I agree with Keenbeen - I don't even feel confident when I'm helping undergrads. I can't imagine how I'd feel if I was an undergrad again and tutoring the year below me - I'd be pretty awful I'm sure! We're not allowed to mark exams/tests here, only homework which doesn't count for anything. I wouldn't be happy if I was an undergrad with an essay marked by some student in the year above. It feels much better to have had it marked by some doting old prof!!

Oh, and for those of you who've had the viva experience, did you find a lot of mistakes/typos between submission and the viva? I've typed a list, and I'm almost onto the fifth A4 page! They're all minor really, but I don't want the examiners to think that I didn't read the thesis before submitting!

I didn't have a mock viva - nobody in my department seems to. I'd agree with Bilbo about thinking of answers to the questions she mentioned. As for my examiner's work, I haven't cited any of his papers, so don't really know anything about what he does. I don't think it's particularly similar to my work. But I guess I should have a look... :p

Congratulations Doc!! (up)

Well I'm in exactly the same position as you - I have my viva next Thursday. I'm finding it hard to prepare too, and feel that I don't know enough. But I'm just telling myself that I can't be expected to know everything, and trying to read as much as possible. Having said that, I don't want to overdo it - I was feeling really tired and drained, so didn't do any work at the weekend, which has hopefully helped.

I'm sure you'll be fine next week. Although it's a long time since you submitted, your work will come back to you - after all, you wrote it! Be proud of the fact that you've submitted and got this far, especially as you've been through a lot recently, which I'm sure was really hard for you to cope with.

Think about your motivation for choosing your particular subject area. Was it something you liked as an undergrad and wanted to continue? Is your work similar to work by others, maybe your supervisor? Maybe part of your plan was to expand/generalise these results?

Good luck with the preparation, and don't stress!! 8-)

All the best Cakeman! Sure you'll be fine :)

I think so :p Although that's not the programmes I use, from a quick google search it seems that proTexT contains everything you need (the Latex package plus something to view it in - I use winedt, which seems to be included as part of proTexT). And jabref is for your bibliography. I've only ever used bibtex, so can't say much about jabref.

I think that should be enough to get you started. If you have winedt as part of the proTexT package, you just need to open it up to start a new document. You need some preamble at the beginning, say

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\begin{document}

Document text here

\end{document}

Then you click the Latex button in the top panel. You'll be asked to save the document, then a black box appears and will run the programme. Any error messages will show up here. If all's ok, the box will disappear, and you then click the dvi button - the magnifying glass under the Latex button, and you should see your document.
To create a pdf, you click the pdflatex rather than the latex button, and then the red kind of triangle adobe symbol under the pdf latex button to see the document. You can also do all of this from the accessories menu.

I'll stop rambling - hope this makes some sort of sense, although if you're not using winedt, then just ignore what I've said! Two useful things:

- Clicking the capital Greek sigma button gives a nice set of shortcuts for all sorts of symbols, useful in equations and so on

- If you're using bibtex (and I presume the same will hold for jabref), you need to save the bibtex/jabref file in the same folder as your Latex file, otherwise Latex won't be able to find it.

Hope all goes well! :-)

Yay! :) I'm sure you'll be a Latex convert in no time!!

I use Latex all the time, and it's far better than Word if you have a lot of symbols/equations. Although I've never used Word for my research work, Latex just 'looks' better imo. Yes, formatting never changes, it writes in a lovely font, and once you get the hang of it, it's really easy to use.

Satchi - once you've written your Latex document, you can view it as a pdf and send it to your supervisor that way. So even if they don't use Latex, they'll still be able to read it.

Leaving the office to go and get coffee and cake :) And taking my work with me ;)

Oh, and you often get some rather amusing results in Google when searching for help on Latex... ;)

I'd definitely recommend Latex. I have loads of equations, so am pretty much forced to use it, but when I see theses in Word, Latex just looks far superior! It's not difficult once you get the hang of it, and that's coming from someone with absolutely no clue about programming. There's a really good guide, Latex in 138 mins I think it's called, that tells you practically everything you need to know.

It's not just academia that's suffering - I've been looking for a non-academic job for months, and have had a few interviews and many rejections. I now face the prospect of having no job after my viva in a few weeks. It'll be hard to get even a 'shelf-stacking' job as so many people are applying for those, and who would want to take on someone with a PhD when they'll probably leave the job when they find a better one?

It's definitely a bad time to be job hunting!

Good luck Amanda, I'm sure you'll do fine. I'm not having a mock...for some reason, nobody here seems to!

Hi Amanda, I'm in the same boat as my viva's coming up in a few weeks. I'm not very sure about possible questions either, but I'm going through my thesis at the moment to make sure I understand exactly what I've written/calculated. I've also thought about possible questions like why I chose to do the work, and what I would do differently if I started again.

How are you feeling about yours? Is it soon? When I found out the date, I was incredibly worried and actually had trouble sleeping just thinking about it. But now that I've started preparing, I've calmed down and feel a lot more relaxed. I just keep telling myself that I can't be expected to know everything!

Good luck with your preparation :)