Yes, it will feel good to submit and have some time away from editing! Hope you are celebrating this stage!

Congratulations on submitting, PracticalMouse! My thesis should be done in the next week or so, but uni is busy doing bureaucratic things so I haven't been given the go-ahead to submit, ho ho. At least it will be done though!

Congratulations! I'm so pleased to hear this news. I almost feel we need to have a forum party now!

Good luck, PracticalMouse - nearly there!

I would have thought that the journal would give you access, since you're an author? I've only got limited experience of being published, but have been sent links to papers I'm on so that I can share them with others - is it possible to request this from the journal?

I used Powerpoint, and used one of my supervisor's posters as a starting template.

I agree with Pjlu - I think you may have to make a conscious effort to do things that will benefit you. I am also guilty of narrowing my focus to either doing the PhD or doing unproductive/unhealthy things like eating rubbish and idling online. It takes an effort to remember to do the stuff that will actually help. This period will be over soon, though, and after a period of readjustment, I'm sure we will all get back into better routines :-)

If you are one of the authors named on the paper, then could you contact the journal and get a link to it? Maybe that's your plan B!

It won't let me get it either, sorry - my uni is listed as having access but then it still wants me to pay for the article.

Try not to worry too much about it. Since they know you, they may just think you were nervous, which can happen to anyone on the day. Also, there is a chance that they were being a bit tough and putting you on the spot, which can happen in postgraduate interviews, as they want to see if you can defend your own work. This happened at my PhD interview and I thought I had done badly, and was then offered the place!

It might help, in case anyone does google you while you're doing your PhD, to set up things like a LinkedIn page and Twitter account in your own name. Those things appear right at the start of google searches, and will give you an online presence connected with being a PhD student rather than anything else.

Hi Tudor

I don't know if this helps, but mine changed a lot once I got started and, rather than doing various studies in a linear way as I had first planned, I ended up delving more into some of the 'interesting' things that were coming up, and my thesis took a much more qualitative, exploratory focus. I think the main thing is that you end up with a narrative based on your data. Is there a possibility that some of your results lead on naturally to looking at something in more depth, for example?

Best wishes with it all - you might feel stuck or uncertain for a bit, but you will work it out.

You should notice a change in the type of feedback you get as you go through the process. It never stops, though!