Is it possible to do part time or on a job share basis? Not ideal but then you could split your time between that town and where you are now?

Sorry about your dog :-(

Really? This is news to me. As far as I was aware qualifications like a PGCE or PDipEd were desirable but not essential at Uni level? I've been looking at teaching jobs, lecturering and fellows, and have not seen one ask for qualifications like that as part of their essential criteria, and I've only seen it once or twice in the desirable. Those were all for jobs starting september/october 2010.
I thought it was a case of a PhD, expertise and experience was expected. I've been a teaching assistant at undergrad level and I wasn't asked for any specific qualifications either. Which qualification do you mean?

I wouldn't worry about a gap between your first degree and the PhD. It's more uncommon for there not to be a gap from what I've seen. Often people will get other qualifications, try a different career path etc before deciding on a PhD. In the intake of PhD students I was in only 2 out of 9 had gone straight on from their 1st degree to the PhD without a gap.

Hope I do as well as everyone else seems to be!

Goal 1: Get my references up to date so when it comes to the end I don't miss any out.

Goal 2: An hour of exercise. Shall dust off the bike and the weights!

Goal 3: If I actually get the other two done and I'll redraft my abstract.

I would have just gone straight on with chapter 8 but I'm waiting for feedback on it.

Hurray! Goal achieved. Plan written, checked and sent. Worringly though the plan was already at 1.5k words. Doesn't bode well for the full chapter. Or maybe it does. I've not decided.

Time to get some job applications done!

Sorry to hear about the dogs :-( Hope things work out.

My goals:

Make detailed plan of my final chapter and get it sent, or ready to send tomorrow, to my supervisor.

Then I can actually crack on with writing it when he gets back to me, or if we need to discuss it in person I can get on with my abstract/references instead.

I think the no is roughly at the right level (it's where I voted too) for general academia. There was a paper, and there's a book somewhere on the levels of atheism versus theism in Academia and what not, and it was about a 70/30 split between there.

It's just something about the mind set I think, especially in research, that doesn't synch up well with complete belief. We're empiricists by nature, and wouldn't take any assertions in our area of interest on blind faith alone, so it's not too suprising that it extends to other areas.

I'm in Psychology too but I found chances to teach a bit thin on the ground. I've only taught on one 2nd year module and done some technical 3rd year undergrad supervising. Am rather envious of your experience!
:-)

It's as Bewildered said. Obviously very important if you go down the teaching route, less so if you go down the research route. Usually if you go down the research route there are chances to gain some teaching experience here and there so you can move over into a teaching position with greater ease later.

If you're approaching your final year then you've got two semesters of possible teaching. See if your Uni has any teaching assistant spaces going. I only managed to get a semester of TA experience over my PhD because of the way the positions were given out You might be able to supplement the experience on your C.V or personal statement by including whatever teaching experience you pick up alongside presentations and assisting with supervision if you get the chance. They're all part of the same skill set really.

I've been applying speculatively for lecturing positions but I'm not holding out much hope. Some advertise and mention they are suitable for the recently qualified, which i assume means they take into account that there may not be a wealth of teaching experiennce present in the candidates but, because of the way jobs are at the moment, even those positions are going to be highly competitive, with a lot of later career applicants with more experience.

I've seen and applied for a few teaching fellow positions though as they seem to require less teaching experience. Very much the first step on the teaching ladder aimed at the recently qualified and perhaps not vastly experienced, as far as I'm aware.

I'm rambliing :-) Sorry. In short, try and get what experience you can. It's essential and as Bewildered said how can you know you even want to teach if you've not given it ago. When you do come to the application stage for post-doc jobs and you're unsure if you have enough experience it's always possible to send an informal query about the level of experience they're expecting.

Same here.

If you have stats in your work, and eventually thesis, you need to be able to do it yourself. As Sneaks says you might run into problems later if you don't know how to do it again, don't understand how you did it or even what it means/what to look for. You'll only end up getting caught out by a stray question. Or you'll end up getting stuck again later in your career and either have to admit you don't know how to do that stats or get help all over again.

If the stats you need to do haven't been covered in your research training then you need to either teach yourself or get your supervisor to take you through it so you can learn. If someone does it for you then you'll suffer in the long run, no matter how well meaning he help is.

======= Date Modified 10 Jul 2010 14:04:36 =======
Going into a viva with publications can be a good thing but you're making the assumption that they're going to get published. Not to be harsh but it's going to be more difficult than you think. I might sound a little patronising here but the publication process isn't as simple as writing it up and sending it to your fave journal. It's very likely they're going to be sent back for corrections and resubmission. This is after a potentially long review period (I think reviews take longer over the summer months. Might just be me though!). And then when you resubmit again you may not get them accepted. It's possible that by the time you finally get them accepted that you'll be at the crunch time for your thesis.

Some journals can be quite picky too. Not just in their standards but in what they'll accept. Some journals I've heard of won't accept a paper if it's been submitted elsewhere. You might end up aiming for the top in this case, missing and finding you've not got many other options for a similar level of publication.

Ultimately you're the one who knows your research best, and where you are at progress wise but I'd advise against publication at this point in time. If your supervisor is against it and isn't being supportive there'll be a reason.

Yup, I did a big plan. So each chapter was broken down into sections, and then each section had a few brief notes on what I needed to include so

Chapter 1
1.1 The background to X
- X theory
- Key study
- Important impications of theory for future work

1.2 Alternate theory Y
- Y Theory
- Key study
- Implications and contrasts with X

1.3 Modern Influences on X and Y debate
- etc

and so on. For my first two chapters anyway. My other chapters are experiments so the breakdown on those is a lot more standard (Intro, design, procedure, results). I'm writing up another outline for my general discussion though along the same lines.

I'm writing up but I don't have a daily timetable. I try and set goals for each day but I've found sometimes you have good days and sometimes you'll have bad ones so having a definate daily timetable can be a bit depressing. I've just stuck to a timetable of hand in dates I agreed with my supervisor. It gives me something to work towards and because I know my supervisor is expecting things to be handed in on certain dates I know someone is going to hold me accountable for it all.

Mine was and is, after meeting my supervisor mid june:

Chapters 1 and 2 *Jun 25th*
Chapers 2, 4 and 5 *Jul 2nd*
Chapters 6 & 7 *Jul 7th*

Corrections on 1 and 2 *Jul 12th*
Corrections on 2,4,5,6 & 7 *Jul 19th*
Abstract, Overview & General discussion *Jul 25th*

Corrections and complete draft *Jul 30th*


But differently people need different write up times I guess. Different subjects too. I'm in psychology and I'm confident of getting it done. I had bits of procedure and results already written up before I started this june and I don't expect to go beyond 60k words. Other subjects though have different details and expectations I guess.

And it depends alot on your supervisor getting back to you in time for the next bit too. I mean I'm still waiting for complete feedback on certain bits. Whether I get it or not determines whether I'll carry on and still be on time.

It's an odd process. I'm finding it to be a pretty isolated one as well. I get up, I work, I go to sleep and inch towards the finish line. I know that there are other people at Uni doing the same but I only find out where they are and how things are through vague reports here and there. It's like we're all boxed off somewhere, chained to a computer.

I'm glad I'm in the write up stage though as it means that soon, or sooner rather than later, I'll be able to explain to family and friends when I'm going to be finished. Maybe it's just my nearest and dearest but they don't seem to understand the flexibility of the end date. Cept my girlfriend who receives the lions share of my moaning and my uncle and auntie who are going through the phd motions too.

I like how productive the writing up can feel though. I mean I know most of what I write is going to end up covered in red ink and sent back to me but I like seeing it all there and put together. I've got chapters 1- 7 drafted to a reasonable quality and it just feels nice to be able to look at them and think, 'This is what I've done'. So long as I don't dwell on that fact it's almost 3 years work it feels good!

I would rather be testing though. There's something about getting and analysing new data. Plus I've got a shed load of experiment ideas that I can't wait to try out. Just need to finish this, and get a job where I'll have time to do them :-(



Same thing here. Bed, desk, chair all within a few feet of each other. During the day the bed plays host to books and papers. Sometimes I can't be bothered to move them all out and just shove them to one side.


What I really don't like about writing up though is you might spend ages putting together a lot ofwork to show to your supervisor, you'll feel good about it, you'll hand it in and then....nothing. No relief, no real weight off the shoulders. It's just onto the next thing, the next self imposed deadline.

Laptop infront of the TV is always a good idea Sneaks :-) I'd give it a go but mine overheats.

I've done it all :-) One more sweep to reorganise some of the descriptive stats and thats those chapter drafts done!

I think it's along the lines of what Jepsonclough said. You should be safe with putting something like 'The methodolgy replicated that of X' or 'A similar methodology to that of X was used...'.

Then it'll need writing out again, and I think so long as it's not exactly word for word you should be okay. As you'll have already given credit to the other publication. Like jepson said though it's worth checking with your supervisor and the individual journal guidelines just in case.