Hi all,

Whilst being officially a full time PhDer from April this year, I have basically done nothing and am looking for some motivation/comfort. Please don't think I am lazy though......let me explain my situation!

I am currently a member of staff at my university on a fixed term research assistant contract that is due to finish in a week. However, when the opportunity for a full-time funded PhD came up in my group in April, I couldn't let it pass! I got the position, but agreed with my supervisory team (who were also my employers) that I would stay as a full time staff member as well until my contract lapsed....this sounded ideal for both parties; they wouldn't need to retrain someone for the sake of 6 months, and I would be able to save enough money to sustain my family when I became a full time student again......hope I have explained myself properly!! Now from the point of view of my studies, I know this wasn't the ideal thing to do, but to be honest, if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have been able to take the PhD due to money. So no option really.

As an employee, I was working on a really interesting yet demanding project that took up basically all of my time during the day, and I was unable to muster the motivation to work during the evenings and weekends. So, as I prefaced this thread with, I have basically done nothing to show for my 6 months to date, which is seriously killing my motivation going forward!

The previous 6 months haven't been a waste though as I have been running a test cell which has given me fantastic experience for when I come to do the same for my PhD......however it is the literature review that is weighing on my mind at the moment. I keep collecting papers upon papers and have a MASSIVE reading list (and I am currently quite slow reading as I like to absorb the content).

Am I alone?! How much do you guys manage to read daily? I just want to gauge whether I can "catch-up" on all the reading I should have done!!

Thanks!

AC

Fully funded phd post that started 6 months ago, but full time staff (and paid I assume) for those 6 months. That is a problem if you were receiving 2 forms of pay. Did they not just postpone your start date?

Hi,

No, as it was "gift" funding for a newly appointed professor in the group, apparently it had to be taken up by that date or be lost! Not sure of the exact technicalities of that.

With regards to it being a problem, are you referring to the clause that funding bodies use to say that you can't do more than 6hrs paid work a week (or something to that tune)? If so, it's ok; as the funding is provided by my university and not a research council, there are no restrictions on this. It was something that we looked at during the whole process.

Stop reading and start writing. Then read to fill in the gaps. At least, that's how I wrote my PhD thesis. I knew enough to know what I needed to cover in the chapters, then I just found relevant papers on the topic I wanted to write about.

If you have written something, you will feel like you have done something. If all you have is a reading list, it's quite daunting.

I tend not to read daily even now - I collect papers and read them quickly when I have a few hours to spare. I don't try to digest all the content because most isn't directly relevant to what I'm researching currently and I will forget the detail in a few weeks anyway.

Hi,

TreeofLife, that makes sense. So essentially, use the writing to drive the reading? It would be interesting to know how you dealt with the difference between the "textbook" literature that is relevant, and the literature relating to "current trends" in the area? In my mind, they are both very different. The literature review is obviously to determine what has been done specific to my field so as to know where I fit into the equation. However, I feel like I should include some textbook fundamentals in the thesis to give some context. Is this something for the introduction chapter, or to be included in the literature review as well? I'm just concerned that my tendency to "over work" things will kick in and I will have a literature review of 100+ pages! I've asked some of the ex-PhDers in the group and get different responses and my supervisor is biased as his literature review was "EXTENSIVE"!

I would try to suss out which are the key authors/papers for your topic (using things like number of citations to guide you). Once you have some core papers sorted out, it's easier to start drafting some writing and then approach other papers with certain questions in mind, e.g. which methodology did they use, how did results compare to the key papers or theories. As I've progressed with my thesis, I've grown more and more likely to gauge papers by a quick read of the abstract - you start to get a feel for which ones you want to immerse yourself in and which others will just function as a reference for a point you're making.

Yes, use the writing to drive the reading. Regarding differences between text books and current trends, I guess I used an undergrad text book to give me an overview of the subject area, but didn't include any of that information really, because I took that to be assumed knowledge when writing my lit review. You definitely need to give context, but you can do this from papers.

Like Chickpea says, it's a good idea to find the key papers in your field as well. These should be relatively easy to find because most papers you read will cite them. Or if you know what you are looking for, then you can use key terms to search for them. In my case, I only knew the name of the species I was going to be working on, I didn't know at the time what areas would be important, so I just started collecting papers and writing as I went along and then added more papers and refined the writing.

So, your lit review needs to be extensive; I take this to mean comprehensive in terms of scope and depth, but with emphasis on your particular research area, which I think is what most lit reviews turn out to be eventually.

These really are great nuggets of advice guys, thank you. I feel more confident already. I think that part of what has been stressing me out was the thought of not having good discipline and writing about EVERYTHING! I now have a better idea of how I can fuel my knowledge requirement, whilst being very direct in my approach.

Thanks!
AC