Searching for fellow PhD students

[youngblowfish]

Hello,

I find myself badly in need of company as a newly pregnant PhD student. I am about to start my second year and, all being well, I should be 12 weeks by the beginning of October.

Are there any pregnant/parents PhD students out there? I could really do with a thesis writing support thread and it would be lovely to chat to people who are in a similar position.

2nd year PhD. 3DC. BFP. Having kittens. Not literally.

Dotty, well done on the upgrade - such a relief to get the confirmation that all of your hard work is eligable for PhD award. Mine was a 3000 progress report and a presentation to a panel of two (very senior staff) followed by a viva. All very nerve-wracking especially as they kept trying to arrange it for when I was on honeymoon! Admin gone mad lol.

Ruthie, congrats on the pregnancy! I was lucky to have very supportive supervisors for DD1 however, the second time around when I was pregnanct with twins I couldn't bring myself to tell them til I was about 8 months gone! I was really worried that they would give up on me and my PhD. Being a distant student helped me conceal the pregnancy as I wanted get ahead before they found out. In fact they were ok about it and have continued to support me despite having three babies! Although my last annual report (3 months poast delivery) suggested that I wouldn't complete with my situation which made me very upset. I did submit ahead of schedule!

I have now submitted my minor corrections but am awaiting confirmation from the internal examiner that these are ok. If not, will I be asked to revisit them, surely I won't be failed, will I? Obviously, the outcome from viva was pass with minors, so that is it surely? I will be glad when it is all formally bound!!!

Welcome footprints! are you just towards the end of your second year? at what stage will #4 arrive do you think?

Well done 2plus1 - so impressive that you submitted ahead of schedule, please stick around if you can stand it and give us the benefit of your experience

How is everyone else doing? I'm working on upgrade stuff at the moment. got a 3000 proposal thing to do -which should be OK as I've also got NHS ethics in the pipeline so have had to do loads, of work for that side of things already. Along with this is an c 10,000 lit review. I have drafted all this now but it needs substantially editing and reducing. Also want to fit in some summertime with the kids so trying to knuckle down in the time that I do have, like now, ha!

Almost no progress at all lately - I only have tiny bits of childcare for the summer and found the last few weeks of term so interrupted with end of term school/nursery things. My honest ambition is just to keep things ticking over during the summer so that I have a few intelligent things to say when I see my supervisor in Sept. I hope I have managed to set myself a task compatible with that though - trying to establish the intellectual framework for my study. So bits of reading, and lots of letting the thinking mature while pottering round with the family. Ahem. Actually, I think it might be working. I had a good idea while swimming the other evening! But like you, Miffy, I shouldn't be here - kids at CMs for 3 hours. Best make the most of it! Just off to put the kettle on, cut a piece of DD2s birthday cake and read...

baby due half way through the third year. Just before summer, which is good news. Everyone goes a bit AWOL over summer, so I won;t be so conspicuous by my absence.

An interesting spin on the classic 'mid PhD blues'!

I am hoping my internal examiner doesn't go AWOL over the next few weeks as I would like my corrections signed off!!! Mind you I feel like I need a holiday though.

Hi...can I join you? I am brand new...I just got my offer letter, and I start in October. I am actually not that nervous about starting...just excited, mostly, but wondering how to manage my work with 2 DCs who will be 5 and 4 when I start. I have no concept of how much time per day I should anticipate working (I'll be doing Information Science), particularly in my first year. I'm on a studentship, so I really do want to work hard enough to finish after three years (which may or may not be a realistic desire, I realise!)

Anyway, I will look forward to getting to know some of you...hope your work is going well!

Welcome NorksAkimbo (ace name!)

I'm on a fulltime studentship too. I aimed to do 5 days a week / 35 ish hours a week, but I've enjoyed the flexibility and done a wee bit of freelancing and packing it in at 3 or 4pm some days to see the kids. (mine are 3 and 5) I really want to finish on time too but I'm scared that slippage in fieldwork may stop that... we shall see.
Hard to believe that a year ago I was at the stage you're at it goes so quick!

Arghhhhh!

I have two very demanding supervisots who have completely changed their minds about the order in which i need to submit chapters to them so my weekly plan from now until end jan when i need to submit my full draft is screwed, they want weekly meetings until mid aug and thi week dd has chicken pox so all plans out the window, plus my car broke down so i have to travel up and get that and sort before we go on hol next wewk (by car) and dsd (16) is moving in so i have to move my study area upstairs and sort her room too! Oh and i am so skint!

Why does everything come at once???

Rant over.....

Thanks for that, Miffy...I am so glad to hear that you have children the same age as mine...and that my estimate of around 35 hours a week was 'right'. I'm hoping that I can use evenings and weekends so that I can pick the kids up from school everyday at 3:30; I know that might change once my field research kicks in.

I will come back more in a few weeks...we're on a lovely, relaxing family holiday now, so I am sucking up all these lazy days...I know I won't get many of those once I get started!

High, jumping back on this thread as am pregnant again and well in (5 1/2 months). I'm struggling with the motivation to keep writing (5th year PhD, chapter 1 in revisions, chapter 2 presented at a conference and resting until revisions on 1 complete). I'm really hoping to finish the first three chapters before the DC arrives in mid-January. Sometimes, it's just too much fun sitting around and feeling her kick, other times I fight the urge to toss all the papers that need grading in the shredder and say I lost them. Most of my cohort are also prepping job market materials, but I'm opting to delay that a year as I have a brilliant job at an international high school and expect to be very selective about university-level applications as DH can't move out of the area with his job.

Hi Overthepond, my best advice (having done this twice) during my 6 year PhD is to get as much done as possible prior to your new arrival. You have enough time to get your thesis written in draft before due date. It is much harder to get back into writing your thesis after the baby has arrived, purely due to sleep deprivation and your little bundle taking up all of your time. So I found the due date looming to be an excellent motivator aswell as trying to prove to my supervisors that I could do this and have a baby (or twins). Many PhD mums to be do not continue their studies post baby and being in your 5th year or part-time lessens the odds too. So make your bundle proud and crack it while you can!!!

I agree with 2plus1; I have 2DC, 1 before and 1 halfway through my PhD. it took me a good 6m after mat leave with no2 to get my brain screwed up to anything useful again.
May need moral support myself; year 4 phD, hoping to meet with supervisor next week to agree timetable to submission next June. aarrgghh

Wearymum, I always found my supervisor to be very good for motivating me (he was an extremely good supervisor) and helping to work out issues with the research or for planning the next stages. Hopefully, your meeting will provide you with an outline of the work to be done for submission. I planned out a gantz table at this stage of the things that I needed to do such as data analysis, lit review chapter, methods chapter, results, etc and set myself about 1-2 months (P/T) for each part. I also added a couple of months for editing post draft thesis prior to submission date. Then I made an outline of my thesis structure (to become my contents pages) and added heading and sub-headings for each chapter. This helped me enormously to focus on writing my thesis. Both of these were sent to my supervisor for comments and agreements on both the thesis structure and timetable. This enabled me to aim for a submission date which I reached two months earlier than planned. Not sure exactly what stage you are at but hope this helps.

Have the gantt ,the chapter plans etc ,but sadly it's the supervisory bit that's lacking. Previous thesis from a phd student in our department wasn't even read by him before submitted. My experiments have also got rather bogged down, but i am tempted to put an absolute end date on lab work of 30th jan and whatever isn't done will have to go in as possible further work......

Hello everyone, how are you all getting on?
I have been pretty head-down and stressed lately, but it feels that this week is to be celebrated: passed my mini-viva so I can proceed through to year 2 and also have had a positive meeting with some key contacts for my fieldwork. Now I just need some final bits of paperwork to be signed and I can start data collection :-)

I was looking forward to getting reading / lit review stuff out of the way for a while, but even though I've written thousands of words as part of submission for year 1-2 things, I have since discovered a whole new seam of literature to investigate so to speak. Still it'll keep me busy whilst I'm waiting for my sample to accrue.

Do let us know how you're all doing - I like this thread and hope that people are still lurking....

Congratulations Miffy. I'm writing up, first draft due in before Christmas. Happiness is on hold until then!

Hi everyone - and well done, Miffy on getting that stage out of the way. I got a new computer a while back and couldn't remember my password (feeble) so not been posting at all, just lurking occasionally. (Actually, I also thought it might be a good way of getting less distracted.)

I'm doing OK, though not made quite as much progress in the first term of my second year as I'd hoped. I need to get on with arranging interviews (am writing a sort of history of a profession, and my plan is to interview people who worked in the sector during the time I'm working on) but I keep procrastinating. Partly with conference papers - good to do, but a bit of a distraction. And also with thinking that if I just filled out my knowledge a little bit more from archive sources I'd be in a better position to do the interviews. But that is madness and could go on for ever, so time to stop and crack on with the interviews, I think. I guess now's a good time to be trying to arrange things for the new year, as people tend to have quite free diaries in January.

I guess the good thing is that - when I get time for it between my million and one other commitments - I do still really love working on it, and feel so lucky to have this opportunity. I was in the library yesterday and thinking about how I'm in my element there, really, and will be sorry when it's all over.

Hi Dotty, good to hear from you. I am also in the tricky setting up fieldwork stage... but more that I feel not in control of it and scared about how long it will take to get my sample.
Setting up stuff in the new year sounds like a good plan and I love it when people talk about enjoying their PhD - it can be a slog sometimes and it's good to focus on the positive :D

Yes, I do try and remember it's a fantastic opportunity (though, of course, yes, a slog at times). So many people find it such a struggle - my own DH did when he did his straight after his UG degree, which I think is partly why I waited nearly 20 years to do my own. But I'm enjoying it at the moment - and in fact it feels like the 'easiest' bit of my life. Certainly compared to family, housework, work commitments, church commitments, school governor commitments, buying the wretched Christmas presents... Maybe if I didn't have all that lot on I'd get more work done, though. And you can quote all that back to me in a year when I'm writing up and have my head in my hands!

ha ha! how many PhD students call it "the easiest bit of their life" ;-) IKWYM though,I do love the peace and quiet of my office....

Hello, I've really enjoyed reading your inspirational tales. I'm currently beginning my reserach proposal (eeek...about 10 words so far!) for a PhD in (deadline February 12) with a start date of Sept 12 (hopefully). I'd love to hear your thoughts, as part of me thinks I'm completely mad to consider doing a PhD with a one year old! I was made redundant a few weeks ago and I've so far galvanised myself into thinking that perhaps academia is the 'career' change I'm after, but I'm very scared that I may be taking something huge and crazy on! I graduated 10 years ago, so it's quite a leap to go back into studying but I've always quietly yearned to do a PhD so I thought this may be the time to go for it. I can only do it if I get funding. Any advice on combining mummy-hood of a toddler (!) with studying (or whether I should quit the idea pronto) would be gratefully received...! x

Hi Frolie - my situation was quite similar to yours, though my children were older. I'd been doing a mixture of freelancing and a 'proper job' and got made redundant from the proper job. And that propelled me into thinking about the PhD. I'd been out of education for even longer than you - 15 years, though working in a related field and writing a lot for work, which has definitely helped. Like you, I'd always wanted to do one and had thought about it several times before but the time had never really been right. I'm so pleased I'm doing it now and not earlier. I think I definitely appreciate the opportunity more and also make better use of my time/have a better perspective, so it seems a bit less of a burden than to some of my younger colleagues. (And actually, there are lots of us in our 30s and 40s in my department, although most of the other older students are doing it parttime rather than fulltime)

You will need some childcare, though. How much will depend on your subject and how much you need to be in uni. And as well as regular weekly commitments, you'll need to able to go to conferences/workshops etc, which might not always happen on the days of your regular childcare. The good thing for me - in an arts/social sciences subject - is that very little is compulsory, so there's almost nothing you actually have to attend. But if you don't do any of the optional stuff - training, seminars, conferences, discussion groups etc - you're definitely missing out on the experience.

DD2 was still at nursery when I started and I had 3 days a week childcare, term time only. And I did bits of work at evenings and at weekends, and my H had the kids for odd days in the holiday. It wasn't really enough and I upped it to 4 days. They're both at school now, and I do 2 short days and get them at 3 and have 3 long days - 2 with a CM and one with my DH. It's do-able. Guess you might be able to manage with less if your toddler still naps?

Good luck with the proposal!

Hi everyone, hope you are all managing to keep work going through the prep for xmas!

I'm really struggling with procrastination at the moment... Supposed to be finishing my theoretical background chapter but i don't want to, i want to do my analysis but my supervisors want me to nail this chapter first een though it is likely to change! Arghhh its knocked out my submission schedule completely!

I need motivation (and sleep)....

I really struggled with my theoretical background chapter too, AtwarOS. Maybe the thing to do is to focus on it being 'good enough' since you know it will change and just get something, anything, out there. (I've been reading the Oliver Burkeman book Help - it's a compilation of his Guardian columns, which I love - and there's quite a lot of stuff on beating procrastination and perfectionism in there.) You could always try the kitchen timer trick - make yourself work uninterrupted for just 15 minutes, go and do something else, come back and do 20 etc. I sometimes find I'm turning the timer off and carrying on because I've managed to get on a roll when I do it.