thanks for your help!! Without wanting to sound defeatist it won't be chosen for the journal - I am a very small fish in an extremely esteemed pond! I will write it like it will be though ;0)

x J

Ah ok... so am I writing this for the *panel* organisers and my fellow presenters in the first instance, rather than for the journal/conference organisers?

hmmm.

x J

Hi Sue, thank you for your input i really appreciate it.

It does seem strange, I have never done a conference before but I did think that there would be a clear deadline.  At the mo I am treating the Sept 15 deadline as a pseudo-serious one, getting the paper so it is readable and with the refs in it, but then hope that the flexibility means I can spend more time afterwards tightening it up. For this conference only a handful of papers will be chosen for publication.

I just thought the organisers would want the papers sometime before the conference so they could know what we are all going to say, and distribute them before our presentations/panel?  Or are they always happy simply with the abstract?

x J

Hello all,

I used to be a regular on here but haven't been on in some time - a lot of new faces I see!

I wonder if you can help me... I have a conference paper that I am writing and presenting for a *big* international conference - it is my first one and it being the holidays I am a bit in the dark about what is expected of me. I have been told by the person organising our panel that she expects the initial deadline for the paper to be the 15 sept, but that she 'hopes this is flexible and we should be ready to circulate our paper to each other (people on the panel) by the 10th October'.

Does anyone know what this means?! I assumed that the 15 sept was a tight deadline for the paper, but my Sup has told me recently that the paper can be rough with unfinished refs if I want, and now I hear the deadline may be flexible. Does anyone know what the protocol is for writing papers before a conference - will anyone actually see it bar our panel?! Why can it be 'rough' - would they ask me to pep it up *after* the conference do you think?

Sorry, am just so confused and obviously I don't want to be up until midnight every night stressing about a paper that no one will actually see!!

Thanks for any help!

x Jayney

Hi there

I am the same - I came on this forum because I know it is a common problem (am just over 2 years into my PhD so have been on and off this forum a lot throughout that period!) and thought it may make me feel like less of a loser. And it has! And I decided to buy the Joan Bolker book 'writing your dissertation in 15 minutes a day' (heartily recommended on another thread on this forum and where peeps who have followed it over the last year are now at viva stage...) - apparently it is brilliant at (a) making you feel better for not being able to work 24/7 and (b) giving tips and tricks to getting back into it i.e - 15 mins is better than nothing; and builds up your self confidence again. Hopefully it will work!!! (Is v. cheap on amazon btw!)

I am going to grit my teeth tomorrow and make myself work, without any radio, for an hour. Then I can do anything I want, (and will probably stay at my desk and work for three...) Once you break the cycle of bouncing up from your desk every ten minutes to do something 'really important' it gets a million times easier (though not getting up is really very hard I find!) - and you even start to enjoy it! bizarre but true - let's do it! (It worked for me last week after weeks of procrastinating - but then I went away for a long weekend and broke my routine! so it all went to pot today :0( But will rebuild it tomorrow!)

Good luck - this work will be yours!

Jayney

ps. never think of the whole thing/chapter/day - only teeny goals, like ten pages of reading/half an hour of work... much more manageable!

Hey guys

I have just bouight the book - I have seen this thread around since last year and now am starting to read-to-write-up... Still a long way to go, am just over half way through the PhD, but am struggling so much to write every day. Seeing peeps are at Viva stage inspired me to get the book and get timing!

Good luck all and thanks for the inspiration!
jayney

Hey Smilodon

Thanks for your advice! I had an epiphany yesterday and realised that I just have to do what I can, and to consider coming back later in the year if I haven't done everything I wanted to. I have been really concerned about coming back because when I go home in April I shall have 18 months to complete - and I *have* to complete on time! Yesterday though I realised two more months wouldn't hurt, if it gets better info - best not to compromise too much on that part! tho I am going to work hard to finish by April. I also thought that perhaps having such a small amount of time will be good initially as it will get me out there and talking to people asap...

Thank you for sharing your experiences of this kind of work - I am too far away from any fieldwork books to remember such stories as anything other than wishful thinking to make myself feel better... It is hard, you do get stalled all the time, interviewees are slippery suckers and getting those questions right so you get the info you wanted is so much harder than you think at home! And people promise a placement will be perfect for you - and then it really isn't and they fibbed so you have to start again!! Judgement becomes cloudy, you forget what you want to know at all and slip into that unproductive level of stress which can only spiral into more stress. Thankfully people here have been kind and helped me to reach a very simple conclusion - work as hard as I can and come back if I need to! And it does take ages for the groundwork. If I think I have longer here then this groundwork has been worth it - despite the waste of time by my placement people... but if I 'run out' of time then it was too much groundwork, too little actual work - this has been my guilty dilemma.

And yes, I do know more than my Sup these days, as I said I am off the reins and he tends to go with what I say/think unless I am wandering off into my own world... :p

Thanks again all, much appreciated - and happy 2009!
Jayney

Thanks Joyce!!

The first place I am studying is a really small village, and in time I hope to include the villages in the wider environs into the study too. I have easy access to people and contacts and have been there before (briefly) so know what to expect. I want to know how people are faring several years after a terrible trauma the village suffered. I know I can do it... but because these two months have not provided the 'in' or info that I expected in this site I am really terrified that this next one will be a mistake too! I am so scared to start the work and worried I will be there for 6 weeks and have no nouse about anything.

I am at the stage in my relationship with my Sup where he has let go of the reins really, so it didn't really occur to me to ask him directly what he thought of the sites I am choosing - I figure he will tell me if he is unconfident in my ideas. I should ask him outright (after new years of course!) I am currently working out very detailed plans, plans a,b, and c; am working out categories and themes I wish to study and how to use the time as wisely as possible; how to contact and research the groups - this is how I am using my days over xmas and new year (while it is quiet, research-wise). I have a break planned for a week then then am back into the work with hopefully renewed vigour and clarity... :p Bearing this in mind, it is hard to know how much of my fears can be attributed to working, being ill (!!) and being messed around in an alien culture for two months. Maybe a week off out of here will do me the world of good! man I hope so!

Thanks so much for the advice - that there is any advice other than 'go home, it is useless trying you ridiculous failure', is brilliant!!

Happy new year too!

Jayney xxx

Hello!

Yep, I shall ask my Sup then! He does know but didn't really say anything about it. But that doesn't mean much to me - he isn't here, how can he know how long it may/may not take? But, he is wise, so I shall ask what he thinks I should do/can do. Maybe I wasn't sure if it was a reasonable concern or if I was getting into a flap about nothing, so your advice has cleared that up for me. yeah, the last two months have got incredibly detailed notes, and not *totally* wasted, just not directly to do with my studies which has been frustrating.

Thank you so much for your advice and time!

jayney

I love this thread! I have been away from the bosom of this forum for too long and am now a nervous wreck!

I am in the middle of a massive confidence slump right now. But reading this has reminded me that so much of this darned PhD is overcoming these slumps, being 'strong' enough to recognise these slumps for what they are and then move forward and keep plugging away until, one day, you finish (and are then probably totally lost without it!). I particularly like this advice you were given buzby: (sorry I don't know how to do proper forum quoting yet!!)

'speak to people who got their PhD a few years ago - people who have since moved on in their career. Most of them will tell you that they are now a bit embarrassed by their thesis because their ideas have developed, or that they never published anything from it but it never did them any harm, or that they see now that it was a 'training excercise' in how to do research rather than the best thing they will ever write. It's important to get in perspective that the PhD is a step along a road, not something final which has to be 'perfect' and rock the foundations of your discipline '

I will try and bear this in mind!! I remember my MA was soooo hard and groundbreaking at the time... and now I look at my thesis and essay questions and they seem so easy and silly! to think I may think this of my PhD one day gives me hope and encouragement!!! hehe.

It will be ok... we shall overcome!


:p

Hehe lovely to see people are working! I am doiung fieldwork so *always* on duty! managed a day off for xmas and boxing day, then had a mini crisis on the 27th about all the time I had wasted! Am in a non christian and hot country so the fact it is dec is startling enough, let alone xmas!!!

Working working working...

Good luck and happy new year all!
xxx

Hello everyone! I used to be a prolific poster but disappeared - too much PhD to do (and the forum was revamped and quite honestly, I didn't - don't - know how to use it!!!)...

I am on fieldwork atm and really need some help! I can't ask my sup because I have to always act totally in control, am in a land with no libraries and my PhD friends are not at the fieldwork stage yet :0(( !! I am at sea!

My issue is that I have only a visa for 5 and a half months in this lovely country, to do an ethnog style research. For reasons that are too long to go into my first two months have been wasted (not by me!) so I have three months left to get stuck in. I have identified two field sites so as to get a decent overview of a very big region and will start in earnest soon. Is 6 weeks in each site viable for a decent ethnog understanding? I do not need to do actual anthropological style ethnog, is more like needing to see people every day and ask how their lives have changed according to a recent event, lots of obs and interviews but no *real* participation as such. I could try and leave the country to get another visa bbut that would take a week (and I may be bombed, or not be given a visa!)... I am pretty stressed! Normally people spend 9 months or something on fieldwork. I just feel like such a novice, like I am making it up as I go along... what if I come back in April and have found out *nothing*? Nothing at all. How humiliating.

Any advice sooooooooooo gratefully appreciated!

Jayney:$

that's good advice - maybe concentrate on where you are now and build up knowledge and contacts and work on what your 3rd year dissertation may be about, (or project etc). Certainly before worrying too much about the PhD - for a start you could 'sort out' a topic but then realise something in a year's time as part of your course and totally change your mind.

Good luck with it though and keep your sense of ambition.

exciting stuff Joyce! Whenever I talk about my work it always sounds very dramatic and ambitious - most PhD projects I hear do! Good luck with it!

I guess for mine I will say in the intro what the layout, arguments and conclusions are... then fill in the gaps. But then, as is so much the nature of this work - in a years time, who knows?!!

hehe!