I do a lot of teaching as part of my funding, but I've been a teacher for years anyway. I have often faced situations where I'm teaching something I'm not 100% about, and it's by far the best way to learn something yourself. My advice would be to get your head around the basics, then go for it. The most important thing is to *appear* totally confident. If they ask you stuff you don't know, do one of three things (in order of preference):

1. rely on the old favourite of setting that as a task for them to find out for next time. If you can't get away with that...

2. tell them it's something you'll be looking at in detail next time. If you can't get away with that...

3. be honest and say you don't know but will clarify it next time.

The most tempting thing to do is Make it up, but of you do that and get found out they will lose all respect for you.

Teaching is great though, enjoy it :)

I keep a blog summarising/reviewing the articles I read. I doubt anyone reads it, but that's not the point - the point is that I know I'm not disciplined enough to take adequate notes, I'd scribble some things down and think "I'll know what I mean". This way, I have to really understand the article as the very fact that my comments are public force me to put my thoughts coherently. Works for me. Just about to try that mindmapping software though, looks good.

I love mine too. Just what I wanted and more.

Looks like we're all in similar situations!
I'm feeling quite positive at the moment actually. 2nd meeting with supervisor, good discussion, lots to read, lots to do.

It's alright this PhD lark!

Again, probably more for humanities than science...

Any tips on organising your reading / note taking? I've just spent a surprisingly productive morning printing off loads of relevant articles and chapters. Now they are all neatly piled up all over my floor. Any tips on the best way to organise what will now be days of reading?

ta

nice to see others with similar feelings!
In terms of hours, for humanities, it's just whatever you need to get it done I guess. There is absolutely no-one keeping an eye on what I'm doing (I like it like that). They are keen to have regular supervisor meetings though, and they want us to keep accurate records of these. Then there's the review panel at the end of semester 1.

Better get some reading done I suppose!

At our place you can apply for whatever you like. But if you are successful in the uni scholarship and then get an external one, you then give up the uni one.

... then the second week was taken up with teaching (I'm on a graduate teaching scholarship thing). I also still do a little bit of teaching in another part of the uni for a bit of extra cash.

I'm meeting my supervisor for the second time on Wed, so I'm determined to spend Mon and Tue getting my head down.

I know it's only 2 weeks into a busy 3 years, but I kind of feel like I'm slipping behind already.

Still loving the idea of it though - the teaching is ace, and I'm fascinated by my topic

I'm interested in finding out how things are going for other newbies like me now we're 2 weeks in. I'm especially keen to hear from Humanities peeps, as the whole science thing seems to be a completely different ball game as far as I can tell.

To be honest, I feel I've achieved nothing PhD-wise so far. First week was lots of induction, admin, and sorting out training courses (to meet this 70 hours req).....

Created by an ex colleague of mine...

http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

Nothing's straightforward is it? Just when everything is sorted, my prospective supervisor gets a new job elsewhere. Any idea where I stand? Do they have to find me someone else, as the offer has already been made?

Thanks :)

Does anyone know if there are any restrictions on doing extra teaching work while working as a GTA?

Thanks

What's your area Krashty?

No, I meant yours sounds suitably academic Apostrophe! I need to work at getting mine to be a bit more of a converstaion stoppper! 'The expression of verbal morphology/semantics'? Ace.

I need to work on how I describe my topic area. What kind of expression do people have when you tell them what you're studying?