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Final year support thread

C

Quote From Hugh:
Quote From chickpea:
Quote From Hugh:
I've just spent the past 30 minutes reading through the thesis submission guidelines, and its feeling really real now, and scary (!). I've got 9 months to submission and lots to do!


Oh yes, it brings it home when you start to think about how the thing will look and what you need to do to submit it! Our formatting guidelines are pretty awful and despite my best intentions, I can't stand to work with the specifications they want so am going to have to convert it all at the end! Hope yours are not too bad!


I'm in the same boat too, our requirements are double spacing which I can't stand, so will have to do it in the end! Thankfully they don't require a specific font!

A friend of mine said it took him 1 month to get the editing of the final thesis sorted! *shock*


Yes, we have double spacing and Times New Roman size 12. It's like something from when computers were first invented :)

Z

I am avoiding looking at such guidelines until I have all of my chapters as I know that I will just overwhelm myself then lose motivation! Currently on my final findings chapter and 7 months until submission.

H

Quote From Zutterfly:
I am avoiding looking at such guidelines until I have all of my chapters as I know that I will just overwhelm myself then lose motivation! Currently on my final findings chapter and 7 months until submission.


Zutterfly, that's a good idea!

Looks like you are doing well! :) I am on my final findings chapter too but still have another 4 chapters to write! I am feeling a bit impatient now and really want to get it finished!

Z

Quote From Hugh:
Quote From Zutterfly:
I am avoiding looking at such guidelines until I have all of my chapters as I know that I will just overwhelm myself then lose motivation! Currently on my final findings chapter and 7 months until submission.


Zutterfly, that's a good idea!

Looks like you are doing well! :) I am on my final findings chapter too but still have another 4 chapters to write! I am feeling a bit impatient now and really want to get it finished!


Well done Hugh! Yes, I know that feeling well- I keep getting caught up in daydreaming about life after the PhD, which then leads me to panic about when to start job applications, which then throws me off of my PhD writing, then *repeat cycle*! I have my conclusion after this and my introductory chapter is just in pieces. I also need to rewrite my literature review and do a LOT of editing. When I think of all of these tasks, I wonder if it is possible to accomplish in the time left :/

H

Quote From Zutterfly:


Well done Hugh! Yes, I know that feeling well- I keep getting caught up in daydreaming about life after the PhD, which then leads me to panic about when to start job applications, which then throws me off of my PhD writing, then *repeat cycle*! I have my conclusion after this and my introductory chapter is just in pieces. I also need to rewrite my literature review and do a LOT of editing. When I think of all of these tasks, I wonder if it is possible to accomplish in the time left :/


I believe you can do it! :-) I still have literature review to write too, and discussion chapter too, so still lots to do, but I think it is do-able, as long as I keep focused and don't get distracted.

I know what you mean about search for jobs becoming a distraction. I have told myself that I cannot even search for jobs until I have submitted the thesis. There will be 3 months in between thesis and viva anyways, so I can use that time to search.

I'm also torn about attempting to publish, I've got 2 more papers I could get out of my findings chapters but it takes time to do, lets see how I get on. Right I need to get back to writing :)

Z

Thank you- I believe in you too! :D My sup has encouraged me to send out prospective applications as soon as April :o not sure if I will get around to it though. Oh and don't get me started on publications haha I recently had my second lot of major corrections on an article that was based on my MA thesis that they want back by June...but everything is so busy constantly! I submitted something from my PhD months ago to but it is still under review. I have told myself further publications can be worked on when I have my full draft submitted. Anyway, wishing you good luck with the writing :)

H

Quote From Zutterfly:
Thank you- I believe in you too! :D My sup has encouraged me to send out prospective applications as soon as April :o not sure if I will get around to it though. Oh and don't get me started on publications haha I recently had my second lot of major corrections on an article that was based on my MA thesis that they want back by June...but everything is so busy constantly! I submitted something from my PhD months ago to but it is still under review. I have told myself further publications can be worked on when I have my full draft submitted. Anyway, wishing you good luck with the writing :)


Thanks, and you too! :) For the first time, I can see the final point, which means I am progressing hopefully ;-)

Z

Is anyone taking the Bank Holiday weekend off? I am allowing myself a long weekend if I hit the quarter-way point of this findings chapter tonight!

H

Quote From Zutterfly:
Is anyone taking the Bank Holiday weekend off? I am allowing myself a long weekend if I hit the quarter-way point of this findings chapter tonight!


Yes, I'm taking next week off too, and not touching any work or emails. I'll probably do some work tomorrow morning and then want to take a nice long break :)

I am a strong believer in taking regular breaks and holidays.

Good luck, I'm sure you'll make it! :)

Z

Thank you Hugh; I got enough done to convince myself that I deserve a lazy weekend ;) Just finishing up some reading with a beer!

Speaking of reading, I was always advised that there is a time in your PhD when you must stop reading and just write- though, I feel like I constantly need to keep reading recently published work in my field and acknowledging it to avoid issues in the viva. Do you find yourself doing this?

H

Well done! Hope you have a super weekend :)

Yes, I have to keep looking at literature too. I haven't actually formally written up my literature review, though I have obviously referred to literature in my discussions in various chapters. It was left towards the end because my field is still evolving. It does make it challenging, because I'm going to have to keep going back and updating discussions that I had written a good while back with up to date literature. There's also the fear of missing something. Tbh I skim read papers and pick out and copy what is relevant to me into a separate document, and then concentrate on the relevant parts only.

C

Oh, the literature review/how much to read seems like a bit of a minefield! I wrote a literature review in my first year, and am leaving it pretty much til the end to update, so that I'll be able to go back over papers without having too many other tasks still in the way (that's the theory, anyway!). I think that as long as you make it clear that you only reviewed papers up to a certain cut-off date, it doesn't matter if something spectacular came along after that date. My problem is that I wasn't very systematic with my initial gathering of the literature, and followed trails of stuff that interested me rather than going through all the results for my key terms, so I think I have some plodding literature searches still to do!

Anyway - hope you all have a good Easter weekend :)

H

Quote From chickpea:
Oh, the literature review/how much to read seems like a bit of a minefield! I wrote a literature review in my first year, and am leaving it pretty much til the end to update, so that I'll be able to go back over papers without having too many other tasks still in the way (that's the theory, anyway!). I think that as long as you make it clear that you only reviewed papers up to a certain cut-off date, it doesn't matter if something spectacular came along after that date. My problem is that I wasn't very systematic with my initial gathering of the literature, and followed trails of stuff that interested me rather than going through all the results for my key terms, so I think I have some plodding literature searches still to do!

Anyway - hope you all have a good Easter weekend :)


Thanks, you too :)

I've noticed more and more students are now doing systematic reviews of literature (with key terms in databases) rather than doing it traditionally and free flow. Is that what you did?

C

Quote From Hugh:


Thanks, you too :)

I've noticed more and more students are now doing systematic reviews of literature (with key terms in databases) rather than doing it traditionally and free flow. Is that what you did?


I used key terms to get me started, but I didn't plough through all the results systematically - I just started reading papers that seemed to be the most relevant and followed different references from those papers, then went back and did slightly different searches and so on. How did you approach yours? I must admit I didn't have the patience to do a systematic review, when there can be thousands of results and you can see at a glance that most of them are not really relevant!

H

Quote From chickpea:


I used key terms to get me started, but I didn't plough through all the results systematically - I just started reading papers that seemed to be the most relevant and followed different references from those papers, then went back and did slightly different searches and so on. How did you approach yours? I must admit I didn't have the patience to do a systematic review, when there can be thousands of results and you can see at a glance that most of them are not really relevant!


I did the same as you too. I found "cited by" check (on google scholar) especially useful too.

I am formally writing up my literature review chapter next month and I think I'm going to give the systematic review option a miss too.

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