======= Date Modified 16 56 2009 08:56:54 =======
I am 18 months into a PhD (with various stops/starts) and feel like I've completely lost the focus and purpose/aim of this research project! The topic has evolved considerably from my original proposal - no bad thing, and at the suggestion of my supervisor. However, I feel now that I have "lost the plot" - I don't know where it is going. I have tried to formulate a research question as a starting point, and sketch out some ideas but I really don't know what I should/want to say anymore (if I ever did know that)!

This has been lurking in the background for a few months - I figured as I had a rough plan sketched out I should just start writing. I have completed a first, "these are the basic problems" chapter which my supervisor seems happy with. I would just start on a 2nd chapter and hope that my ideas become clearer as I write up more chapters - but that strikes me as a potentially dangerous approach? It strikes me that one could just end up with 80,000 words spread over 7 chapters, but no real focus/aim, or is that what a first complete draft does actually look like?!

I guess my central problem is envisaging the whole thesis - I don't feel I can proceed without having a better idea what the whole thing will look like. The problem is especially acute now because, in order to upgrade to full PhD status I have to submit a 1.5 page outline (not sure if that is double or single spaced - the instructions in our department on these kind of matters are terrible) to an internal/external examiner along with my 1st chapter for them to judge if I am capable and the topic is suitable for development into a PhD. I am so scared! I know it is essentially a helpful process and allows me to get 2 further expert opinions on my work/direction - but as I don't know what my direction is anymore, I am just terrified and end each day in a depressed, dejected heap.

Has anyone else had to go through a similar process, and/or does anymore have any suggestions for getting a better handle on "envisaging the whole" / doing a detailed mid-way plan/synopsis, post-initial proposal?

Thanks!

Hi Cupcake

What is your first chapter? Is it a lit review? You say you have sketched out the 'basic problems'... usually the lit review helps you to frame your research question more tightly. Without that focus and more work on it, it's kind of difficult to see "the whole picture". If it makes you feel any better, I only really got a clearer view through preparing for upgrade (but we had to have written 3 chapters for that to happen) and I'm only now (close to finishing) able to really "envisage the whole". You can, at your stage, though, envisage a loose structure, something along the lines of:

Here's an interesting problem... here's what others say about it, these are the things I think they're not saying, taking this angle/gap as a starting point, this thesis investigates this... in order to investigate these things, I have done/plan to do this... all of this relates to this/these question(s). This is an important thing to study because... this is a suitable way to pursue the study because... In doing this, I expect to find these things...

You should think of the outline as a "these are the things I've been thinking about" that will help your upgrade panel see what you've been doing and where you're headed and whether what you think you can do is feasible. The outline should also relate to the work you've already done - the chapter you're handing in and show how that has contributed to your thinking. Another thing you could think about doing is writing a separate, brief (maybe a page)... report outlining how and why things have changed over the year, how your initial proposal was developed and changed and why... what was wrong with it, how has what you have done instead changed things and so on. This shows the development of your thinking over time - and that's all part of the process. Understanding what works and what doesn't, rather than 'having to get things right' is what matters... At PhD level, things are not 'right' until they're done (well, except maybe experimental scientific work)... and even then, the 'rightness' is as tenuous as the next person who comes along to challenge it and find the 'gap' in your work, which, when all is done and dusted becomes part of the new wave of literature and some future student's lit review. :p

Hi Cupcake,

I had that problem at the start of mine. I had some interesting research questions that my sups were happy with, but it all seemed a big sprawling mass of disconnected ideas rather than a potential thesis. I left my writing for a bit and did a diagram, a sort of mindmap thing, with all the main ideas, key books I was referencing and problems I wanted to answer, as it got all the PhD things swirling around in my head onto paper. It gave me a way of seeing how all the different elements that I wanted to research actually related to each other. A bit like joining the dots to make a picture like in kid's drawing books, I suppose! From that, I could see a pattern emerging for a potential chapter structure, as various bits grouped together in a fairly logical way. Once I had those broad sections worked out, it let me formulate mini-research questions as a focus for each chapter, and after that I could work out how I was going to go about investigating each section, my methods, what data I needed, what bodies of literature I'd have to read, etc.

I was looking at it yesterday and it's more or less what I've ended up with for the final thesis structure, so I guess it was a good thing to do to get a grip on the PhD as a whole - I was seriously overwhelmed by it all before my upgrade. The hardest bit was trying to force my diagram into a linear structure of chapters that would flow ok for reading purposes as a written thesis. It was messy and frustrating to do, and I realised there was no easy way to organise some data, so it was a compromise, but that's ok if you explain why you've done it that way.

I handed in an abstract, a chapter outline of about 3000 words, a chapter of about 4000 words I think that was a sort of lit review and an account of what I wanted to research and why. I also handed in an A3 version of my mindmap diagram, and talked about it at my upgrade panel meeting - it was just another way of showing the examiners what I wanted to do, why and how. Why don't you go with one and a half line spacing as a compromise for your text? Single line is very squashed for writing comments and doesn't read as easily, I think.

Try not to be a dejected heap though, it is a difficult thing to do, but it takes shape gradually. It's all work in progress until the very end, and that includes the upgrade.

Mine was a bit of a mishmash to start with. I knew what the end point I wanted to make was, but the getting there was a bit of a maze. However I also did the mapping process and then read the authoring a PhD book which gave me ideas for the structuring of the whole thing. Together they gave me something to work with. In my case I have a series of chapters which build towards the final chapter which shows the connection between them and how they all fit together. At least that's the plan at the moment. I've got one half written chapter and one maybe two thirds finished. One of the sessions I went to here suggested a good way of getting yourself organised is to write an abstract for your work, obviously not the final one :$, but a sort of this is what my thesis is all about, it might work for you. :-)

Hello to you all,

Thank you so much for your helpful, thoughtful comments, advice and encouragement! I'm sorry it's taken me 3 days to reply. I decided the best way 'forward' was to do nothing for the weekend - go skiing and clear out the brain with a healthy dose of cold air ;-)

I am feeling a lot more confident now and have worked with all your suggestions - filling in the 'gaps'/starting to write a draft abstract (though this is my central problem: how to summerize the purpose of the research in 1.5 pages!) and I've made some very pretty (and helpful) mindmaps which had enabled me to see some 'connections' that I had not previously thought of! So, thanks again...

I've never been particularly clear what this idea of a "lit review" is... Maybe we just don't really use them in my discipline? (Which is (international) law.) I mean, of course I have read very, very widely and identified what I perceive to be the 'gaps' in the literature. I guess I take more of a "problematising the central question" approach? i.e. my first chapter shows what the 'problems' are with the current framework, how we have got to the state we are at and why I think we are 'there'... Maybe that is a lit review in all but name, but I get the impression it is not... I look at the problem for the international community so to speak, rather than the problem/gaps with previous research into the issue (which isn't very copious anyway, given the newness of the problem!)

Anyway, better get on with it.

Bests,

"Cupcake" (an old nickname - not quite sure how it became my login name!)