It's sometimes difficult to get people with exatly the experience you are looking for - sounds definitley worth applying to me. It's always very daunting applying close to home. I'm applying for a postdoc in a dept I have some links with and I am very nervous about it. I have felt pretty confident about the PhD - but now I feel very intimidated about being a postdoc. My first reaction was not to apply in case I just made a fool of myself - but that is rediculous - nothing ventured nothing gained!

I'm in a science field and I wrote up mainly at the end - or rather, the analysis and writing up were done together over the course of about 9 months. I did some writing before - but very little was used.

It's unusual to self-fund a PhD in any applied science field. You would have to get a pretty fantastic job to make that expense worthwhile (especially if you are paying international student fees). If I were you, I would try to get a graduate entry level job in the field with a view to getting the kind of position where you can work on your PhD as part of your job.

A lot depends on what kind of project you are talingabout. What subject are you thinking about? Self-funding is more the norm in some areas than others.

Ruby yes I'm focussed on getting finished rather than adding anything. I'm hoping I will be in time to get my viva before the summer break. Getting a bit irritable and snippy - hopefully I will be a new and improved person when this thing is finally done.

Since I can choose the style I'll just choose APA or Havard and use page numbers for direct quotes only. Thanks!

I would take it. It's not uncommon at all. My PhD supervisor was my Masters supervisor. I didn't apply for any other PhD and for family reasons I can't move. Good supervisors are like gold dust!

So just what do you get out of this after the work you have put in? I think I would definitley want to talk about this - calmly and assertively.

''But I can't tell him to get lost as I still have to work with him on the initial project.'' Well, he still has to work with you too and he hasn't let that stop him. You can raise this firmly without having to walk away completely. In future, make sure you have something in writing before getting involved in joint projects. It does seem to be a recurring problem in academia - taking people's work and ideas to get funding/papers that are then not shared.

That's how I feel Ruby. My urge for perfectionism is seriously overshadowed by my urge to submit. Every time I see a potential problem or missing doodad I just think - what is the quickest and simplest solution? The delete button can be helpful.......

Do you know when your viva will be?

I will fortify myself with red wine.

I've also got a bottle of expresso coffee liqueur which I have been saving for the mad final push to submit.

Can I get confidence intervals for Spearman's ranked correlations (or the difference between them)?? I've read contradictory reports from absolutely not, to treat them like Pearson's r, and do some kind of boot-strapping. Please don't tell me to normalise the data - the transformations render it meaningless.

There is no dept style as such - you choose a style. There are very few formatting requirements altogether.

I can't google for the pages as they are not quotes or even nearly quotes. I'll go back over the book entries - I'm pretty sure I've only quoted from books I actually own, thankfully. So I could just set aside an eveing to trawl through them (groan.....).

OK I've had a look through the Havard system and they recommend page numbers, espeically for quotes - so I think that's the advice for me! I don't fancy trawling through looing for page numbers - I'm trying to submit on April 1st :p

Looks like I need to standardize my online refs too - they are a pain.

I'm not remotely law-assiciated - more biology/genetics/psychology. So thankfully there are very few book references. Doing the bibiography is fantastically tedious. But hopefully the end is in sight8-)

I'm allowed to use basically any referecing style as long as it's consistent. Not sure what you'd call the style I'm using but it's fairly commonplace I think. There are no actual quotes (well, maybe one somewhere...) - so is it only actual quotes that need a page ref? I thought it was basically any information from a book rather than a journal. I'm much too paranoid to put in random numbers. But I am wondering what to do with the few that have page numbers - I guess I will have to leave them out as well for consistency.

I do wish I'd been a bit more thorough about referencing my references so I know exactly where to find them again (and no they are not all in Endnote - that would be too easy....).

I'm on a mission to submit very soon and I'm checking all my references are in place. They were not as well organised as I intended unfortuntely. They are mostly journal papers but there are a few book references. I vaguely remember that you are supposed to put in the actual page number when you cite a book - but unfortunately in most instances I have no note of the actual page number! How necessary is this - anyone else referenced books without page numbers???

Personally I would tend to agree with Ginga - unless you feel you are becoming ill with the stress, in which case, you could get a dr's note to support some time out.