I am about 16 months into my research and I'm currently transferring from the Masters to PhD register (transfer thesis due this Fri, transfer viva next Wed :( ) I have to write up what I've done so far and then a PhD proposal too...

The problem is that I just never seem to have enough time to do all the things I'm meant to do... I have been working on the transfer thesis for about a month now, and here I am with two days to go and still a mountain of work to do!!! Maybe it is my fault for procrastinating over one thing or another, but I always seem to be panicking at the last minute...

But also, my supervisors seem to have a really unrealistic expectation of the amount of work I can do in a set period of time - does anybody else have this problem?

See next post...

Just for example, my supervisor said to me yesterday that all my references (about 30) in my proposal are too old and I should replace them with ones from 2006 and 2007... and come back to him today with that done.

Continued...

So that means searching, selecting, reading and writing about 30 new references... in one day?!?!? Seriously, is it just me????? Am I like the world's slowest reader and I just never knew about it up till now? Because he is making out like this should be no problem at all...

Anyway, glad to find this place... I can't believe I didn't know about it before!

Hi Rosy,

Just a note of encouragement and to say I know how you feel. Not upgrading quite yet but I elected to give a seminar this Friday before faculty... and, yup, like you - have been procrastinating for the best part of a month. So, here I am, late at night, reading, analysing, thinking, etc.

Continuing next post...

What's your subject area? On the references thing - you don't need to read all the texts in their entirety... just do the search, skim read them. If you've done some work before, you should already have some key words to use. You can use the same key words to search the actual text to find useful quotes/refs... (just use Find in Word). Tip - be organised about it. Keep all new papers in a folder and date them... e.g. 070214 Keyword-Title - that way, it's easy to group things together.

(Continued) - That way, you should be able to get through the needed refs quickly. The searching might take longer, of course. Good luck!

hey Rosy,

am pretty much in the same situation here. why don't you read the abstracts of articles to see which ones you should read and then read the intros and conclusions of the ones you need to know about. that's what am doing as my deadline is on Friday as well. I'll read the full versions later.

hope that helps .

thanks for the consolation - am not the only one 16 months in and still struggling with a transfer report.

if it's any consolation, i pretty much have around 30 to read and incorporate by the end of tomorrow. thanks bakuvia.

Thanks for the replies, and thanks for the dated folder idea bakuvia! It is good to know others are in the same boat jojo... I am just not used to having to get so much done so quickly i guess I like taking my sweet time on these things

My advice is use Google scholar, you can see which papers have cited another particular paper. So you could put in the references you have and see which more current papers have also used them.

Good luck!

Thanks rutherford... finally got the transfer thesis done last Friday and had the transfer viva, and all went well - what a relief!!! Advice will definitely be useful for future reference though :)