Hi there, I'm a bit confused- shouldn't you have £30k left over after paying fees?

Hi CharlieChaplin,
I know exactly how you feel! I now do one day on, one day off (in terms of hardcore reading and writing)and I am way more produtive than when I used to try and work all day 6 days a week. Give yourself permission to have the day off, because we all know that 3 days of productive work are worth a lot more than 6 days of procrastination/general doom in front of the pc

In the end a phd is about game playing, and you've just gotta to quit takng it personally, laugh about it to put it in perspective, and then get on and try and produce something-anything!- to get through the progress report! Shouldnt be too hard to come up with something and then its up to your creative genius to justify why your results are interesting/useful Good luck! And you WILL get there in the end, everybody feels like this at some point

Hi AmyP,
My advice is to have a laugh at the whole damn project! Sounds like its been a bit of a nightmare, and with these science projects it sounds like sometimes its just not your fault if you get crappy results! So firstly, give yourself a break. Secondly remember that this is just a phd, not your life. Keep it in perspective, I know thats hard to do sometimes, but sometimes its just better to decide you dont care, laugh at how pointless you feel it is, and then you might be able to get on with it. I find it helps to trivialise things, just temporarily, so they seem maneageble and back under my control.

Hi everyone, I think sj04 is right, comparing yourself to others is usually pointless. I recently started worrying that I wasn't doing enough and started a work diary, recording what ive done and what ive read each day. It has been enormously motivating for me because although I have to admit that I only really do 1-3 hours of concentrated reading each day (I'm reading a lot of philosophy thats all new to me)I can look back over the week/month and realise what I've achieved- also it forces me to admit when I'm being lazy as there are blank days in the diary.....Not that that happens a lot of course Anyone else doing anything similar?

Hi Nadia,
I had a similar problem when I wrote my proposal, and the work I'm doing now does not relate at all to what I proposed to do! The reason they ask for chapter outlines and timescale is not to hold you to it, but rather to assess whether your project is 'doable' and that you can complete it within a reasonable amount of time. So my advice would be avoid vagueness and try to state what you will actually do under various chapter headings (it doesnt matter so much what they are) and try to be specific about what you will read etc its all about convinving them that you are serious and worth getting their money!!
Im not sure if that helps but good luck!!

Well you're not alone! I've just started and have less idea what my thesis is about now that I did 6 months ago...but its only the first year, I'm sure it'll fall into place! I'm finding the isolation in my new uni pretty depressing, I seem to spend hours by myself reading (or rather, thinking about actually doing some reading) only to come home to my shared house where noone seems to talk to each other- its just general doom at my end!! Still, its still better than being in a corporate slave