Hmmm, I might find that tricky

This morning I have to give a talk at a project progress meeting

Hope it goes well.

Good Luck

I'm meant to be writing my thesis.

So am I, and I need to tell my supervisor what I've been doing work-wise soon.

I was meant to send mine my methods section last week Monday

I know exactly what I will be doing when I finish - going back to my job as a teacher. They are only letting me do the PhD on condition that I work for them for another 2 years at least. Oh, and I will be being a mum, of course.

I am still alive!

And I got a free two course lunch

That sounds good.

My supervisors seems quite happy as well.

Well done both!

Well done!

I've done nothing all day. Or all week...

That's good!

It's called thinking time - just as important as writing time.

I call it "browse the internet and eat chocolate time"

I'll join in here, just started my second term, and have this morning sent my supervisor a draft conference paper, which doubtless will need hacking to bits.

What is a conference paper, exactly? In my field we have papers and we have conferences, but I'm sure we don't have conference papers

Umm, well you have a paper for a conference (conference paper) and you have a paper for a journal (journal paper).

(Or is this some sort of academic sarcasm that I'm not picking up on?)

No, it was a genuine question!

We have journal papers, obviously. We have posters and talks for conferences....

OK, well the conference in question wants 5,000 word papers.

Unsurprisingly I've been doing a lot of reading lately, and I've read quite a few conference papers, which often seem to be longer than journal papers.

I can imagine it's a lot of work!

I've never really been to a conference - I went to one but didn't present anything Is this what you need to send in to get accepted or are you definitely going?

They wanted an abstract/proposal earlier, which they have apparently looked at and then told some (all?) of us that they're fine and to submit the paper, presumably the final thing needs to be accepted and on the back of that a free holiday to Singapore!

Very nice!

We had a guest chappy at lunch time who has apparently produced about 1,000 papers - if he's had a 40 year career that's one a fortnight - how did he have the time to do any work?!

He probably made his minions (i.e. students) do the work

We have conference papers and journal papers, but the conference papers don't actually have to be written papers because they're done as oral presentations.

How have you managed to escape going to conferences BB2? I've had to do several and absolutely hated them to start with - I very nearly chucked the whole PhD in at one point because I hated conferences that much. I've enjoyed the last couple I went to, though, so I'm obviously getting the hang of it now.

A quick play with google indicates that someone I was at school with is up to about thirty. At the moment I'm the only person from my school year who went on to a physics degree without a paper to his name.

But how many of those publications are actually his own work where he's first or single author and how many are things where he's happened to do a tiny bit of work for someone and got onto the list of authors from that? Has he got a lot of very similar papers in different journals? - that isn't allowed in my area.

I don't think anyone is _supposed_ to do that in any field (regurgitate in different papers). He seems to be first named in about ten of them, they tend to be fairly expensive physics experiments with very big magnets and very low temperatures (although they might call them high temperatures), and I doubt there's much opportunity for individual experimentation.

And he's still early on in his career?

Most people in my area don't do more than 3-4 publications per year. My department (which is 6* rated in the past few RAEs) expects academic staff to do two publications per year.

Been doctored about 5/6 years.

6* rating? Has there been some grade inflation, I thought it only went up to 5*

No. Three or more consecuative 5* ratings get turned into a 6* one.

Your friend having had his doctorate 5/6 years makes his publications record sound better. If you include his PhD as well then that's 30 publications in 8-10 years which is around 3-4 per year. 30 from a single PhD (which is what I thought you were talking about!) would have been rather different.

Are you sure you aren't playing Brain of Britain? Five in a row and you get a bonus point.

No one has made me go to any apart from a uni one which doesn't really count.

Too much work to do, far too little motivation to do any of it...

Hmm. I know that feeling...

Spider solitaire is much more interesting.

The internet is more interesting.

I've been staring at the same two word documents since Monday and nothing much has changed.

I actually miss doing experiments.

At least you got to play with fun chemicals and stuff at one point, the closest I get is visits to the engineering labs to speak with colleagues on a project. Then it's back to desks and offices!

Poor crazy mathematicians kept hidden away!

Just out of interest, what are your council's rules on council tax?

Obviously, full time students are exempt... but what about when you're registered as an overtime student? In Leeds, overtime students used to be exempt too. Until August this year when they decided to change it

How convenient

Overtime? Do you mean you're beyond the end of your funding? I'm not sure it would make any difference as you are presumably still registered as a full time student

We are exempt until we submit the first version of our thesis for examination, regardless of whether we're a 3rd year or a continuation student.

See, my council was the same until they changed it

It now says...

What is it?
The Overtime Period fee is a special concession that allows EdD, DClinPsychol, DPM, MD, Integrated PhD, PhD or MPhil candidates (full-time or part-time) to register on a reduced fee after the standard period of study but within the maximum period of study. The fee is £150 for the academic session 2009/10.

The Overtime Period fee is non-refundable. During this time, candidates should be completing the writing of the thesis and not undertaking further research. Schools should ensure that candidates involved in further research register as full-time or part-time students; they will be required to pay tuition fees accordingly.

Will I qualify for Council Tax Exemption?
Students in their over time period are not eligible for council tax exemption from Leeds City Council. If you do not live in the Leeds area, please contact your relevant council. Further advice is available from the student union.

Oh dear.

This is what our regs say:

Postgraduate Research Students on Continuation
Once research students have completed their period of study, they may be regarded as "on Continuation" for a period specified in the core regulations. During this period the student must complete and submit their thesis for examination.

If you were a full time student whilst on the supervised period of your programme of study then you are eligible for council tax exemption during the continuation period.

Exemption from council tax whilst on continuation is only valid until the first submission of the thesis. This does not include the period of marking, corrections, re-submission or as you prepare for the viva examination.

Please Note:
Confirmation of council tax exemption is provided for students on continuation for the following quarterly periods:

Quarter 1 - 1 October to 31 December
Quarter 2 - 1 January to 31 March
Quarter 3 - 1 April to 30 June
Quarter 4 - 1 July to 30 September
Council tax exemption certificates for students on continuation can only be provided up to the end of the current quarter. For example, a request made on the 13 March would be granted exemption to 31 March.

For us it did used to be until the thesis is accepted, but that's changed in the past year or two.

Can't believe it just changed last month - great timing for me

I've actually done some work today

WELL DONE

I've done some too.

I've also discovered a whole load of data which I'd forgotten I had.

I _think_ I've done some work today, and I again failed to successfully direct a fresher in the right direction, and I kept having staff asking me if I needed help in the library.

I've spent the day thinking about doing some work - does that count?





Note: it's thinking about doing some work... not thinking about work itself

I plotted two graphs today and got a thumbs up (lol) from my supervisor for them Yay! Much better than the disappointed look he gave me on Monday....

And then I confused lots of little undergrads about autocad for 3 hours