Good to see so many people about on this thread.

Hope you're all had a good week.

I took a few days off to help a sick relative last week but back in the swing of things now. I'm trying to get a full draft together for August and then aiming to submit before Christmas. Scary part is having had zero feedback on any of the 3 chapters I've already drafted. My supervisor seems confident in me but I'm worried he's going to read them all together and give me tons and tons of suggested changes! We'll see.

I've also cut my daily writing goals down from 1500 words to 500 words. I'm the type of person that needs a daily goal and 'to do' list but I was setting it too high, reaching 1500 on some days and feeling good but much less on other days where I had to do lots of reading to go back to. Hoping this change will help my daily motivation, starting tomorrow :)

Hope you're all having a good weekend and the writing is going ok.

GM.

I have an experience that isn't exactly conference specific but it's intellectual property related...

I was advised by my supervisor while in the first year of my PhD to meet with a student in his 4th year. We were looking at the same topic but from different disciplinary perspectives.

He was incredibly friendly and suggested some literature, conferences and key people in the field to get in touch with. He also sent me a report of some of his early findings. I thought this was all very nice of him.

He then asked if he could take a look at my 1st year progression report, which I had just submitted. I send him this and he responded with a HUGE list of suggestions and comments. I was a bit taken aback because I had never asked for feedback and the report had already been submitted. I should have found this helpful but instead it just knocked my confidence.

None of the above bothered me too much, it was a month later when I bumped into him at a conference and he said thanks for my report, it had "cleared a blockage in one of his chapters". Now I didn't mind him reading my report but he used one of my central original ideas to fill a gap in his own work and later when I read his thesis, I easily located the paragraph about my ideas. This was a little disheartening but I have no idea if I am even entitled to get annoyed about this. I'm still very much in the dark when it comes to intellectual property.

The moral of the tale is just to be careful....

GM x

Hello everyone,

Bad news is I haven't finished my chapter yet. Had some family issues to attend to and took a couple of days off.

Good news is my supervisor is pleased with my progress and our meeting has given me a real boost. Just need to remind myself of that when I'm struggling.

I'm tutoring this afternoon so no more PhD work for me today. Will be catching up on Sunday I think.

Hope you've all had a productive week and have a lovely weekend.

GM

Hi Tulip,

Sounds like you haven't got too much left to do then? Sure you'll get there. Well done on getting your third results chapter redrafted.

I have a supervision meeting next week, I'm a bit apprehensive about it as it's been over two months since the last one (supervisor off ill), hoping he doesn't feel I'm too far behind. Goal is to send this chapter to him the day before :) It's a good motivation anyway and keeps me on track.

Have a lovely Easter break (if you're managing to have one). I'm having Sunday off! :)

GM

Phew lemonjuice! I feel better about the two episodes of The Simpsons I've just watched now :) My self-discipline dwindles when other people are on holiday. I know I need to set up a good little reward system e.g. 500 words = 1 episode of House of Cards and some chocolate!

I'm aiming to finish my lit review for Tuesday. Meaning 1000 words a day over the Easter weekend. You're not alone! :)

Thanks alot awsoci! That's incredibly helpful. Although I have things like impact factors in the back of mind for when I publish my own first authored papers, I'd not considered checking the impact factors of the papers I'm co-author, this seems silly now :)

About the chapters, one is a prestigious publisher of practitioners materials and therefore should work in my favour in terms of applicability of research I guess. The other is a research methods chapter in a quality press so I'm feeling like both of these might hold a little more weight than I'd considered before.

Thanks a lot! Next stop - first authored papers from my PhD!

GM

Well done Tulip on getting your chapter sent to your supervisor - always a good feeling.

I'm still relatively early on in the writing process but late on in terms of time! My funded three years ends in September and we've agreed a submission date of the end of November. I still feel this is a very tight deadline as I have so much to write let alone re-write but we'll see :) When are you planning to submit Tulip?

I did manage my 900 words on Thursday - 1000 words actually in the end but then only 500 yesterday because I had to go back to the literature. I'm having today off and then working and writing tomorrow.

Have a great weekend!

GM

Hi,

I'm planning on submitting my thesis later this year and starting to look at post doc opportunities. I can't help but notice that others in a range of disciplines have many publications at this point. I have 3 published papers that I'm a co-author on and 2 book chapters that I co-authored.

Bearing in mind that I'm in the social sciences, does this seem low, average or high to others? I'm concerned that it's low but my supervisor (who did his PhD in the 70's) doesn't feel that publications are a priority.

Thanks

GM

Hi Tulip,

Great that there's a couple of us reviving this thread. I hope you managed to make progress on your results chapter revisions yesterday.

I only managed 400 'new' words yesterday as I had to re-write, edit and locate some more papers too. On the plus side, I feel my writing quality is ok. I've set a more sensible goal of 900 words today (odd number but gets to me to a rounded total). I spent about 3 weeks annotating, organising and collating my notes to get to this point which is why my daily goals are so high!

Wishing you a productive day :)

GM

Has anybody got any experience in applying for these. I'm looking to submit my thesis around the end of the year and my supervisor recommended I apply for a post doc fellowship like the Marie Curie fellowship. He has since been off sick and I'm not sure when he'll be back. I was wondering how other people went about applying and how they found the process?

Trying to keep my writing motivation up by thinking about my postdoc opportunities :)

Thanks

GM

Congratulations BlackTrinity and Wanderingbit! I love to read success stories.

I thought I'd attempt to pick this thread up again as I'm feeling in need of a some accountability partners.

Today I managed a whole 1200 words towards my literature review chapter. My goal is to finish this by the end of the month. I've got a super productive day for a change and towards the end was really enjoying writing.

Tomorrow (Wednesday 25th) my goals are

1)To write 1000 words towards my literature review chapter.
2) Finally get around to emailing my collaborator with an update.
3) Write and submit abstract for conference.

GM

Hmmm... I'd not thought of this. I'm also struggling with my literature review. This might be an idea!

Thanks very much for this. I think I'd save myself a little stress if I just accepted that doing a PhD is isolating. I read somewhere that before you start a PhD you should apologise in advance to friends and family for not seeing much of them!

I've cherished the alone time and space up until now when I'm currently working 12 hour days, money is running out and so is time. I'm probably in need of a couple of days off and a bit of perspective.

I couldn't find any recent posts on this topic so it's a good chance for me to vent something that is bugging me. Thanks in advance for reading.

I was wondering how much time people spend with friends and family during their PhD study years?

Not only do I suffer from the common 'time off from PhD guilt' but also from the 'not seeing friends and family enough guilt'. Often I'll work Monday to Saturday on my PhD projects and then honestly the last thing I feel like doing on my one day off is spending time with friends and family who struggle to understand the whole PhD thing.

I live with my boyfriend and we get a couple of hours each evening together which is nice and keeps me sane. However as I've reached my final funded year I've found myself working longer hours and becoming increasingly apologetic with my boyfriend for not being able to spend quite as much time with him.

I haven't got a close family anyway and few close friends but typically my contact with others is something like this:

Mum - 30 minute phone conversation every couple of weeks
Brothers - Text/Facebook/Phone call a couple of times a month
Grandparents - 2 to 3 visits per year
Best friend - meet up for lunch/sports once a month
Friend A - An hour sports session once every 2 weeks
Friend B - 50 mile trip to see them twice a year.
Everyone else - occasional facebook messages and "oh we must meet up soon!" type conversations

Day to day I have little contact with friends and family besides my boyfriend. I get on with the other PhD students in my building really really well but all of our relationships feel very superficial and I don't know how to change that or if I should. I'm an introverted but confident and approachable person and I 'know' lots of people.

I tend to feel equally lonely and equally wanting to be left alone. Does anyone else get this?

Thanks

GM x