's decision whether to remain married or not.

Why is taking your partner's name when you marry a sacrifice?

People seem to get very emotional about the issue (in both directions). I think I would do it because it's nice, but there's plenty of simple reasons why someone might choose not to, and I would hope that their partner wouldn't think it was a big deal.

As for saying that it would create "an imbalance" in a relationship because the man doesn't have to change his name - what kind of a relationship do people have where that would be a problem?

Is there anything that you could start to write up now? I'm in the same situation and I found the whole 'writing up' thing really daunting, so I'm trying to write little bits while I'm still in the lab (just making a graph or writing a paragraph here and there). That way when I come to sitting down to finish there won't just be blank white age in front of me. Even though the stuff I'm writing isn't axactly top-quality, it's still easier to change things than to start from scratch.

My supervisor recommends dividing each chapter up into subsections, then dividing each of those into paragraph that make one point, until what you have left is not an enormous piece of work but lots of little tasks. It also helps you get your head around what specific things need to be done before each section is complete. Have you spoken to your supervisor about how your work is going to be transformed into a thesis?

I think the reason you're perhaps not supposed to copy text word for word from a paper is because you're presumably not the only author, so it would in theory be impossible to tell whether you were plagiarising yourself or another member of your lab. In reality it might be advisable to re-word things, especially since the word limits are so strict in most journals that you will probably WANT to say more in your thesis than you has space to say in the paper. I think it's fine to lift figures/diagrams exactly if you did the experiments and drew them yourself.

Supervisors who say 'the PhD is your life' and 'I worked 16 hours a day as a student' fall into one two two categories:
a) the obsessives
b) the liars
You can tell the difference because those in category a) will probably continue to put their research above anything else in their lives. Either way it's pretty difficult to explain that while your research is important to you, so are other things.
I wouldn't recommend being in the lab 9am til 3 or 4pm, a PhD isn't supposed to be LESS work than a real job. In the end you'll have the easiest life if you try to start and finish around the time other people in the lab do. Also that way you'll have people to talk to while you're there.
Obviously if you're doing a non-science PhD then please ignore all my advice, I can't say anything because I'd find it very hard to spend many hours a day just reading and writing (not looking forward to writing up!).

According to the administrators in my department, findaphd.com charges very little to advertise (about 1/10 compared to Nature and New Scientist) and many more appplicants cite it as the place where they saw the project advertised. So no bad-mouthing please because it seems to be a very good resource. But I agree that people should distinguish between the discussion boards and the actual 'finding a PhD' part of the site.

The general feeling around here (present company excused) seems to be that a PhD should be very very hard, should consume every waking minute, and no-one should be allowed to have a holiday, a relationship, or a nice time while they are doing one. Well done for admitting preferring sunbathing to PhDing!

Is there someone else you can talk to about it - a student manager or someone like that? They would have to keep it in confidence, but if it later becomes a problem they can back up your story of how long the stress has been going on. That way your superisors will know that you're not trying to cause trouble or get preferential treatment, and that in fact you've been trying NOT to cause a fuss.

The visual aids guys at my work said you should always set the powerpoint slide to the size of the poster (A0, etc) and then zoom in to work on it. If you make it in A4 and they have to enlarge it then fonts can get funny-looking and pictures can get pixelly.

I like using powerpoint - making a poster is hard enough without having to learn how to use a new piece of software.

Good luck.

Does anyone know of a good website for finding out what scientific conferences are on? (I'm in a molecular biology type area if that helps) None of the posters around the building seem particularly relevant to what I'm doing, and I'd like to find out what's out there before I blow my funding on one that might turn out not to be the best.

Forgot to say - we can in theory come and go as we please, throughout the night and at the weekend if necessary (growing cells are annoying). The only problem is that if your supervisor doesn't see that you're working, he won't know if you're working really hard but not producing results, or just not coming in at all.