Hi all,

I am a couple of months into my PhD, and after spending the past few months doing lots of reading and some writing, I seem to have found what I want to do, and some gaps in literature that I feel I could fill. I am now hoping to make a project plan of my PhD, i.e. the plan for the next two and half years or so - when I'll be finishing study 1, study 2, etc and when I'll be writing up etc. I have heard people mention (including my supervisor) that it is too early days to narrow things down (that it may inhibit my creativity), but I really feel like that is what I want to do, as I have found the gaps in literature (why should I just plod on aimlessly?) and can now define my research objectives (though I know they may change in due course). Is it really too early? When did you define your objectives and start some studies?

Also, how much time would you allocate for write up? And has anyone on this forum submitted their thesis before the end of three years?

Thanks! :)

I was a 6-year part-time student. However I hit the ground running. I wrote my literature review (which remained largely unchanged by the end of my PhD) within 3 months of starting. Then I immediately started the research phase of my research.

I still took nearly 6 years to submit (which is equivalent to 3 years full-time), partly because I found the writing up hard, partly because my neurological disease progressed. In the final years of my PhD had no more than 5 hours total (in 1 hour chunks spread throughout the week) for study time. But I finished.

I don't believe you need to spend ages "finding your area" in the first year. I also think people can often waste a lot of time doing far too much reading/lit review, which isn't relevant later. And then people run out of time and run into the fourth year.

Hi Chococake

I 'locked on' (as it were) in my reserach about the same time in as you are thinking of doing. For me finishing in the three years was, and is a priority. That said, I do agree with your supervisor in one way in that it can inhibit your creativity to a degree. If you want to finish in three years I think you have to be quite ruthless about it and there are therefore limited opportunities to explore any juicy tangents that might crop up!

I had mandatory graduate education modules to take which I completed in my first two years (it was expected they would take three). I completed all of my fieldwork in second year (I'm in the social sciences). I am currently writing up and hope to submit this summer - if I do that wil be within the three years. I officially started writing up in December. During my PhD I have done quite a lot of teaching, attended 7 conferences and also done lots and lots and lots and lots of marking :-(. Publishing for me had to take a back seat as something had to give. However, as I don't see my future in academia I hope that won't be too much of a problem.

Doing it this way can be pretty relentless. If you want to finish in three years, you have to keep motoring just about all the time. Don't forget that life can throw the unexpected at you as well (as Bilbo so admirably demonstrates). I had a family tragedy during my second year which made me question just what is the point of what I am doing. I'll be dedicating my thesis to my sister.

I have kept going and come this summer please please please I will submit! My advice is don't get too hung up on the three years if it's not a massive priority. It sounds like you're really taken with your topic so I think, go for it

(up)

I'd write as you go. I decided to get straight in after 4 months and collect data. It was originally going to be a kind of pilot study - but that data now forms 2 out of my 3 studies :-) and I built on the findings for my 3rd study. I had all my data collection complete by half way through the 2nd year. I just dragged my heels with the writing :-(

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Thank you all for sharing your experiences and thoughts :). A question to all of you: Is one year sufficient time for write up?

Wow that is really impressive, how did you manage that?



Great, its good to hear you started your studies early on. I think for me also finishing in three years is a priority, not just because of finances, but because if that is the given time, then I feel I should work hard to finish in time, and then can I move onto the next stage of my life. I don't personally have a problem with exploring juicy tangents, but I don't want to loose track and focus, and end up wasting time, or conducting studies that end up not being relevant.



Wow, you had all your data half way through? That is great. Is it taking you longer to write up because you didn't write as you were going along? I was told my some PhD students that there was no point writing as you were going because the literature will be updated and you will end up changing everything anyways. Any truth in that, or not really?

Got on with it, and focused very quickly on the core literature. I was really ruthless. I didn't bother about stuff that was interesting but of marginal interest. I focused quickly on what I needed to, given my research interests, and was therefore able to write the literature survey fast.

And it's not as if I'd done any preparation beforehand. My PhD was on a totally different topic from my Masters - even a different century :p

Barring big problems with writing up (like finding you find it extremely difficult) 1 year should be enough. But you will give yourself a head-start if you can start writing up before then. Write as you go along. I sort of did this. But I wish I'd done it more.

I am very impressed! Have you had to change your literature review much? Or nothing at all? I think I want to take the ruthless approach and focus one way.

I had to change virtually nothing at all over the 6 years of the part-time PhD. A full-time student at a nearby university completed his closely-related PhD while I was doing mine, so that needed acknowledging and dealing with. But that was about the only change, and could be done in a couple of sentences out of a 7,000 word intro/lit review chapter.

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I agree with the others to write as you go if at all possible. I did (sort of) but having to do a load of assignments along the way made it difficult to really crack on. As a result my write up really started from scratch last December. I am on target to submit during the summer but it has been a full on process. I had completed my fieldwork which consisted of 60 interviews and 10 observations by the end of 2nd year. Despite my best efforts I fell behind with the transcription and even still it haunts my dreams! I'm not sure what methods etc you'll have but if you are going with your topic, I would advise starting to organise things. It takes time for potential particpants to come back to you and set things up. Maybe though you're based in the lab - in which case I know nothing!!

Hindsight def means I would do things differently if I had to do it all again (shudder) but hindsight is 20-20 vision and things happen which you can't forsee. To be honest, I don't think I would have done much differently - except for that darn transcription!

My field is constantly evolving - it is very much industry based - and I feel what I write today looking at literature will definitely have changed when I come to the end of my PhD. However, surely, if one's studies are based on the Literature Review, they should accept the literature review that one did and wrote before the start of the studies, or else how else would the studies make sense? Why is there a need to update the literature review again at the end?

That's a valid point in one way Chococake. However, I don't see it as much as what you write now later being found to be incorrect (althought that can happen as well). It's more that you mature as a researcher as you go along and the level of abstraction you derive from something is likely to be more refined the further you are in the process. Plus, if you are industry based it would seem to me a good idea to keep an eye on current developments and include up-to-date literature. Mine is more practice based and even though my lit review is done, I have updated it with 2010/2011 publications. It also makes any recommendations you make more valid. No point recommending something that somebody else covers in a more up-to-date publication.

You certainly can write your lit review now but I think you should still expect to refine and update it as you go. Unless it's obvious from the start that yours is a historical examination of a topic, you could be criticised for just looking back, not forward. There is little that you write during your PhD that you do not re-visit, in some form or other.