Does anyone know if it's sacreligious to have a methods chapter of a phd as an appendix?

I've currently got my methodology chapter in the third of a seven chapter thesis. However, it's quite a personal methods chapter and doesn't seem to fit where it is. It's a social sciences/ humanities PhD.

Thank you

Hi Bobby - I had a similar experience last term and was similalry terrified. In the end, I spent a huge amount of time preparing - particulalry for my first 2 seminars - so that, when it actually came to doing it I knew exactly what I was meant to be doing - even if I didn't know quite how it would work with the students. This meant that at least my pre-seminar terror was lessened when I was actually in the seminar. As I'm not good at talking 'off-the-cuff' and as it didn't seem the appropriate format to deliver a full-on lecture I made the seminars completely interactive and made sure each one had a balance between the students working in pairs, in small groups and in a larger group. When I could (i.e. with the appropriate kind of material) I would set up kind of debate-type games - for e.g. 1. getting the students into three groups, 2. giving each group a short summary of a different theorectical perspective on the same issue to discuss 3. then getting the groups to briefly present a summary of the argument to the other goups and then 4. discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each of the arguments with the whole group. Exercises like this can take up to an hour and, I found, where very enjoyable. To my complete amazement I actually did enjoy teaching the seminars and found it very rewarding! Hope this helps and good luck!

Your experience sounds familiar to mine - except I'm fortunate not to have a migraine - hope it gets better soon. I'm finding my 'productivity' levels worryingly low - as I'm aiming to get my final draft complete by the end of january (minus appendices, etc). Although I'm not aware of feeling stressed, I'm also having problems sleeping (very unlike me). I keep hoping that my subconscious stress would transform into more productive energy and focus!

From what I've been told, there are more opportunities for a career in academia for Law PhD students than there are for Soc Sci students. This is partly because, as law is a vocational degree, many people with law degrees become lawyers whereas there isn't a similar route for Sco Sci graduates.
But I suppose there are many other factors to weigh in as well - what the supervisors/ department/ university are like etc as well as the other teaching opportunities and benefits that you mentioned.

thanks pineapple. the teaching that I'm going to be doing isn't attached to lectures, i.e. the weekly seminars are all the students get to learn the subject...so I'm going to be very dependent on them having done the reading for the week.... but I also want to think up as many kind of active teaching methods/ exercises as i can so that if/ when group discussion work does drie up I've got other things to do to keep the seminar going.  i' m also not sure if/ how much lecturing i should or shouldn't do????? in a kind of informal seminar setting, would it be inappropriate to read out say a 20 minute lecture??? and then go on to group exercises??? thank you again!

I've been asked by my department to prepare and deliver a module to 2nd year undergraduates. its in a 8 x 2 hour 'seminar' format (in the humanities) - so there's an expectation that the seminar's are interactive. has anyone else had experience of this kind of teaching? and any ideas for teaching methods and exercises would be much appreciated!!! thank you!

Thanks Cheep - that's really useful info.

Love to know how the PhD has been 'worth it'?

I'm feeling just now that its been a terribly indulgent and enjoyable, but basically worthless waste of time - I'm now even more anti-social and 9-5 work-shy than I was 3 years ago! - and I'm not quite sure what I've learnt except how to skim read lots of books and procrastinate!

Thanks Cheep - but I actuallly have the opposite problem - I tend to write quite concisely so I'm more concerned about reaching the minimum word count! The minimum PhD word count for my university is 75,000 - so I suppose I was wondering if I could do something like a 60,000 word thesis with 15,000 (of relevant!) words in the appendices - or would this mean that my thesis was more likely to be considered as an MPhil? My supervisors haven't suggested that either the 'quality', or quantity, of what I've written to date hasn't been of PhD 'standard' - but as I get closer to imagining completing the thesis, I feel that I want to just get to the point rather than adding lots of waffle to reach the word count.

snap! - 'loom' then!

loam

thanks missspacey - that gives me some idea - I had thought my biblio was too big at approx 4,000 words but can relax now!

i know this is propbably different for every thesis - but I'm trying to gauge approximately how many words I should be thinking of for my appendices and bibliography (as they're included in my final word count)...anyone got any idea??? thank you!

me too!

I'm coming to the end of my third year and I've had approximately 15 meetings with my supervisors (that's not counting brief meetings to sign forms, etc)

thanks bettyspaghetti - I''ll give the footnote biogs a go!