Morning all, managed to edit just 300 words last night, pretty poor effort! So I have lost 1000 of 7000 so just 6000 to lose, haha. However I did manage to include 9 appendices of published work into the thesis. The journals supply the finals in pdf which is a nightmare to include into Word. Each one had to be uploaded to a convertion programme to change into jpeg. Then the converted files were downloaded and each individual page inserted into the thesis, arghh! At least this is now done. The structure of the thesis is really starting to show now, yeah!

So today/evening I am going to re-read more of the thesis and edit out some more words...........yawn, I have lost motivation.

Well done, definitely an acheivement! :-)

Hi there, I was offered a fully funded PhD 12 years ago. I was unable to accept this due to personal health concerns and at the time I was gutted. I wondered if I was giving up on an amazing opportunity and also on my dreams. However, I had to put my health first so that had to be my focus at that time. Seven years later I was in a fortunate position of being offered a supervisory team and uni place for my own PhD. This time I was successful in my career and my PhD stemmed from my daily work. This meant that I was able to fund my own course fees with grants to cover the lab work costs. I am still self-funding and am at the last push for completing my thesis after 5 years of studying. Who knows whether I will pass but I am trying very hard! So you see just because this time is not right for you does not mean that you will never acheive this. If you need to reconsider your studentship then take some time to do this. There will always be another student to take your current post and it will not affect you later in your career. Hope this helps.

Just to add, I am another part-timer! I will be at 6 years (3 yr equivalent) in May 2011. My draft thesis is done but I am reducing the word count presently. Then the editing and formating etc so hope to submit within the 6 years. (robin)

I would agree with the previous posts. My main drive was to set-up a 'contents' style page of what to include in all of my chapters. Then, from what was already written/published, I cut and pasted everything into the appropriate places. This gave me an outline of what to do and what I needed to do. I then produced myself a 'gantz' table of the chapters to write, stats etc along the side and the months along the top. I shaded the time duration I was allocating myself to produce X, Y or Z. I gave this to my supervisor to show what progress I was planning to acheive. This prompted me to get on with it! Even while I am ahead of schedule I still carry on doing as much as possible as it drives me to think I may finish quicker than planned lol. Set up regular meetings with your supervisor to show what you have done and to discuss any issues etc. Get them to review each part as you write it so that they have smaller chunks to deal with, this way I got regular and prompt feedback.

As for the loneliness, isn't that what a PhD is all about! I would suggest having some contact details for those that are leaving so that you have someone to contact if things are not working out. They are the people who know all about the work so are undoubtedly knowledgeable in the field.

Hahaha, love to sell some, maybe an alternative vocation in life :p

Just hope I get through this and pass my PhD someday soon.............seems like forever!

I have 6300 words to un-write from my thesis! Managed 740 on friday night and I have had the weekend off so today I hope to get some more shaved off. Student nanny is coming so hopefully she can deal with babies while I get a few hours in during the day, then I will continue this evening. Very disheartening to do but needs to be done!

Hi Costate, yes this is a science PhD thesis. The uni regs only allow 40000 but don't state a percentage range. As a previous but recent thesis has been questioned for word count with view of failing it for being too long, I need to reduce my word count! I have lost 740 words from part of the lit review chapter so far and have alot more to lose :-( I have not heard of many people having to reduce their draft by so much so was hoping for some feedback from those who have.

Well done for passing your viva! You must be so relieved after 18 months of revisions and a 10 minute viva. Shame they let you worry for a while before calling to tell you with the result, but at least it is done. You must be overjoyed.

Is it possible that the protocol does not include all of the little quirky bits that the postdoc did for their experiments? It may be that they used a slightly different method that acheived reliable and consistent results that has not been divulged to anyone else. Don't feel that you have failed as it can be a number of things that can affect outcomes. Do you have any contact details for the postdoc to check the methodology is correct. Have you changed suppliers for any of the components used?

I think that you need to discuss this with your supervisor as sooner or later they will be expecting to see your results. It would feel alot worse telling them that after all this time nothing had actually worked . I think it is better to speak up early so that changes can be made to get this work done.
Good luck :-)

Thank you Florence and Keenbean, you have inspired me to act on this with some enthusiasm.  I was very worried that I am going to omit a critical paragraph or significant detail but with the direction given here I can see the potential of streamlining the thesis. Hopefully as you have suggested it will 'tighten up' the whole style of the thesis which must be advantageous.  It just seems like a mammoth task, a bit like writing a theses lol.

I have highlighted my flabby areas :$ , in particular the lit review that I wrote first with no regard for my word count!  I have also spoken to my supervisors and one has been fabulous in showing me an example page of how to reduce words. This is very similar to your suggestions of rewording sentences to remove waffle.

So although I am disappointed to have to reduce the thesis as I could be doing other things with it for submission, I have to embrace this new skill.  The uni regs have been checked and they are ambiguous to say the least! However, a hefty thesis has recently been questioned regarding over-wording and there is a possibility that it will not be examined.  I really don't want to fail like that.

OMG, I have finished the draft thesis and I am 7000 words over the 40000 (main text) limit, arghhh! How on earth am I going to remove this much without losing the plot? I have to laugh otherwise I would be crying. I never in my wildest dreams considered at the beginning of my thesis write-up that exceeding the word count would be an issue. Has anyone else had to radically delete so much? I really don't know if I can do this, as I have no idea what needs to be included and what I can get away without. I am awaiting my supervisory team to comment and the uni will not allow a percentage margin.

I can empathise with you about it never seeming to end! My draft is done, but when each chapter was written it was sent to the supervisors for comments so they were given little and often. Now there is the editing, formatting, insertion of figures appendices etc which looks as though it will take forever although others on this forum have suggested it goes quite quickly! I think that assuming your supervisor has not seen this draft as it was written then it will take them some time to read through properly to be constructive. Obviously the christmas period is going to impact on that time as naturally they will want to join their families etc. I know it is disappointing not to be submitting and the delays are naturally annoying. Take this as a good thing that you will be submitting a well reveiwed thesis as this will make the viva that much easier with less issues to defend. Financially it will be a strain and I think that this is a seperate issue. There is no reason why you cannot work some hours while finishing the thesis, there will be many a student who has had to do this. Assuming your supervisor sticks to her obligations you haven't long to go.

Hi Sneaks, has your supervisor asked you to clarify the number or degrees of freedom? Usually in stats the 'effect size' can be a combination of the p value, the test (r) value and the sample number taken into account ie n or d.f. For example, if you have r=0.8 and p=0.001 but the sample was only 4, it wouldn't be an effective stats result but if the sample size was 200 and this was your stats output it would be very 'effective'.

Of course I may be completely talking rubbish.............:$

Well done Amy! I will be looking at my viva in about six months and am already getting nervous about the thought of it! I don't envy the 3.5 hours you had to endure but I guess if it was enjoyable the time will fly.

I guess a little celebrating before cracking those minor corrections is in order, enjoy!