Am completely overwhelmed. Submit end of September, still have lots of writing to do, and just got back so detailed comments from my supervisors that I need some pretty severe re-writing and re-structuring. Have no idea how on earth I'm going to make it right with so little time to go. Feel like curling into a ball and hiding till its all over. Feel like crying but have to keep ploughing on when I've lost confidence in my own ability to write anything decent. Want to wallow in my misery, but have to keep writing. At times like this I wonder why on earth I was invented to be so bad at time management to be struggling at the last minute like this. Take my advice - stop doing analysis early and start writing, don't spend all your time trying every bit of analysis under the sun only to be left with minimal write up time (like me) :o(

The analysis bit concerns me somewhat too. Alright, I'm only at the end of year one but then I'm somewhat aware that I will need to find a cut off point where I agree with my supervisor that I have enough to go with and write up from there. Trouble is, supervisors will always want that bit more, so how do you agree an appropriate cut off point?

Hi, I'd say if you set yourself an aim or a question to answer for the chapter - do enough to answer that aim/question... I'd do the analysis and it would raise some interesting questions, and then I'd do a bit of analysis to try out that hypothesis, and keep going down those lines. I think it's essential to stay focussed. If you have enough analysis to tell a nice story that meets your objectives - that's enough. If you know you have plenty of time to do the additional bits of analysis, that's great - but only do them if you know you have the time. My supervisors left me to my analysis and it's only now that they're reading the full chapters that they're suggesting other analysis or questions to answer... it's a bit late for me to change much. Hope that helps (I might come across as being overly negative but am at wits end right now!)

Don't worry, it didn't come across as negative. Most informative in fact. As you say, staying focussed will be the key here. It probably depends on each person's supervisor, but someone in my dept suggested to me that I make it clear early on, that in no uncertain terms I want this PhD done in 3 years and that I'd like their assistance in ensuring that it happens.

Calm down SeaBird .. you will be fine ... the thing is you cant write anything unless you have the analysis of your results done. Doing reports with you experiments and results during your phd (thats what i did) and let you sup. review these reports each time u do one is beyond helpful ... it will keep you updated and fresh and know your way during you phd work, as well as will save you plenty of time during writng up. Anyway, everyone has his own way of dealing with things. Although doing that my sup. gave hard time in reviewing my writing and i went through what you are going through and i had feelings to quit and dont want to do it any more ... but you need to be strong and plan a time schduale to finish ... and tell you what after i finished the final draft i went to paris for a treat .

Hey SeaBird, good luck with plowing on! You can do it. When you're finished you will look back and won't believe how much you managed to accomplish in such little time. You'll be surprised. When it has to be, you can do amazing things. Most everyone I know who was reaching the end of a major piece of work, with a deadline looming, said afterwards that they still couldn't quite see how they did it, but that they accomplished about half of all the work in the last 10% of the time. I'm speaking academics here. Just keep going - you can do it!
And don't forget: if you do need a day off, then take it. It is a lot more efficient than working with half-energy for a week.