How is everyone doing today at the end of the week?

Hope it has been a good week for you guys. Mine has not been productive as I had hoped but been poorly with a sickness bug :/ so I will let myself off ;)

I will but I have requested a meeting too with no response to that either, so I am not really sure what to do! Thank you for your sympathies though, hopefully this may be a short term thing!

Good idea DrJeckyll! I do inform them of when I plan to submit individual chapters to them (numerous times) and I just don't get anything in return. I mean, even a 'I am really busy but I will try to have this back to you by *insert date*' would be appreciated. I have told them my planned submission date of the full drafts a few times too. I may have to send something weekly, like a 'countdown' full of exclamation marks and emoticons 'It's 3 weeks till I submit my draft to you!!!!! :D :D :D' etc.

Possibly, but I didn't have that much support from them in the first two years. Meetings were more frequent, but getting feedback often took months. I think that in the third year this becomes more frustrating when you have submission fast approaching, and how quickly you get submitted depends on getting timely feedback. Also, I think it may be due to them getting some new full time students; they are spending a lot of time with them. I do not mind that but when emails are ignored constantly, but they are responding to their other students and emailing you completely unrelated things to your work, it feels a bit insulting really.

Sorry to hear that MrDoctor. How did it all work out in the end? Or are you still writing up? I get the same in some PhD meetings too...sometimes completely irrelevant conversations.

Mine goes through phases...they were really really bad in first year at getting anything back to me. I felt held back as a result. We had a discussion about it and they apologised...just that they are *so* busy etc. etc. but who isn't? Second year, they were a bit more prompt but I barely sent them anything as I was doing field work. Third year...they returned one chapter after a few months, ignored all my emails about others I have sent. I am dreading submitting my final draft because it'll probably take them a year to read it *sigh* Mine doesn't even give me a date, nor responds to prompts!

Started a separate thread on this before realising this 'moans' thread is here...

Supervisors who just no longer acknowledge your existence in the third year!

Hi all,

Not so much looking for advice, more just a venting space!

Does/did anyone elses supervisor just seemingly abandon them in their final year? I have never 'depended' on my supervisor as I work very independently. Even for my first couple of years I would only see them once every few months. Now I am writing up, I send chapters when I complete them which either does not get acknowledged or takes months for them to read anything. They now just ignore any emails about my thesis, but recently have just begun emailing me with favors not related to my PhD or publishing or anything that is relevant to my progress.

I just think it's a bit rude when they are ignoring any correspondence about my work, but then only contact me when they want a favor doing and do not even acknowledge my other emails. I am working very hard to complete before my funding runs out...every day, weekends, late into the night, and I have begun to find this quite anger inducing really!

Did anyone else have a similar experience? Sharing your grumbles too may help! Also, do not get me wrong, I am a very patient person but I think we all get a tad frustrated when writing up.

I agree with the above posts.

Publishing is not an essential part of the PhD process. If you can get them, great, if not, it is ok as it is not a requirement. As others have said above, you can certainly send publications out once the PhD process is over. I would imagine that would be an easier approach as it will be a case of converting chapters into papers.

I had one of those days today Chickpea haha I spent all day reading articles that will probably inform a total of one short paragraph of my discussion chapter.

I think it is a good idea to broadly state key findings in the introduction as they are normally part of the abstract, yet I would write them in a broad overarching way rather than a list of very particular findings in the introduction. But that is just my opinion!

Oh my goodness, 73% is awesome. I am not sure how to calculate this, I would say I am 80% there. I have 1/4 of my final findings chapter to go, then a conclusion. BUT I have to do some major editing on my introduction and literature review. I have also kept discovering things that are relevant to a findings chapter I submitted to my sup one month ago that I would like to weave into it when editing the final draft.

Where did the PhD go guys? I remember my induction day like it was yesterday!

Could you put it in the conclusion? I think this would be the best place to include a summary, even if just a bullet pointed list, of your key findings, otherwise you may find the conclusion chapter repeats this additional 'key findings' chapter? The key findings will be in your discussion, but it sounds as though you want to summarise them after discussing to make it clearer (have I interpreted this correctly?) If so, I think the best place would be your conclusion.

Yes, wishing you both (Chickpea and Hugh) a productive day tomorrow!

I blame the unhealthy sleeping pattern I developed last year when I was drowning in teaching work. I'm most productive early in the morning yet I really should learn that rising early won't happen if I stay up until midnight!

I think moving the recommendations to the end sounds good :) I think sometimes the hardest part is planning how you are going to structure a chapter/collection of chapters. It took me a couple of months last year of just thinking, note-making and mind-map constructing to work out how to structure my findings chapters. I even have a mini introductory chapter just for my findings to justify why I have structured them in the way that I have- maybe you could do something like this once you have completed your findings and discussion to set the reader up for how you have organised it and why?

Also, I am glad I am not the only one who gave in to an afternoon nap!

I am not sure about that- I am dreading the LR as I feel that will be much tougher :/

I think that there will always be new findings emerging and it may be that you need to put a 'cap' on integrating new things (unless they are huge and groundbreaking) into your discussion at some point. I doubt the odd paper between now and submission will result in a huge shake up of your findings. If you feel really strongly about integrating something that you find during the writing of your LR, just go to your findings/discussion and leave yourself a note to refer to that particular paper etc. All it takes sometimes is a couple of sentences to integrate a newer piece of literature into a chapter. I am planning on finishing my discussion/conclusions then integrating some of the literature I have cited there in my LR (but not every single piece mentioned as that would not be possible). There are some broader 'themes' in my findings that would be good to include a section on in my LR for instance. I am planning to do one final 'sweep' of journals when writing my LR and only include new things if I think it is undoubtedly necessary; I will be very selective of which new literatures will be included.

On another note, I have had a wildly unproductive day and time is just tick tick ticking away. I had a nap earlier even though I got a lot of sleep last night, and I am just sitting here panicking and eating birthday cake...oh dear!

Thank you for the birthday wishes Chickpea!

Hugh- I feel it is best to complete the conclusion first. I am going to be writing my conclusion over May-June before returning to do some heavy editing (or a complete rewrite) of my Literature Review. The only reason I have for doing it in this order is that I feel on a psychological level that it will separate 'finishing' a full (rough) draft and 'editing' the thesis. I feel this may make me more motivated in tackling the Literature Review, edits on my Methods/Methodology and completing the introduction (which I gave up on last year and is just pages of bullet points and quotes!) Not sure if this helps, but I suppose my best advice would be do whatever you feel more motivated to do yourself; if you follow a pattern that you feel unsure about your motivation levels may drop.