Hi guys, am having a mini-melt down...

By next Friday I need to have a new experiment programmed, the first chapter written and 25 essays marked.

I just don't know how I'm going to get it all done.

The programme needs to be done for Evil-Supivisor (so no negotiation there), chapter for Nice-Supervisor (deadline set a few weeks ago, so I really should do it. Its been slow coming as I'm having to read and incorporate a lot of brand new material from a slightly different field). Absolutely no choice with the marking. Has to be done next Friday. Supervisors will not be sympathetic to the marking situation, as they don't seem to understand that students have to do this in order to earn extra money to live (they begrudgingly allowed me to become a demonstrator, on the understanding that marking was to be done "in my own time". I haven't even told them that I'm a Seminar Leader in addition :-()

Am feeling very stressed. Just don't know how I'm going to get it all done, along with other tasks that have to be done.

Heeeeeeellpppp!!!!!

aagh it's horrible when you have so much to do and so little time. And somhow it all takes longer in that situation.

Maybe approach the course convener/undergraduate office about the essays, and see if you can hand them back next monday to buy you a little more time. They might be a bit flexible about it (they've tended to be at places I've worked, but then I konw people can be difficult about getting marking back as it needs to go back to the students, who complain if it takes more than 5 minutes to mark their coursework!)

It's terrible that it goes this way, but I think I'd make sure I got stuff done for evil supervisor, and then tried to get as much done as i could for nice supervisor.

Well first thing I would do is make a plan - The one thing that has a finite end is the marking, this means you oculd either set to and get it done first, leaving all other time free to do the other two things, or you could allocate so much time every day to this task, for say the first 4 days only (if you spread it over the whole period then you might run out of time if they take longer than anticipated.) When you say you have to get an experiment programmed, do you mean you have to set the experiment in a time frame? If so start at the end and work back to now (sorry if this bit is completely wrong, if it is wrong then maybe you could apply some similar logic to the process you have to put in place, bit outside my field :$. for the third bit, the chapter, it looks like you have already made some progress. I'm at that stage with one of my chapters, but what I do is read through the chapter and put in bits and pieces from the new stuff in a different colour. I can then see what I've added, and it makes it a bit easier to take it out again and put it elsewhere. it speeds up the process. The other thing I do is pose questions or put in comments also in a different colour, for example I might put something like, 'this bit looks good so far, but what do the opponents say, are there any more recent people I need to put in here, what about a table to summerise, would this be good?' -its something my supervisor does, and it is really quite helpful. Oh, and above all, don't panic because that just wastes time!

Sounds to me like you are in a situation that you are not in control of.  I was in a similar position in the first year of my PhD, but found that being just one step of everybody can keep you on top. Try and anticipate what people expect from you, write a quick plan and then stick to it - it works for me!  Become an expert in something than nobody else knows anything about, even if you think it may be perceived to be 'simple'. More than anything, pretend to be confident (even if you're not), it works wonders.  Best of luck!