My supervisor left the uni and said they wanted 
to stay on the team, the team that was mostly them with a teeny bit of input  
from another one,  who did nothing - except make a few huge mistakes which
have  been glossed over. The result is that this year I have had virtually no  
supervision because the one who moved has other fish to fry and is hardly  
available and when they are, I'm not. I have made several protests about this,  
but being part time doesn't make this easy, and I think you tend to hang on  
thinking that maybe this week you will get the feedback you need, except it  
never materialises. My subject had been tossed about in the department like a  
hot potato and no-one wants to take it on. I have had five different  
supervisors, three of whom have taken one look, done a session with me - and  
then decided they didn't want to do it. At the moment the head of faculty is 
looking at it, but they have no expertise in my area ( and to be honest 
although the supervisor who left thinks it is his area in fact it isn't and
is  probably  taking a completely different take on the subject to theirs). My
advice is to  make sure that this person will be available to answer your
queries, will  actually reply and comment on your work in a reasonable length
of  time and most important HAS TIME TO DO IT. Make sure the department has 
something in place if it all goes pear shaped. Keep a very close eye on what 
is going on and as soon  as it looks like it won't work, get something done
about  it sooner rather than later.

someone in my school when writing a list of equipment needed for a field trip put down that they needed to bring w(i)llies with them instead of wellies - its a girls school.

ignore them. just make a mental note so that you can defend the comments they made if necessary.

Make sure you stay within easy reach of a dentist in case there are problems ( someone I know had to go back as they had 'missed a bit') try using a salty water mouth wash/gargle and you might want to try putting a clove alongside the disaster area ( this remedy goes way back to mediaeval times). Gums do heal quite quickly though which is lucky.

can't get it to open:-(

Just to let you all know - if you didn't already - the scam where they tell you they are phoning from windows about the error messages on your computer and that you have viruses/mal ware etc. on your computer and need to follow the steps they talk you through to remove it' is going the rounds again. I know of several people who have had these phone calls over the last week or so. If you get one of these, don't do it!:-).

I've had a look, but I think it is aimed more at undergrads? at my uni there are loads of booklets on all sorts of aspects of writing, and I suspect they are also online, as is material concerning referencing etc. for undergrads, and of course anyone else can access this. I think my uni expects postgrads to recognise their own weaknesses and go and find the help themselves, the librarians would always help anyone who needed assistance in this kind of process - I  know because I used to work in the library on a Saturday on the helpdesk. One of the things with total reliance on computers to help students in these kind of areas is that they don't always explain things in more than one way so if you can't understand it the first time it just gives you more of the same instead of trying a different angle which can be annoying and unproductive.

don't think you are right or wrong really. Perhaps it depends upon the way you have structured your lit review? mine also builds on the preliminary chapters, in that there are two foundation chapters which provide material for the rest. I have stated this in the lit review and have reviewed the material on the first two chapters as I went along (I'm writing up the second of the chapters at the moment.) and that is the way I am doing the rest. What I will do next is note that the material required after those chapters is based on the findings in the first two and I will show how I located and decided which lit I would be using for the other chapters based on the findings of those two foundation ones. The literature selection for the chapters will all be in the lit review, but the process of finding and selecting the material for them will be shown to have depended upon the results of the first two chapters. Or... could you write a conclusion for the two studies and then start again for the third with its own lit review etc. to show that the third study emerged from the results of the other two?

Thanks for that, it does tend to be after things like et al. - etc. was just the thing I had in my head at the time. My super says capitalise everything that moves, yesterday at a group meeting someone else said that she thinks the single capitation is right and penalised her students who use capital death. Sometimes you just can't win :-(

I can't really help directly on this, but I was at a meeting yesterday when the subject of statistics came up, and the prof said that whatever you do you must always know exactly why you did it - he said whenever he sees a load of statistics he wants to make sure people know all about them and why they made the choices they did (I'm avoiding stats because my sample is nowhere big enough and luckily enough the only other work done in my area used percentages!) there was also a lot of talk about whether advice should be sought from a mathematician or a researcher on what to do - and that might be your answer

I had a discussion about this with my supervisor recently. What do you do if you have an abbreviation, such as etc. at the end of a sentence, or if you want to follow it by a comma? They say only put the one full stop so it goes...etc. or ...etc, not a full stop to indicate it is an abbreviation and then another full stop or a comma. They said this is convention. Is that so? Both look a bit strange.

Also, Harvard referencing. Do you write Changing job boundaries and workforce reform or Changing Job Boundaries and Workforce Reform some say do it the first way, some say the other way at this rate I will be producing alternative versions of my ref list!

if you have deferred, that would mean , as far as I understand it that you accepted their offer, but asked if you can take up the place later. They will have assumed that you were going to take up the place and have set in motion plans for your work with them. What you have done is gone somewhere else and not told them. They will not be pleased I should think and you should have told them as soon as you decided to go elsewhere so they could have offered the place to someone else. At the moment I don't think you should approach this other person at all, I think it would be very unwise. You are only at the beginning of your study and will have perhaps a chance to meet them informally later on neutral territory. Get in touch with the other place at once. Apologise profusely for not contacting them earlier and you may be able to rescue the situation, remember people talk to each other and you don't want to be the person who went somewhere else and didn't have the courtesy to let them know.

As far as your supervisor is concerned I would stick with them at this early stage of your research, and later you can tell them that you think the work of X is just the area you need help with, and they may be able to or agree to contact them for you. Don't give them the impression that you are suggesting that they don't know enough to help you, they will certainly know more than enough and to suggest otherwise is quite frankly a little bit insulting and may be taken as just that.

you are just at the start and will, if you approach the situation carefully, and may I add humbly you should be able to rescue the situation. If you approach the situation without understanding the problems you have created you will if you go down the route you suggest create more problems which could result in you antagonising people you need to be on your side. Tread softly or you will be treading on your own dreams. Take care. J.

I think it about time there was a universal time for reviewing chapters. It is really bad that some will do a quick turnaround and others take forever. My supervisor has taken four months to look at changes I made to one chapter, the other supervisor has failed to look at the same chapter for a year (I kid you not). I've had to complain higher up, but the result is not really that good. They take on these things and should know what is expected, and then they just push it to the bottom of their 'to do' list. I don't want them to do much. most of the time I'm just getting on with things myself, but a bit of feedback would be good - and they are being paid to do it after all, and they are not the only ones with busy lives. Ideally they should get back to you as quickly as possible, the first draft will obviously need alterations so a broad sweep is what I guess is needed after that a more reflective approach would take longer, but not so long that it makes it difficult for you to finish in the time available. I would send them a timeline of your proposed progress to the finish, so that they can see how long they have! :-)

when you fill in the bit they will ask if they may contact your references. Just put that they can only be contacted if they offer you the post.

my advice would be to look beyond the hype about an area, there are good and not so good areas in every part of London. It is a big place! I agree about the underground stations, it is easy to get around via the tube, and you can wait under cover if it is raining. I would also make sure you have a supermarket within reasonable distance. I used to live near Edgeware road, and Oxford street was my main high street! -although there was a good market etc. nearby too.