Evening all,
I've just started my PhD in psychology and am finding it pretty overwhelming/exhausting at the minute. The sense of freedom to take the research in any direction I want is great, but also terrifying me at the minute.
Is anyone up for a thread where we can share first year stuff (lit review stress, review panels, productivity slumps etc!)? Any subject welcome :)

I'm in :).

I start my PhD next week!

I would be up for this - just started my PhD this week.

Yep, there are different concerns at different stages

Sounds like a great idea for a thread - good shout.

We've published a little bit of advice for new students recently back on the FindAPhD blog.

https://www.findaphd.com/advice/blog/

With my 'Editor Hat' on I'd be very happy to chat to anyone who's interested in sharing their initial PhD experiences as a guest poster - now, or in future.

Cheers

Mark

I would love to participate! Just started my PhD a month ago and have been dealing with a lot of procrastination - or mainly focusing on classes in which I am TAing instead of focusing on my own research...

Great stuff-hello all :)

What areas are you all working in?

I've had my first supervision meeting this week, and already the project is evolving from my original proposal, which looks like it may involve a change in methodology. So lots of reading to do around that.

Out of interest, if any of you are in psychology/socsci, how much training are you being given in research methods/practice etc?

My project is in biological sciences. Started yesterday! I have a lot of reading to do so that I can draft an initial plan by the end of the month. I'm kind of suffering from imposter syndrome just now. My supervisor seems very confident in me though.

Next week is the induction week for my school, looking forward to that :-)

Hi evilpenguin, how have your first few weeks been? I know how you feel with the imposter syndrome, I had a period last week where I managed to convince myself that I should quit as I didn't want to do a PhD anyway, happily i'm over that now though!

How is your plan coming along?

Hey huckabees! My first few weeks have been ok, I was getting worried that I wasn't achieving much but this week I started my lab work! I'm still going through the imposter syndrome stuff, but I am still learning a lot about my project so hopefully as I learn more I'll get more confident in myself. I'm glad you are over it and didn't quit! I did think about running away a lot in my first fortnight, it was overwhelming.

At the induction week they told us about all of the upcoming deadlines. I'm trying to not think too far ahead, I'm just focusing on the next few months. My plan is to have the first draft of my lit review done by the end of this month so that I can submit it by the Christmas deadline, and by Christmas I also need to have completed the first set of experiments. I'm only able to run one experiment a week at the moment, but hoping that once I learn the ropes I can set up two a week.

How is your PhD going? You said you have quite a bit of freedom with your research - have you decided which direction you're going to go in?

Maybe we can even set up a whatsap group chat to support each other along the way. im ridhwan, 3 months into my research program (PhD) in biological sciences.

Sounds like you are off to a flying start with your experiments then! How many word is a lit review for BS generally?

I have much more of a direction now (i think!), I've narrowed down some specifics aspects that I want to address, and I'm also thinking of making the sample population much more specific (so a sub-group of the community I'll be looking at). I'm taking this all to my supervisor on Friday, so hopefully she'll be ok with it! I think now that I have a bit more structure, moving forward with planning my studies will be a bit easier.

Can I ask what area of bio you're looking at? I'm looking psychology of sexual health risk behaviour, so quite interested in epidemiology and disease transmission!

I don't have a word limit as far as I know, I could probably write around 4000 words with what I have so far though.

That sounds really good! Hope your meeting with her goes well!

I'm in nanotoxicology, investigating inflammation caused by nanoparticles.