This is part suggestion, part question since I'm not sure about tense either (forgive hijacking thread). Currently I'm using past tense to report work I've done or someone else has done and the results but present tense to report discussion and conclusions on the basis that the work is finished but the conclusions drawn still exist in the publication referenced

e.g Jones and Smith studied tail tickling in mice and found that 90% enjoyed it.
Jones and Smith suggest that all rodents may benefit from tail tickling.

Does this seem to make sense or is it likely to get criticised for inconsistency?

Thanks Sneaks and TimeForTea for explaining pdf conversion. Will give it another go.

I've only once tried reading a pdf paper on a Kindle and gave up after a few pages because I got fed up with all the scrolling left-right and up and down which it entailed. Also I'm doing visual arts and found the images weren't as clear as was ideal. It probably would work for graphs but you'ld have to zoom in on them more so have yet more scrolling. However I know someone else who finds them very useful for reading papers so maybe the scrolling is something you can get used to, I was fairly new to kindles when I tried it.

Today's goal is to get some understanding of correspondence analysis and whether its appropriate to my data. Am anticipating a fun day.

Sneaks, I'd be inclined to leave your word as is, at least for the examiners - if you asterisk it you are implicitly including a judgement on it and the speaker and to acknowledge that the word (and associated regrettable attitudes) exist is just a fact not offensive in itself. Though if your thesis or associated papers are put online I could imagine that it might be necessary to asterisk to avoid automatic filtering.

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I know I'm dodging the question about whether you have too many participants to name but could you use (made up) initials rather than names if you decide to take that approach to avoid all the preconceptions which get attached to names? Have very nebulous recollections of a study done asking primary school teachers to pick from a list of first names those they would associate with troublemakers which showed quite a number judged character on the basis of names. Though can equally see that 40 sets of initials might get confusing.

Have you tried inserting a single cell table and pasting the picture into that rather than directly into the text? I've found that solves at least some of the myriad stupid problems word has when dealing with pictures.

Can see why you are uncomfortable about her rewriting. Could you try redrafting the passages your supervisor has rewritten in your own words, in effect taking her rewriting just as an indicator that this passage doesn't read well in the original* and that she has provided one idea for paraphrasing rather than using her rewritten text directly. It may just be that your supervisor is being overenthusiastic in pushing her personal writing style onto you. Could you get a second opinion on a chapter from your other supervisor as well?

*this sounds like I'm agreeing that you should worry about your writing style - I don't necessarily, just that most writing can benefit from coming back to re-look at it after a bit of a break.

Although this may not be very useful since you don't know how long the presentation is supposed to be, a good rule of thumb for number of slides in 1 per minute of presentation.

It would be worth checking if the university's study skills/research training department run courses on how to prepare for a viva, might also be worth speaking to the postgrad secretary in your dept, they seem to know or to know how to find out most things.

To stand any chance of getting useful feedback you need to start by saying that you have no intention of contesting their decision. It was the official policy of a council I used to work for to assume that anyone who asked for feedback was preparing to take legal action so to give them as little information as possible and I've encountered that attitude elsewhere as well. Don't think it occurred to them to not assume the worst and consider just being helpful :-s

Hope things pick up for you soon.

Good morning
Sadly not a 9am start but I thought I'd join this thread to motivate myself as I'm not making a lot of progress at the moment. So Goal 1. Get the applet I'm struggling to write to complete the next stage in my analysis.

Little Penguin - I can really only sympathise and suggest what you and/or your supervisor have probably tried already of finding out who the individual person was who set the viva date (I know that may be easier said than done) and getting in touch with them in the hope that they were acting out of ignorance of your situation rather than sheer bloody mindedness so might be persuaded to rearrange. It is after all of benefit to the university to be able to publish that their postgrads have gone on to do further research.
Best of luck.

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Hi
I think you might be right about your sup just being inclined to cut to the problems, though I suspect it may be more to do with individual supervisors' personalities than course length since I know of some who are quite capable of finding time to give positive comments.

I think it can initially be a dispiriting change from undergrad level because there's a sudden assumption that you should have more awareness for yourself of what works and what doesn't and that you don't need telling what's good without by any means implying that everything is bad.

Yes, pm email and will send.

My undergrad uni had a similar system to the guest staff member mentioned by Bewildered, they called it Honorary Research Assistant so that might be a phrase worth mentioning. They didn't have a formal system of nomination it was just if you could find a member of staff prepared to take you on they would sign authorisation letters for access to computer/library/anything else necessary to do the work.

Then I would use diagrams - much easier to get a sense of the results and how variables relate from a graph than a table of numbers. Though I know from bitter experience that it also makes it easy to see when your hard won results show nothing of anything. Hope that's not the case with you.