"Can't you hear me, S.O.S.?": TLG's PhD study blog!

I have just ordered a copy of Here I Go Again the second movie as I felt like it might provide some much needed light relief in current situation. I know plot is rubbish but love Lily James and love Abba so it will do the trick I think.

Good shout! Lily James was great in that film (not seen her in anything else), I was very impressed with her

I have to say though, I think I'm one of the few ABBA fans I know who prefers the first film to the second

You're up late, hope you're alright

Yes I am fine thanks, always a bit of a night owl but am turning in shortly. I am surprised most people like second movie more it really has no cohesive plot line at all. Have you seen French and Saunders skit take on it, I think it was for Comic Relief. Absolutely Hilarious and I highly recommend you have a look on Youtube. Well I will bid you goodnight now! Hopefully tomorrow goes just as well!

Meep That's annoying they can't move it, though I'm sure yours will go well My yearly progress review is on 18th May. For the first time in 6 years, I'm not too worried about it!

Will they expect you to have a year's worth of work done or is this different to a first year report if you don't mind me asking. Still trying to get my head around Phd's!

They tried to move it to August, but my internal examiner is on annual leave for that month, so June was safer. Otherwise they might have had to shunt everything forwards and it might have messed up my timings (and whether I have to go into my 4th year or not)!

I can only speak for my PhD (as there is a lot of variation in the process). I started in January officially, but only truly started properly in April as my supervisor was on sick leave. Normally at the review they would expect anything from 6 to 9 months worth of work. The review is just for guidance/monitoring to make sure I'm doing the right things and to advise on things going forward - it's not a pass or fail situation. The upgrade (which I think is what you mean when you say first year report) is the viva-esque assessment at the 1 year mark of your PhD which determines if you can upgrade from MPhil to PhD candidacy. Mine will be around January/February/March most likely, so I don't have to worry about that just yet!

Ahhhhhh I see Good that you should be able to avoid a 4th year this way, though.

And eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek about your upgrade being at the end of your first year. For me it was the end of my second year ( if I'd been full-time. It was actually the third year of my course, as I did first year full-time, then went part-time at start of second year) and even having it that "early" (in my mind) was super-stressful

I'm actually not too worried about my upgrade - I did clinical exams (basically vivas about patients) during my first degree, and I had some very harsh examiners. While it was awful at the time, I feel like it was great training for this, and I feel like I'm prepared for anything! Plus, I know my internal examiner well, so I can predict the style of questioning he'll go for!

Got my annual progress review in 20 mins

At least this year I've done lots of work (by my standards, anyway), so I know in advance that I'll definitely pass. Which makes a nice change

Ooh let us know how it goes!

Went really well! The chair of the panel hadn't read my documents though, so he was like "I didn't know your project is about ABBA!" and I was like

Glad that's out of the way. Think I talked too much but I said almost everything I had wanted to say

It's great that your voice was the prominent one in the room though, it shows enthusiasm and that you didn't need to be heavily prompted! Good job!

Did you get any good advice from the committee or was it purely to see your progress to date?

Thank you

Both supervisors were very firm that the current questionnaire I'm working on has to be the last data gathering I kinda knew they'd say that but was hoping they wouldn't, coz I still feel like there's so much more to do/find out/ask people about Realistically, deep down, I know they're completely right though

It is really hard to know when to stop collecting data, especially with a nice long time like a PhD (i.e. months.years of data as opposed to a few weeks at say, masters level). How many responses have you had so far? What kind of analysis do you plan to do?

I'm still designing the main questionnaire, so it hasn't been disseminated yet. Ideally I'd like to get at least 30-40 people to respond to that one. My questionnaire about favourite ABBA songs has had over 120 responses I've done about 10-11 semi-structured interviews, and have numerous chats with people at various events. Plus all the screenshots/Facebook saved links (over 1000) from online fieldwork Idea is to do most qualitative analysis (quote-gathering and comparing/contrasting them against one another/my original perceptions of ABBA fandom), with some demographic-related statistics thrown in

Well done for passing!

There are lots of things that you have done - your masters, what you have done on your PhD, the charity work/mentoring and other things I either don't know about or have forgotten!

I'm sure your supervisor will be very understanding if you're not ready for supervision yet if you genuinely can't do it