I see why you'd be upset if you paid someone to do the proof reading. Are you sure your friend's corrections are actually correct though? I've seen some pretty terrible 'proof reading' by people who are trying to help out a friend, but who unfortunately know very little about syntax and punctuation.

Hi Emaa,

Try not worry about it too much. A friend of mine submitted her thesis in a huge hurry because she was told she had to either submit or pay another year's (international student) fees. After she'd submitted she found lots of typos and other errors, but she still passed her viva with minor corrections. If your examiners are not native speakers of English, they will hopefully not notice some of the mistakes anyway.

On the Labour Party and the deficit – there was an interesting story in the media very recently on the deficit myth and how the Tories have spun the story to make Labour look bad. Here is a quotation from the Huffington Post article:
“In 1997 Labour inherited a deficit of 3.9% of GDP (not a balanced budget) and by 2008 it had fallen to 2.1% - a reduction of a near 50% - Impressive! Hence, it's implausible and ludicrous to claim there was overspending. The deficit was then exacerbated by the global banking crises after 2008”.

Finally, Ukip in their own words: ‘People talk about Ukip being bigots. There are hundreds of thousands of bigots in the UK and they deserve representation’ (Matthew Richardson, Ukip secretary). Plus, have you noticed how Ukip keeps having to get rid of candidates because they are so scandalously racist, incompetent or corrupt?

I have a feeling I should probably not engage with this, especially in this forum, which doesn’t really seem the right place for it, but since this appears to be, amongst other things, an attack on international students, I am going to respond.

Criticising British culture - culture shock is a well-documented phenomenon which consists of several phases: honeymoon, frustration, adjustment and mastery. During the frustration phase it’s normal to feel negative about the host culture. It’s probably not a good idea to voice your criticisms to members of that culture, but I must admit that I did it when I was young and thoughtless and living abroad.

Adjusting to a new culture is hard, but it might be a bit easier if members of the host culture were a bit more welcoming. A lot of my international students tell me that British students hardly talk to them. In my opinion, if we want people to integrate then we need to make an effort to help them by being friendly and inviting them along to our social events or into our homes. Also, there are an awful lot of British people living abroad who make very little effort to learn the language or adapt to the culture of the host country, so we are not really in any position to criticise.

Adapting to our culture – what is British culture exactly and which bits would you like internationals to adapt to? Should they take up cricket… or Morris dancing? Learn to say ‘ooh lovely’ every time someone gives them a cup of tea? Spend their Friday nights getting so wasted that they throw up in the street and clog up our accident and emergency departments just like the natives do?

GrumpyMule, I definitely think you have a right to be annoyed. I agree with DocInsanity that the student should have included an acknowledgement in his thesis.

I know someone who did a seminar presentation which included a diagram she had designed to illustrate her conceptual framework, and I guess she must have shared her slides with the seminar group because some time later she attended another student's seminar and saw her diagram displayed on the screen with no acknowledgement. So yes, we definitely need to be careful.

I think what my friend is worried about though is that if this kind of borrowing/plagiarism/theft happens to her, it will invalidate her whole PhD, and I don't think that is the case.

Thanks glowworm and DocInsanity for your replies. I can see how it might be a problem in some science fields but where your presentation is based on qualitative data from interviews and observations, no one else has access to that data, so I'll try not to worry about it too much!

I've just had a conversation with a friend who is preparing a conference presentation. She only intends to present one very small aspect of her PhD research and not give any indication of other themes or wider conclusions in case someone steals her ideas and publishes them before she has finished her PhD. It's never occurred to me to worry about this before. Actually, I'm usually too busy being terrified of standing up in front of an audience to think of anything else. Is this something you worry about?

I would be interested in seeing such a list and happy to contribute when I start submitting work to publishers but I can't help at the moment.

To be fair though, if your advertising strategy is to ask seriously dumb questions in a forum full of PhD students, you are probably not going to be too successful in drumming up business :-)

Ha ha lemonjuice and GrumpyMule - that's why I have to come to uni to work. Otherwise I'd spend the whole day in front of the tv, telling myself 'just one more episode' again and again.

I'm sustaining myself with tea, hot cross buns and chocolate mini eggs. Diet starts Tuesday :-)

Have a productive day everyone!

Hi everyone,

As a part-time student close to the end of my PhD journey, I will be spending most of this long weekend writing my thesis. It would be nice to know I'm not alone in this. Today I plan to finish a section in one of my data chapters and revise the introduction to that chapter.

I think you need at least two years work experience, possibly management experience before you can get a place on an MBA course

Hi Mara,

According to an advice e-booklet available on jobs.ac.uk, it shouldn't be more than four pages, but another article on the same site says it is often many pages. I think 4 is good!

I just spent a whole day - 9 to 5.30 with no break - working on a job application, and I'd already filled in some of the basic info on the application form. Is that normal?? So glad I didn't leave it till the last minute (Monday).

There is some good advice on preparing for the viva on the last page of the Accountability partners thread in this forum. If you don't already have a list of possible questions, I can send you some, but you need to bear in mind that your examiners may ask completely different questions. As for speaking in English, if I were you, I would practise as much as possible. Get friends to do mock vivas, and if you run out of friends just talk to yourself. English is my first language but I lack confidence talking about my work so that's what I will be doing before my viva.

I can send them and I have your email address from the last time I sent you an article.