2nd Year Accountability thread

A

Hi All,

Timefortea - hola!

Sorry about your studies Sneaks. Good plan with the writing. Is it a recruitment issue or will you be able to pull some results from it? No results are still results???? Congratulations on the supervisor approved writing. I wish I could get to that stage!!

Timefortea - I'm having to rewrite my literature review at the moment. It's such a frustrating process. What discipline are you in?

No tips on the nice weather and lack of productivitiy unforunately...

Today I have done a timetable to finally finish this stupid literature review. I hope to have it done by the beginning of the week commencing the 13th. Now I need to implement the timetable. I will also be analysing the data I have managed to get in the last few months. Hoorah.

In shock good news, yesterday I had an abstract accepted for an oral conference presentation. Now I am scared...

What is everyone elses plan?

A

Avatar for sneaks

ooh conferences - well done people! I've been accepted into one next month and am dreading it - really can't be bothered to go and seriously tempted to pull out but that would be chicken, and they may not want me back in the future!

In terms of writing - I am lucky that my sup seems to like my first drafts - although tbh she only skim reads them I think, AND I think she only said the last piece was good because she hasn't had ANYTHING off me for ages - so I reckon she just wanted me motivated to do SOMETHING!!!

It is recruitment I'm afraid - my participant pool is quite specific, although not enough to think you couldn't do research but evidently I was wrong! My third study was going to be a questionnaire, which was fine but my org contact has ignored three emails from me asking where they are with sending it out - and I phoned her desk and apparently she's on training til monday - but I have been emailing her for weeks so thinking she has jacked in her half of the project and decided to ignore rather than actually tell me so I can get on with my research some other way :-s

these are the times I wish I was researching dustmites or something - at least they are all around me in my house (due to no cleaning - ever).

Anyways, decided to hold myself accountable and TRY to get SOME work done today, even if its just 5 mins, I have been sooo restless. So my plan for the rest of today (yes I know its 2.30!) is to read one article and write up the notes - which should provide me with a structure for the next piece of writing.

I will report in tonight regarding my progress!

M

Hee hee so much for promising to report in that night sneaks!

I'm new here but would like to join. I'm a 2nd year in maths, the mostly pure kind. Had to abandon my original topic recently and just starting at square one with another. Hoping to be able to go back to the other before the end and somehow include it in thesis. No idea what kind of chapters and such I'll have in the thesis. Not really sure where things are supposed to be going at all. No clear goals etc. So my aims are pretty short term:
by end of month:
have some idea of research plan for thesis
consistently work for more than 1hr per day
by end of week:
have presentation ready for supervisor (actually on thursday)
this involves reading two chaps of maths (50pg each), understanding them and then explaining them to my sup in a presentation.

Oh and have to get bus home in half an hour so it'll be all on the list for tomorrow. (book has to stay in uni)
holding out for a miracle!! :$

M

Ok so I've thirty minutes of reading done so far today but I actually got quite far with that time. If I could only manage to keep reading consistently I'd actually manage to finish the chapters today! Will post later to update.

M

Keep falling asleep on the book. Going to head home. almost finished the first chapter. best be up early to finish the rest ! :-(

A

Hi Mathkitty

Congratulations for resurrecting the thread!

I'll try and check in a bit more again but I'm in data collection at the moment.  So, today, I will be finishing the quality assessment for my literature review, going for a swim, then heading towards my research site for data collection this afternoon.

A

M

Oooh excellent! Wish I had data collection to do, best of luck with it!

Did actually finish the chapter before going home and came in to find my presentation is delayed til tomorrow - hooray! :-)
Though will still have to read and understand the other chapter and write my presentation today... Eeeep!

M

======= Date Modified 14 May 2009 21:09:55 =======
Finally finished the 2nd chapter! sneaking home now. Have 17 pages of notes but no presentation. Will look over tonight and decide which bits to write on board tomorrow before the time. Will let you know how it goes! Wish me luck :p

F

Hey - would it be possible for me to join this thread for a bit? As my post a few days ago suggests, I'm struggling a bit with work at the moment and I'm in my second year.
Run down of my week so far...
Monday: Some planning of my next chapter and 60 pages read
Tuesday: A lot less reading and a lot less work in general! Did finish my marking though.
Wednesday: No work at all (apart from attending a seminar) - I had a work-related panic attack (an actual panic attack) in the morning.
Today: Writing my chapter and although I've only managed to work consistently for about 2 1/2 or 3 hours I wrote 1300 words. Not very good words but words nonetheless.
Tomorrow: More writing. Going to try working in 30 minute slots with breaks in between to listen to music or read Joan Bolker! If I can work the whole morning like that and maybe an hour or so in the afternoon I will try to be satisfied with that I think. Achievable targets,etc.
:-)

F

Okay... plan not working at all so far... have not done anything...:-(
What is going on?!

M

Hope things are going better for you now florence. My presentation was a disaster because I was too tired from working so hard all week. Sleepiness and tough technical grilling do not go well together. Last week had two conferences to go to and was so tired everything else was a write-off. Have plenty of work to get done this week so I'll rely on you all to hold me accountable. Starting with my first 30 min bite!

M

Actually worked reasonably effectively today so I'm happy :-) Though the problem I'm working on doesn't seem to have a solution, or rather I've yet to invent a work around that generalises. I can get to that tomorrow I suppose. Dinner is more important and that means going home. Hoping tomorrow goes as well but I've to do some admin which could steal all my time.

Avatar for sneaks

OOh - I had given up on this thread, nice to see some new faces!

I have just got back into the swing of things after my yearly performance report/viva and a european conference (which was a complete waste of time and money! - although I did present so something for the CV).

I am at the point now where I have fobbed off my supervisor for a while about how much work I have been doing, and now she will want to actually see something, so getting a bit scared! Need to get back into writing cos that seems to always get the best feedback, rather than data collection, but trying to move house, get married and do data collection, marking and other work at the same time! crazy!

M

Excellent to have you sneaks :) I'm the same with the marriage, moving house etc.
pacifying the supervisor is always a tricky business, not been doing so well lately. makes for lots of stress.
especially when I get almost nothing done for an entire day: 2 hours sleep isn;t conducive to inventing a new generalised solution to a new problem.

eep! :-(

F

Just emailed off a fair few thousand (quite rubbish) words.
Not a brilliant result but I have written something and have worked really, really hard in the last week and half (Bank holiday weekend? What bank holiday weekend?).
Now just wait to see what the sup says...

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