h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today I found out the start date for my new job. This is a good thing, the downside is that means I only have 213 days of my current job to finish this little PhD thing.I am planning on getting a celebratory tattoo on the day I get my PhD. I haven't decided what yet, , but it has to be scientifically accurate. On bad days I fantasie about getting my letters tattooed on my arm... You may not see me much about these parts. (Obviously if I hadn't spent so much time on saving h2g2 I wouldn't be panicking so much, but then there might not be these parts to see me around)...

The Supervisors, aka Prof Bosses are experienced supervisors, they have made it clear that not getting a PhD is not an option. It would reflect badly on their department. Prof B is the national Stroke Tsar, sadly Prof A is not the national stroke Tsarina and they are not opening nominations for a rasputin. They have told me the thing to do is to write about 8 papers, get them published, and then cut and paste them into a thesis. The advantage of this i that the reviewers will ask the questions that are likely to be asked in the viva. So far I've written 1, there is another one on my desktop, which is on version 2. All the other supervisors get their students to write a thesis and then work on the papers. When I feel nervous I think how many other students they've supervised...

Today I was working on a lecture I am giving on Wednesday, for the lecture I needed information that will be part of Chapter 4, so I wrote three tables that will be in Chapter 4. This will be the next paper.

How about a tattoo of your MRI?

Tempting but it's not the main thrust of my thesis, which is post-stroke dementia. That is not a subject that lends itself to tattoos. Today I was searching for a paper I was the 3rd author on, so put my name into pubmed. I found a paper my brother had written, curious I decided to read it, in the introduction he had included a quote from an book our father owned.

It felt strangely cyclical.

Odd, couldn't get into this journal yesterday at all!

Anyway, best of luck - and if you need any help with anything, or someone to rant at, or someone to make you drop it all and go for a long walk to "get your head showered" as they say around here - well, you know where we are.

Wow! My mom has stroke onset dementia. We are not enjoying it. I'll be interested in following along.

Hi HBFJ,

Thank you for letting me know that. I'm sorry that your mum is ill, but thank you for letting me know that you are interested in what we are up to.

I got a couple of hours of editing in yesterday, I'm editing a paper I wrote with a colleague wrote using my data and her data to analyse her hypothesis but as the second named author I have to approve it. I've heavily edited the introduction and the discussion, and still not there. English isn't her first language and she isn't really able to express her hypothesis clearly. It's taken me ages to read the papers she had cited to check that they support her argument and then actually try and express it succinctly. I cut 1500 words down to 250, which feels like a fairly brutal editing procedure.

Today was mainly editing the slides for the presentation I'm giving on Wednesday. I did a run through at Ben and she thought the introduction was a bit confused and lacked signposting.

I think I've made the changes. I get to run through with the boss tomorrow. I also have about three other things I would like to do before our meeting at 2.

Sometimes I read, on here, about people and their PhDs, and it makes me really* envyious that I never went beyond my masters degree..... then other times I read about how much hard 'work' it seems to be... and I@m not so* envious

I'll be sure to make sure you don't regret your decision. At the moment Ben and I spent about 3 hours a week in each others company.

Oh I'm still envious really... No way I could manage to do one now, mind, I'm too far out of the 'thinking space' I had when nearer my studying days and can't imagine trying to get back into the right mindset again