Deadlines
I have to say, I am panicking about deadlines right now. I have a supervision next week, and am handing in work on Friday that is incredibly underprepared.
I was in a musical last week which took up a lot of my time, and I let it take too much really. I did some work but not nearly enough. In part this is my poor time management and inability to say no and let other people do what they should be doing instead of doing it when they fail to. In another part, this is a further indication that I don’t work well like this. I like to work by writing - the suggestion read for four weeks write for two doesn’t work for me. I need to be doing both at the same time, and my working isn’t going that way at the moment. I take some responsibility for that, as I haven’t discussed my working method with my supervisors, but I do still feel a little resentful at the lack of direction as to where I should be up to, and what I should be contemplating right now. I have no idea whether a phd student 2/3 through their first year should have written one chapter, or two, or six. There just isn’t that kind of information available.
This is one of the things I need to discuss at my supervision, as well as the fact that I need to produce something written at every stage. Saying ‘read and come back with a plan’ doesn’t work well for me - I’ve read a fair amount but it’s not in a coherent manner that I could give to a supervisor for comments. It should have been, really. I’ve struggled in attempting to do it any other way. My notes are in programs that work on Mac, which work for me, but which absolutely would not translate to my supervisors’ university systems.
Also, I am appalled that neither Blackwells nor Waterstones could find an in print collection of Wilkie Collins’s short stories, so there is a new link in the sidebar to e-text versions of these.
Posted: May 8th, 2008 under university, phd.
Comments: 1
Comments
Comment from Robin Adams
Time: May 12, 2008, 1:53 pm
You’re not alone. I and every PhD student I’ve known - in fact, everyone I’ve known who’s doing research - feels lost, alone, and certain that everyone else knows what they’re doing. This is what it feels like to be doing original research, I’m afraid.
But how much should a PhD student have written after eight months?
Nothing. You shouldn’t even know what your thesis is going to be on until at least halfway through your second year, in my opinion. I didn’t choose my topic until halfway through my third year. You can’t plan a piece of academic research like a military campaign.
Reading incoherently is exactly what you should be doing right now. Learning the best way for you to take notes when reading, and to present notes for your supervisor’s comments, is very useful. These self-organisation skills, and a broad knowledge of your subject area, are the most valuable things you can get from doing a PhD. The thesis itself and the qualification are far less important.
Remember, too, that you don’t have to have completed your research by the end of the third year. A thesis is not meant to be a completed artefact; it’s a report on a work in progress.
Yes, research is scary, it’s lonely, and it’s stressful. But it has its perks, the biggest of which is that you set your own hours and choose for yourself how to spend your time and what interests you. You’ll get stressed by the bad parts whatever happens, so for goodness’ sake allow yourself to enjoy the good parts, too.
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