Guys,

My PhD life just started, only a few weeks so far, but I already feel stressed out. I found myself a lot problems, things like:

1. English difficulties. I am not native english speaking though I meet university's requirement. when reading the papers, I have to use dictionary. Have to spend hours to understand a paper.

2. No idea with my research field. I have started reading
the papers relative to my field. But after finished reading, I forgot the context so fast, sometimes have to reread over several times.

3. Fed up with the boring papers. some papers, I spent hours on it and still got no idea at all.

4. Stress from peers. Most of them from native english speaking with no english difficulties, plus so hard working. seems they are ok with this study.


MY GOD. I start to consider my ability of study, whether i am not ready for a phd. or this is common in the first year. anyone helps me? :-(

try not to stress too much Aotema - there's another 3 years before peak stress so try to pace yourself - as a complete stress head myself I realise that this can be very difficult, But give yourself a break - it takes more than a month to get into the swing of things - and everybody has their weaknesses - it's great that you have already identified one of yours honestly it's a positive- just keep plodding along slowly and try not to stress yourself out too much

EV
xx

Sincerely thank you. I really give myself too much stresses. If its not my personal ability problem. that would be ok to deal as long as i pay enough effort to it. This is my second week of study actually, hope it will get better in next month. God bless me. Thanks again.

Hey Aotema! Most people take a few months to get into the swing of their PhDs, so do your best not to stress at this stage. Reading papers can be challenging under the best of circumstances, so it must be really hard in a different language, but there are a lot of people in our department doing PhDs in their second language. Some of them speak word-perfect English, but many do not, and they have picked up the language very quickly once they have started studying. One of my best pals here finds English difficult, but she goes to English classes and I always offer to check through her work for her before she hands anything in to make sure there isn't anything too strange in there! Perhaps there are English classes where you are studying? It is also common to have no idea what you are doing at the beginning! It can take a few months before a vague plan comes together, so just keep reading and make sure you have regular contact with your supervisor, who should be able to point you in the right direction with respect to whose work to read and which direction to go in. You're gonna be fine, it just takes a while to find your feet! Best wishes, KB

Hi Aotema,

what you describe is sooo common! I had exactly the same problem during my Masters. I am not a native speaker neither and additionally I was not trained to read scientific papers in any language :) There are no magic tricks out of it. Just read as much as possible. Read whatever falls into your hands. Newspapers, articles, literature books. You don't have to understand everything, just skim through papers. You will notice a steady and slow progress. Try to keep good organisde notes by category.
And then, the worst part comes after that... writing. But don't get desperate and stressed. It is just a very stip learning curve :)
(As my supervisor gently describes my incompetence...)

Keep going!

Hi Aotema,

I too had the same problem. In one point of my first yr PhD I started to think that I was not made for PhD but things turned well after excessive reading. Many times I completed the entire book but still hard to figure out what exactly it wanted to say. But, I am much comfortable now and I am not behind. At the end of the 2nd yr, supervisors said that my work is exemplary. Even in the first yr annual review, the same comment I got. The only solution I think is read, read, read and write, write.....In the first yr I spent lots of time reading, in the train station, in the car, anytime I had a chance...

Good luck to you.
Swetch

Hi,

I felt exactly like you did in my first year - in fact for a bit longer than that - but I passed my viva last week so although it seems impossible now and there is a lot to endure ahead it is not an impossible dream. In response to your 4 points above...

1. Don't worry to much about the fact that it takes you hours to understand everything. My area is post-structuralist philosophy and I had - and still have - the same problem as you even when reading it in in English which is my native tongue.

2. I also forget stuff really easily; someone asked me the colour of my front door yesterday and I couldn't tell them and I have lived here for 5 years. To combat this as an undergraduate I started making heaps of notes which I call chapter cards. Basically each chapter/paper that I read that I thought was important I wrote up on an index card; sometimes making one of these cards takes me all day. By the time i had finished my PhD I had over 550 of these cards.

3. Don't know what to say about the fact that you find reading these papers boring. This seems to me to be the bit that you should be the most concerned about. I hope that you find your own research interesting.

4. I know exactly what you mean about these confident people who always seem so on top of things and have no problems with motivation. If it is any help to you I have been the recipient of 4 scholarships - the last of which brought me and my family to the other side of the world and paid our food and board for 5 years - and have just passed the viva with no problems and I am the laziest most unorganised and contrary student you could ever meet; never met a deadline, never kissed up to lecturers/supervisors, ignored the conventions for writing a thesis (eg. no literature review), the point being diligence and confidence does not necessarily equate with success.

Good luck

BB

God, you guys being so helpful. It gives me more confidence. Thanks so so much.

About the my English, I have asked my supervisor if I need to take extra class, but he seems very comfortable with my English and not really suggested me to spend time on it. I think my seriously problem so far is reading (writing probably comes after). So as your guys suggested, only one way to solve it: read more.

To Swetch, it really brings worse feeling of getting no idea after finish one book or one paper. hope it won't have same feeling after this beginning stage.

To Biddysbottom, congrats for your final completion. About this card thing, is this really helps? could you describe little bit more? maybe i can try too.

Afterwords, it makes me feeling much better, its common in first year of PhD, not my personal reason caused :P I will work hard on reading and reading. ....:-s

Hi Aotema

Hope you're feeling reassured. Sounds like you're way ahead of me: I'm just starting, and am still faffing around getting the correct registration, inter-library loan cards, timetables etc, so I haven't read any papers since writing my proposal in June. It's a marathon, not a sprint, and I haven't even bought the trainers yet :-)

Hi Artista,

I hope you will get better feeling than I do in the following weeks. Lets keep it up.(up)