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>> 23.02.04

Funding focus (iii): how will the funding money be paid to me and how much is it?
The third part of the Funding Focus looks in brief at how much money a postgraduate student can expect Having guaranteed funding to carry out studies, the natural question is: how much funding will I get? Information within the various research council websites concerning this question is actually pretty difficult to find. Almost every one of the seven councils has a section marked "funding" and yet has that section filled with so much information it can be hard to determine what you want to know. An exception to this rule... {>>}

>> 13.02.04

Funding focus (ii): how do I go about getting some of the funding available?
The second part of the Funding Focus concentrates on securing some of the funding available for postgraduate study Having discussed the various institutions and areas that fund postgraduate study, we now look at how to access the funding available. Once again, we will concentrate on each of the different funding bodies to see the best ways of approaching this problem. Before considering this, however, it is worth nothing that being organised can often set you off on good footing: once you are sure of the postgraduate course you wish to... {>>}

>> 11.02.04

Funding focus (i): where does the money come from?
In the first part of the Funding Focus, we look at where the funding comes from in general for postgraduate research Funding for postgraduate research can come from a large range of organisations. The most familiar of these organisations are the funding councils — such as EPSRC [1] etc. — though these form only a part of the possible sources of money for research. Other funding options are available through institutions themselves, employers, charities and trusts, as well as from the individual wishing to enrole on the course through part-... {>>}

Funding focus
One of the most important factors associated with a postgraduate course — both in terms of deciding to do it, where to do it and how to do it — is money. Since a lot of the information already provided within the Phd diary concerning funding is not obviously accessible (located mainly — though not exclusively — in the money & funding category), the next few entries will form a Funding Focus that will provide a step-by-step guide to postgraduate funding. It will be (roughly) split into the following sections:... {>>}

>> 09.02.04

Prize questions
The momentum of writing entries in the PhD diary has diminished over the last few days due to an increase in application. The majority of my time has been spent scrawling busily on a piece of paper trying to solve the mysteries of initial value problems, the sum total of my application leaving things — as they stand — exactly where they were before I started. Never the less, I am not to be deterred and am confident something will happen soon. As a small diversion from my work, I... {>>}

>> 04.02.04

Which comes first?
For an unknown reason, I haven't been sleeping too well of late, but despite this — or perhaps in spite of it — my work has been progressing well. Tiredness is a state that provides your brain with more capability to concentrate for shorter periods of time and it is in those periods that I have been at my most fruitful, moving to the point where I am equipped (mathematically speaking) to lunge into the major challenge of my PhD. It may turn out that this preparation will prove to... {>>}

>> 03.02.04

Mental health
I was prompted by yesterday's diary entry to try and find the statistics to which I was referring, namely that "mental illness is found more often in male postgraduate students between the ages of 25-35 or so than any other social group." So far, I have not been able to find anything to corroborate this, although in the mean time have found a series of links on mental health and illness that pay particular attention to students: Oxford Student Mental Health Network >> founded in 2000 in the Oxford area,... {>>}

>> 02.02.04

Mathematicians with Asperger's
Over the course of the weekend, I found myself reading an interesting interview with Mark Haddon, writer of multi-award winning The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. A book that I read during my summer holiday last year (I'm so ahead of the fashion, me), it was enjoyable and told the story of a young boy suffering from Asperger's disease (the details of which can be found at aspergers.com). Despite the obvious mathematical thread within the book, I didn't consider the correlation between it and the condition of... {>>}