I was also asked to teach from a few weeks into my PhD, and I remember very clearly the feelings you describe. Looking back now, I can see how my teaching has improved over the years, which doesn't make me feel great about the first lot! However, I can also say that I have seen the same lack of confidence in people who had their PhDs, were employed as teachers and were taking on a new module, so at least part of what you are feeling will be the same that everyone has when taking on a class. Perhaps your uni offers some teacher training for PhD students? I went on training in my second year and it did help.

I also got the kind of information Zutterfly describes - if the uni knows about a particular student having a disability, there should be a plan in place to guide you.

Good luck, both of you! I sometimes think that final push can be the most productive bit of all - certainly I need that feeling of a deadline approaching before I can seem to work to my full capacity :-)

I'm hoping to finally submit before Christmas, but the earlier the better really. Today my goal is to work out how I'm going to present the stats section of my quants chapter - it has been so long since I did any quants that it's a bit like another language!

I'm sorry, Zutterfly. You're nearly there :-)

My appendices are going to be quite hefty as well, although I am hoping that the whole thing will still be able to be bound in one book - must check the upper page limit for that. Are you both including things like sample transcripts? I was thinking of just putting in a page or two of a transcript with workings to show my analysis - one of my supervisors thought I'd be putting in all my interview transcripts, but I don't see the point in putting in all that raw data and besides, my thesis would then be ridiculously enormous!

That sounds like a difficult and stressful situation, especially with the changing guidelines about what they actually want you to do. As someone currently doing qualitative analysis, I would absolutely hate to have someone looking over my shoulder and saying, 'why haven't you spotted this?' - as you say, different analysts will come up with slightly different results. I'm sure it's not to do with your skills, it sounds like a lack of clarity on their part, as well as an inability to let you do the job!

I think it depends on the kind of role you want in regards to mental health. I would think that your research experience would be fine for doing mental health-related research (and possibly policy/developmental roles) but for traditional psychologist jobs (clinical, educational psychologist and so on) there are specific qualifications and defined career paths. It is possible to get in to more 'hands on' roles through, for example, doing qualifications in things like counselling or coaching, if you wanted to work directly in helping people, and if you didn't mind doing some post-PhD training. I would advise having a chat with a careers advisor and you might also find the British Psychological Society website interesting.

My uni charges £130 for 4th year/writing up, and £500 for 5th year if you still haven't handed in. I haven't heard of any other uni with an arrangement like yours.

Congratulations TreeofLife! Great news!

Hi Teegs

The ending is pretty hard going, isn't it? I'm just trying to remind myself that it IS the ending - this period will come to an end, and it will be soon. It's like being in a dark tunnel and feeling like you're getting nowhere, when in fact the way out is just around the next corner. I think there is so much pressure on that we're bound to feel every up and down as a major swing. But it'll soon all be behind us - hang in there!

Might it be worth looking at literature on things like peer support groups/peer-led interventions? I've worked with sex workers before (primarily via addictions services) and there is a prevalence of peer support groups in that field, in which sharing is encouraged for things like learning, confidence building and so on - this may be a helpful area of overlap for your topic?

I think it differs from conference to conference. I submitted an abstract to one that was as you described, and the instructions asked us to specify which symposium we felt was the best fit, although all abstracts went to a central place. In the end, I think the conference created an additional symposium, because mine and similar others ended up in a group that I don't think was on the original list! Are there any more details on the application form, e.g. a space for you to put the symposium name?