5 spaces left in the slack chat, send me your email on DM if you would like to be added!

I use the same colour but less 'intense' - not sure the technical term but I basically reduce the saturation to about 75%

Great thread, haha. The font lover in me is enjoying this.

Personally, I prefer a serif font for main body text. A lot of the san-serif fonts don't actually have a 'proper' italics, and just use an oblique. Since I use italics a lot in my work, I like them to look as good as the regular text. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Calibri does have a proper italics set, so its got that going for it.
Personally I don't like Calibri, but I think it's perfectly acceptable as a thesis font. Garamond is a big no no IMO, like IntoTheSpiral said, it can be hard to read, and I don't think all the letters sit along the same base line...?

I think there are nicer ways to format headings than using a different font, but again that's down to taste.

I realise I haven't helped. I'd stick with what a lot of people seem to like, which is Arial or Times New Roman (shock, horror!) and just get it submitted...When it comes to work related stuff, its often a good idea to choose the path of least resistance.

HI everyone, the chat is set up and the first two invites sent out. I think I can invite 7 more people so DM me your email address if interested :-)

Edit: Any email address OK, you can set up a throwaway if you need to, and you don't need to give me your name or other identifying info if you don't want to!

By the way - with slack you just make an account and log in, you don't need to download anything, or at least I didn't!

Excellent - I've set up a team on Slack. Please DM me your email addresses and I'll send out the invite

Hi PaperLantern,

I'm sorry to hear that you are having these thoughts and feelings. I understand how stressful a PhD can be, There are a couple of things I wanted to say to you that may or may not help.

The first is that nobody here can tell you if your feelings are depression or imposter syndrome. You should really seek professional advice on that with a full consultation with a mental health professional. Does your university offer free or reduced price consultations? If so, I would seek that out. If it is depression or anxiety, you may require medication or counselling to stabilise this.

Secondly, I think its quite usual to feel out of your depth. I am currently writing the thesis, and I often feel that I am not adequate. The only thing we can do in that kind of situation is do our best. The PhD is a learning process and sometimes to learn we have to make mistakes and be corrected. Just keep swimming.

Thirdly, is there anyone in your department you can talk to about this? I find that talking to other PhD students can help with feelings of inadequacy. It doesn't even have to be overt on your part. You don't need to find someone to tell all your worries to, just have a coffee or something and make general chit chat. I'm pretty sure that within a few minutes you'll both be opening up and talking about stresses and worries.

I strongly feel that you should seek some support/advice from a mental heath professional - depression and anxiety are not just thoughts in your imagination, and need proper medical care. Sending you vibes for a good day today, and hoping you can reach out and get the support you need and deserve.

Hi everyone,

Recently I've been wanting to find an online forum where I can generally chat and shoot the breeze with other post grads. I spend the majority of my time working at home and it can be a very isolating experience. I sometimes post over on Phinised, but I find that most people on there are in the USA so the timings don't always work out. I've found a chat app called Slack where people can make groups and chat, and it seems like it would be easy to set up a group on there for like minded work at homers who want to create the office type environment that I find really motivating.

So my questions are:

1. Any takers on joining a slack group I would make so we can chat during the working day?
2. Anyone know of any active sites/forums where there is plenty of off topic chat in the GMT timezone?

The forums question I want to avoid gaming sites because I tend to get carried away if I log into gaming sites during the work day!

Have a great day!

Thanks for all the responses :-) Seems like it must just be a style thing. I see it so often now that I started to wonder if I had missed something important. I see it a lot in conference abstracts e.g. "(Re)considering Idea X"

Here's a question that has been bothering me for a while now but I haven't known where to ask because it seems like something I should already know and is therefore uncomfortable to ask about...hopefully I can get some inputs here. If it's too off-topic, happy for mods to delete.

I've noticed that using parenthesis in academic writing is becoming more common. It's really been bothering me that I see this all the time but I don't know where it originated from.

For example, sentences like "Respondents are (re)considering, (re)thinking and (re)negotiating their positions in the organisation" (NB: I just made this sentence up, it is not a quote, if it coincidentally reflects an actual piece of academic writing I was not aware of this at the time of posting)

1. I am not quite sure what is intended with the use of (re) in this kind of sentence. To me, putting something in parenthesis like this means "They are both considering AND reconsidering" they are "both thinking and rethinking". Is the use of parenthesis in cases like that just a short hand way of saying "X-ing but also Re-X-ing"?

2. Does it come from one particular school of thought, or is it just something we do?!

Would be interested to get some thoughts about this - is it just a short hand, or does it have some kind of history to it - did it arise out of some kind of 'moment' in academic writing?

English is my first language, and I often have to write in a foreign language for my research so I can understand how you are feeling. The reality is that it's extremely difficult to achieve native level proficiency to the point of writing perfectly correct language for academic purposes. It's possible to get close, but there will nearly always be mistakes (in my opinion). And of course, even native speakers make mistakes!
My suggestion is to find an academic in a similar field who is a native English speaker, but is trying to learn/write in your native tongue. Then you can exchange papers for proof reading/corrections. Of course, you will have to check your institution's guidelines on proof reading as some do not allow this kind of exchange and you could end up in a lot of trouble if they don't allow it.
The important thing is to remain calm and work away at your language skills as far as you can.
As a side note, typing in CAPITAL LETTERS in English is considered by many to be shouting, and should be avoided at all costs :-)

I don't think it matters what subject. The options are either get on and do it, or don't bother. Certainly, wondering if it can be done is a waste of time. Do or do not as Yoda would say.
20,000 words is not a huge amount, but the op needs to take action, not procrastinate by wondering if it's possible.

You have plenty of time. Really, you can do this, you just need to accept that the next couple of months will be tough. Did you start your reading today? If not, start it right now. You can do this, but you need to stop thinking about doing it and do it.

Hi there,

I don't have any experience with this so I can't help with the feedback part of this. I wanted to reply to this post and try to encourage you. It must be so hard dealing with all of these issues at the same time, and to have balanced all of that for a semester and then receive that feedback must be hard too. But it is definitely not worth taking personally, and even if it was you can't afford to take it personally for the sake of your own mental health. Sometimes when I get into a cycle of despair over what other people have said about me I repeat the mantra "what other people think of me is none of my business". Unfortunately, qualitative evaluations of this kind make you see those things, right? That's the tricky part...
I can't tell you anything specific but know that you are not alone, and your life is worth more than one set of feedback. My advice would be distract yourself from these thoughts somehow (sometimes I find saying "STOP" very loudly - either out loud, or in my head if I'm in public!- every time I return to the destructive thought helpful) and wait until they pass. And they WILL pass.

Wow...I feel a bit sorry for the people in your department that you would make such a snap decision...