GRcade

One of the presents we're weighing up for my brother and his wife-to-be when they get married this week is a plot of land up in Glencoe so that their titles can officially be Lord Doctor and Lady Doctor. I think that's got a class ring to it.

Karl_ wrote:Cheers! No matter what happens I have to submit whatever I have on the 30th, no extensions

Oh damn, that's a bit worse than me, I just wanted to get mine all done as my funding ran out in August and now I have to actually pay for the school myself

If you already have all your analysis done and you just need to write hopefully it won't be too bad. Best of luck!

Karl_ wrote:

Rightey wrote:I hope it goes better for you than it did for me lol. I wish I could say "I wish someone had told me to not be a perfectionist with it" but people did tell me that and I just didn't realize I was doing it.

Cheers! No matter what happens I have to submit whatever I have on the 30th, no extensions

This is exactly the position I was in, mate. Put a line in the sand that you will submit by and just work whatever hours necessary to get it done. I did a couple of days at the end where I went to work for 08:00, had a break to walk home at 18:30 and then worked until 05:00ish before having a nap and getting up for work again at 7. Just do what needs to be done.

I think we all get to that point at some stage(Trelliz and Jen can no doubt confirm!), which is just wildly unhealthy. With that said, how many PhDs would actually get finished without a hard deadline?

For me it was the month or so before hand-in. Drive to non-academic work for 8am, leave work at 2pm, get to library at 2.45pm, leave the library at 2am, grab some food, make tomorrow's lunch, quick nap and repeat. It was a relief on days I took a 4pm class and could head home for an hour after work for a quick kip, or backshift days when it wasn't worth going to the library and I basically just slept for 18 hours.

Like Mini E says, you have a hard submission date, and now it's time to put in a couple of weeks of hard graft. When it's done, it's over. You'll never need to worry about it again. And strawberry float, you're about the smartest 12 year old I've ever known Karl, you'll be fine.

Another chapter of the thesis is done. Thank the Good Lord.

Just one more and then the conclusion to go.

Rightey wrote:Another chapter of the thesis is done. Thank the Good Lord.

Just one more and then the conclusion to go.

Good man! The conclusion is pretty brief and (by definition) doesn't require any really new content - so just one big effort to go then the formatting!

Oh God the formatting

One of my minor corrections was to put a completely superfluous full stop on all of my references. All 750 of them.

Formatting is always a pain!

What did you guys use to write your theses - do people just tend to use standard word processing software (i.e. Word) these days or does anyone still use LaTeX?

EDIT: Also 750 references Cora!?

I think I had more like 200 in mine but I guess this will differ greatly across various disciplines.

Yeah I don’t imagine there needs to be so many for a science PhD. The general humanities rule is “reference everything,” so I had telephone calls, archival work, books, newspaper articles, anything you could think of in there. The formatting of the references and bibliography took nearly two months.

I had 848 references in my thesis #Storytopped.

I wrote mine up using MS Word but with a separate document for each chapter, then brought it together towards the end.

Christ, that Minimum Effort. You've been to Tenerife, he's been to Elevenerife.

Corazon de Leon wrote:Oh God the formatting

One of my minor corrections was to put a completely superfluous full stop on all of my references. All 750 of them.

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to formatting. I will also need to go back and do some extra descriptives for some variables that I hadn't originally planned on including.

Btw, for adding a period at the end of every reference, you could have probably done that in Excel. Convert the references to static text, copy and paste them in one column in Excel. Then in the next column add in the periods. Then in the third column append column B to column A and lastly copy them again and paste them into word.

Rightey wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:Oh God the formatting

One of my minor corrections was to put a completely superfluous full stop on all of my references. All 750 of them.

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to formatting. I will also need to go back and do some extra descriptives for some variables that I hadn't originally planned on including.

Btw, for adding a period at the end of every reference, you could have probably done that in Excel. Convert the references to static text, copy and paste them in one column in Excel. Then in the next column add in the periods. Then in the third column append column B to column A and lastly copy them again and paste them into word.

That advice isn't going to go down well, mate.

9 days until my degree starts.

Getting nervous as I basically have no idea what to expect. Excited too

Mini E wrote:

Rightey wrote:

Corazon de Leon wrote:Oh God the formatting

One of my minor corrections was to put a completely superfluous full stop on all of my references. All 750 of them.

Yeah, I'm not looking forward to formatting. I will also need to go back and do some extra descriptives for some variables that I hadn't originally planned on including.

Btw, for adding a period at the end of every reference, you could have probably done that in Excel. Convert the references to static text, copy and paste them in one column in Excel. Then in the next column add in the periods. Then in the third column append column B to column A and lastly copy them again and paste them into word.

That advice isn't going to go down well, mate.

Nah, it would’ve taken me longer to learn how to use excel than it did to actually just add the full stops to be honest.

Ah I understand, very clear, thank you machine learning community.

Jenuall wrote:Formatting is always a pain!

What did you guys use to write your theses - do people just tend to use standard word processing software (i.e. Word) these days or does anyone still use LaTeX?

EDIT: Also 750 references Cora!?

I think I had more like 200 in mine but I guess this will differ greatly across various disciplines.

A colleague of mine was using Latex for his thesis, I honestly think it's just because he didn't know how to use Word properly. I taught a course on MS office once, and the things that Word can do are really amazing once you dig down, even more so for Excel.

Karl_ wrote:

Ah I understand, very clear, thank you machine learning community.

Could be worse...

Philosophers



I'm using LaTeX for what it's worth. I'm sure there's nothing in it that you couldn't do if you were good at Microsoft Office. OTOH it is built for mathematical and scientific typesetting so it's a natural fit for the kind of writing I'm doing.

Been accepted onto a PGCert in higher education and teaching, which is wonderful. What is slightly less wonderful is that I'm in the dark as to whether or not I'm eligible to pay tuition fees. My e-mailed query last month suggest yes, but a note has been left on the application that says "Please note this applicant holds a staff contract and is eligible for zero fees," and also that God knows if work will let me have time away from the office to do the part-time course. It might have to be done in holiday time.

I've read that the PGCert and a HEA Fellowship are both basically required for higher education teaching jobs in England, but they aren't really a thing yet up here. I'm hoping they help for the next lot of jobs that become available from next year, and also that I've got a book deal by then for further kudos.