Hi 404 and Sue, thanks for the replies! I think I am just going to get as much done in the next two weeks as I can and then enjoy the time off - which will be about 2.5 weeks in total, yippeee!!! I will be coming back to the craziest month ever but at least I will be all nice and relaxed :-)

Hi All, it's been ages since I've been on here but desperately need some motivation at the moment!!!

I submitted my thesis last July, which was coming towards the end of my fourth year of the PhD... my supervisor was positive about it and told me to submit. However, I did have a sneaking suspicion at the time that he hadn't read it all that thoroughly, but i didn't have the guts to say it to him! (He's also my boss as I lecture part-time and he's head of department).

Anyway I was supposed to have the viva early last September but then all of a sudden it was postponed for a week, then another and another... and eventually in mid November (!) they told me that the viva wasn't going ahead and I would have to do a list of revisions before it would?!? Very confusing... I don't know exactly who passed down this order, but it wasn't the external examiner because my supervisor forwarded me an email from her that said she was still waiting for the viva to happen - so she doesn't even know about the plan to do revisions??? I spent all November and December talking to all sorts of people in the uni, heads of everything, trying to get a straight answer on what is going on but I couldn't... so anyway in January I said "well I guess I should just do the revisions then!!!"

By that stage it had been almost six months since I submitted so I had lost any momentum that I had going last Summer... then also I have a bigger teaching load this semester so I haven't been getting as much done as I should! Also, I am getting married in three weeks, and there is only one month after I come back until this year's submission deadline... so I have about 7/8 weeks left and SOOO much work to do. Finally, my grandmother died last week :-( So my plans to get a ton of work done over the Easter break kind of faded away. It's now the last day of Easter hols (from teaching!) and I am so far behind...

I guess the real problem is that I just have zero motivation at the moment. I want to enjoy the buildup to the wedding but I am so stressed that thoughts of wedding are now synonymous with thoughts of deadlines!!! But I have to get loads done before the wedding because there's not going to be enough time afterwards... If I miss the graduation deadline AGAIN this year... AGGGHHHH!!! It doesn't even bear thinking about!

I'm sorry for the long and rambling post - but does anyone have any advice??? Please tell me something very motivating that will make me want to work around the clock for the next three weeks and magically get loads done???

You should watch this video - it's based on the work of Biggs about different types of learners and different types of teaching... very interesting!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5629273206953884671#

I can feel a massive debate coming on... yes ok maybe in some fields you could technically do a PhD in a year, IF you already knew every single thing you needed to know, had all your participants/whatever lined up and had no problem churning out the written word. But if you could do all that, you wouldn't need to do a PhD in the first place!!! In hindsight (i.e. if I knew then what I know now) I could have probably done mine in 2 instead of 4, but that's the whole point, you DON'T know it all at the start!!!

ANYWAY, the original question was... how long to write up? I wrote my thesis in 8 months (like you, practically had nothing written until that point), but I was still doing data collection and analysis and had a massive amount of teaching too... So maybe you could do it in 6 if you can devote all your time to it? I also felt I had it 'written' in my head as you put it... I found myself wishing for a little magic tape recorder where I could just say it all and it would somehow appear on the pages rather than having to painstakingly write it all out myself... if that makes sense!!!

Slowmo, I think a chapter a month is very realistic... I think 4 months for revising seems a bit long though but I suppose that is down to your supervisor rather than you! Mine was not too picky thankfully, although I hope that doesn't mean he missed things that my examiners might spot!!! :$

Yes! Four of my friends also doing PhDs have done this, all at different stages of the PhD - one has even had a second baby recently! I'm sure it is tough to juggle everything but by no means impossible :-)

I submitted my thesis a week ago today! And I know I should be delighted... I never thought I'd even get that far and I always said if I could just get as far as submitting a thesis I would be happy... Ha! The amount of times I have said in my life "I'll be happy when..."

Anyway I have two weeks off before I need to start preparing for the viva (first bit of time off in years!!!) and I am finding myself spending it moping around the house worrying about jobs/money/you name it! Myself and my partner are planning on moving to the UK (from Ireland) so I am frantically trying to get a job - I had one interview so far and I was really well-matched with the job description but I still didn't get the job! I can't find anything anywhere near as suitable so I am now just applying for totally random things... But surely if I couldn't get the job where I had everything on the job description, then I won't be able to get these other ones either (where I'm not that well-matched at all)?

Also I am already planning the move from this house when we don't even know where we are going yet (we are going to stay with relatives in the meantime), trying to plan our wedding which is next May (in Ireland, so I kind of need to have it all sorted before we go!)... Arrgghhhh!!! Oh yeah and I'm broke from having to do the last few months of my research un-funded...

Anyway I think I just need to vent!!! But also just wondering does anyone else suffer from the "I'll be happy when..." syndrome, where as soon as you get the thing you wanted, you have 10,000 more things to worry about instead, resulting in a chronic state of unhappiness???

And it's my birthday tomorrow :-( Haven't even planned anything as I just feel like crawling under the duvet and pretending that the real world doesn't exist anymore...

Sorry for ranting!!! Any advice on how to just cheer up/chill out would be much appreciated!

Yes we can agree/disagree, of course! I just thought it was unusual to see such a long and well thought-out discussion first thing on a Sunday morning - my brain is not normally in full working order by that time :-)

Anyway I think we can all agree that this thread has become quite complicated following a lengthy process of complexification ;-)

Hahaha how ironic! The word is a 'complexification' of itself!!!

I was going to say the same thing, you kind of answered your own question in your post! Sounds like you would really prefer the first one... is it that you think you are more likely to have a succesful application with one of the 'lesser' options? If that makes sense... In other words, going for what you think you can get, rather than what you actually want? There is a famous quotation about that, can't remember it now, but it basically says - go for what you really want!

Hmmm... you passed your viva and got a job, sounds more like a dream than a nightmare to me!!!

Just kidding... sort of ;-) It must be annoying though, is it going to delay your graduation?

I used to get that, not so much any more :-( How I handled it is to dress in a professional manner so that you set yourself apart from the hoodie-wearing students!!!

Hi Servo, thought I would reply as nobody else has! I think the reason nobody has offered you advice is that there are probably not too many people in your situation!!! I have no idea what point you might need to re-start from, maybe you could find out from your old university or universities that you are interested in attending?

I have to say, you are braver than me, I can't imagine going through the PhD process a second time!!! Best of luck with it :-)

I'm sad to see that 'a' is being sorely under-represented here!!! Naseema, definitely, go for A!!! You won't regret it!!!!!