======= Date Modified 04 Jul 2011 15:07:30 =======

It's unpleasant in the extreme. I got similar from my super. These people revert to being nasty little bully boys, given a modicum of power. Keep your chin up!

It's not really discipline - it's that I live alone, and have nothing else (much! ha ha) to have to do! The only discipine I'm exerting at the moment is trying to give up smoking. Now that really IS hard! How are you getting on??

Sorry, Delta, I don't find you compassionate. This means caring for others and for general social justice. I just find you rather self-absorbed, albeit necessarily so. If you don't care, how lucky is it that you got a salary? I wish you all the best.

Thanks, Bilbo! As a lifelong journo, this is something I know and I know from experience it's the hardest thing to do. So in the last week, while I've been thinking about this paper (and I always write in my head before writing), the big issue for me has been, 'What's the hook?'
The hook has to be there in the first para. I think I got it. I hope so!

Sorry, Delta, but I have to say that I sold everything I had to self-fund my PhD because I was so passionate about the work. I am now totally skint, after a hitherto successful career for 35 years.
Congrats on getting there without caring, turning a hair or understanding what many of us have to go through. I strongly suspect that many of us have supervisors who are exactly as you are - smug, maybe even arrogant, and totally empty of human life experience, or compassion.
You should do very well in this world.

Doodles, thanks to your energising support, I did 8 hours of work today, and I think I've nailed the intro. I have the bulk already done, but I need to get it focussed, and you really helped me to get my mind and heart on this.

Can't thank you enough!:-)

Great, Doodles! I've done another 4 hours so far today (prep stuff - what I call 'immersion'). Let's do some mutual prodding!(up)

Thanks for your wonderful and really helpful reply!
I've identified the two journals I want to aim for (first choice, second choice) and I've also got some lesser ones in mind.
All in all I think there about 8 papers in the Fud, but I'm starting with the one I find most exciting so as to give me real motivation. I've also had an offer (albeit from another continent) to look over my stuff before I submit, so I think I'm following most of your guidelines, but really am lost in academia.:-)

After being away from my Fud for four months I have to get my act together, and need your help. I have to start writing papers. Yes, I should have been doing this all along, and I should have been doing conferences (again, as I used to, internationally) but Prof wouldn't let me for the last 4 years. He said that I mustn't reveal my expertise to my participants. Ho bloody hum. Apart from writing book reviews in the THE I gave up my career. So I'm now free of the shackles, but also devoid of the academic help, such as it was. Prof wasn't in my niche.
There's at least one part of my Fud that's totally methodologically innovative, and it's about a projective mechanistic analogy interview technique I devised for obtaining evidence from youngish children on the autism spectrum to reveal their social/sensory understanding. I didn't make a big issue of it in the Fud, because it would have used up too many words, and used it as a brief pilot, but I know it's really big.
I've been back working on further Lit evidence for the last two days, and am very hopeful I can put this together by the end of the month.
Please, can some of you nudge me to keep me on task?
My personally-set deadline is end of July, which means I expect to finish it by 21st, thus allowing me time to nit-pick!
Thanks!

Dunni, my best advice at this stage, and it's professional as well as personal, is to stop thinking about any of this. Your mind needs a break. What's more, you need to give this thesis a chance to sink down and even itself out, and just breathe. I've always found that my mind works best when it's had time for a rest, because then it functions much better. So, for the next 3 days, go a bit silly. Watch pointless telly, cook and eat some great food, or if you can afford it, eat out once at least. Do some physical exercise. 40 years ago when I had a serious breakdown I was prescribed squash every day - the game, not the juice! I've found swimming is just the perfect relaxation exercise for me, and I love saunas, steam rooms and jacuzzis. So what I'm saying is that you need to shift your attention from your mental state, to your physical state. When your body is comfortable, both your working memory and your rote memory work so much better (FACT!). Go see a film. Make love. Sleep. Window-shop. Eat chocolate if that's your thing. Sit by the sea or in the country. Be kind to your body and it, in turn, will do wonders for you.
Everyone here has total confidence in you. Now chill! And the best of everything.

Yeah, that's sorted!

YES!!!!!! Thanks to all your encouragement, I got up off my backside and made some enquiries (I just hate asking for anything), and I'm STILL on the Associate/Approved Tutor list at my Uni Dept, so I can keep my affiliation, but as staff rather than student, for at least another 12 months!!! I can get my papers written!
phewwwwww. Huge sign of relief..............

I have no sympathy at all for my super. He lives on his fragile ego as he never passed the 11+ and it's his Achilles heel. I am a national agony aunt and have really tried to give him slack and understanding. But some of his emails to me have been far beyond acceptable. They have been quite frankly barmy. Ultimately, I have to say that I believe he's seriously dysfunctional. And my co-supervisor, a truly eminent clinical psychologist, has gone much further to diagnose him as a pr***. I wouldn't presume.

I've tried to understand. It's pointless.The pressure he is under is bolstered by a fat salary and a 'God' complex. Why should i feel sorry for the pressure he's under? He gets paid to take it.