PhD support group?

studentphil

misskool wrote:

Hello Pelican, welcome to the crazy thread where we talk about all sorts of random things!
What biology do you do?

Dont you like random stuff?

dumpy

To the person saying that the write up is the easiest bit with voice recongition software, have you written up?

My brother (PhD Chemistry) told me not to underestimate the write up as he had, I thought I hadn't but I did. I now warn everyone I can about it.

Best moment of my life was when the examiner said "you are probably nervous so to let you know, unless something goes really wrong, you've passed" Can't really remember much of the Viva after that....

smileygal_2

misskool wrote:

Seems a bit frustrating when it feels like real life gets in the way of the PhD! Or am I the only weird one here?

Oh i dunno, i find being a single parent is the perfect way to stay on planet reality and not let my PhD take me over to the dark side known as academia

studentphil

dumpy wrote:

To the person saying that the write up is the easiest bit with voice recongition software, have you written up?

My brother (PhD Chemistry) told me not to underestimate the write up as he had, I thought I hadn't but I did. I now warn everyone I can about it.

Best moment of my life was when the examiner said "you are probably nervous so to let you know, unless something goes really wrong, you've passed" Can't really remember much of the Viva after that....

I wish people would not misrepsent what I said, I did not say it was the easist, but the most straight forward once you have all your thoughts clear in your mind.

misskool

smileygal wrote:

Oh i dunno, i find being a single parent is the perfect way to stay on planet reality and not let my PhD take me over to the dark side known as academia

Brave...very brave. I can't even take care of myself well, much less a lil' 'un while doing this phd. :T

dumpy

Oops sorry

Not sure if your a science person or not? But I found the amount of detail in a science PhD took ages to write up.

All the methods and materials although boring and easy can take ages and if you are using images in your PhD they can takes ages to a) get the results you need, b) manage to get a good image of them and c) reproduce good images of them onto paper. Things have moved on since I wrote up but scanning gels and autoradiographs, then annotaing and importing into the relevant parts of the text was not one of my favourite past times.

It's all these fiddly little bits that take the time and test your sanity and it's these bits that people haven't done, who say "I did a PhD but didn't write up"

That was the point I was trying to make, not what you had decided to write about but the actual nitty gritty of writing and compiling the thesis.

studentphil

misskool, do you think I have randomised your thread?
I sort of get the feeling you do think that.

studentphil

dumpy wrote:

Oops sorry

Not sure if your a science person or not? But I found the amount of detail in a science PhD took ages to write up.

All the methods and materials although boring and easy can take ages and if you are using images in your PhD they can takes ages to a) get the results you need, b) manage to get a good image of them and c) reproduce good images of them onto paper. Things have moved on since I wrote up but scanning gels and autoradiographs, then annotaing and importing into the relevant parts of the text was not one of my favourite past times.

It's all these fiddly little bits that take the time and test your sanity and it's these bits that people haven't done, who say "I did a PhD but didn't write up"

That was the point I was trying to make, not what you had decided to write about but the actual nitty gritty of writing and compiling the thesis.

I am an Arts person and for me the most difficult part of writing is ordering my thoughts before I write. I find it takes me 5 times longer to think about it than write it. I can see the nitty gritty can be a pain though.

studentphil

An interesting point I would like to ask is, do you all see your research as part of our grand final science or do you see science as something that is relative to society and when science changes most of the current science we have now will be swept away?

pboae

dumpy wrote:

All the methods and materials although boring and easy can take ages and if you are using images in your PhD they can takes ages to a) get the results you need, b) manage to get a good image of them and c) reproduce good images of them onto paper. Things have moved on since I wrote up but scanning gels and autoradiographs, then annotaing and importing into the relevant parts of the text was not one of my favourite past times.

and the formatting, the hours I spent reinserting images after some tiny change wreaked havoc on the formatting. I still ended up with 3 pages that I fudged and printed out separately because I couldn't get them how I wanted without messing something else up. Butterflies beating their wings, etc.

I don't know if this was the same for everyone, but academically I didn't find my PhD *that* hard. There was a fairly steep learning curve at first (which I really enjoyed) then it sort of tailed off and turned into an endurance test. If it had been difficult purely because of the academic work involved I think I would have coped better, but before my PhD I had no real experience of having to grind on with something long after the motivation had gone, and that was the bit that I found hard.