OK so this might be a ridiculous question but...

I am about 20 months into my full time Phd. I have drafted my literature review and methodology chapters and finished data collection. My supervisors have told me to now leave those drafts and begin writing some results. I didn't think I would be doing this until September when I officially registered for my final year so now feel a bit panicked. Should I not be working on the lit review (which is by no means finished) or writing more background stuff or reading? I kind of feel like it's moving too fast and I will look back and think why did I leave that in such a state in a years time! When did people start drafting their findings chapters? This might sound like a silly post and I apologise, I have been suffering with anxiety recently and just feel like I need a bit of comparison with where I am at with others.

Sarah :)

Hi SarahLouise

Not a silly post at all. To me you sound like you are steaming ahead and I think your supervisor's advice to move on is good for a number of reasons. While your lit review draft may well need work you most likely will find it easier to re-work after you have done your analysis. What's the difference looking at your results now as opposed to September? Your thesis does sound like its moving fast but why is that a bad thing? I would go with your supervisors; they obviously feel you are up to the task of tackling your results. I think you will have the guts of a full draft mid 3rd year and can spend the rest of the year revising, reworking, editing etc.

I am part of a Graduate Education Programme which meant that I had lots of modules and their associated assignments to wade through before being able to write up. However, I now have a full draft completed and am now re-working it and WILL (!!) submit in September of this year so like you, within three years :-)

What I've found is that, while I had a lit review written, I needed to do all the analysis so that I knew 'the story'. THis has resulted in me finding 1-2 key messages that the entire thesis is about, which of course, has meant re-working my lit review (which I'm doing now, hopefully 2months before submission). So I agree with the sups, likelihood is that you'll re-work most of what you've written, add to it, scrap bits, change what you emphasise etc but you'll only know where/how to do that when you know what the overall message of the thesis is, which comes, in part, from your empirical work.