Hi all,
I am currently in my first year of my PhD in perceptual psychology - I love my project, I have a clear idea of what the motivations and key questions are, and I am very enthusiastic about the data I have collected so far. I have finished 6 experiments in the past year, each with over 30 participants and all of which have come out with nice (although not always simple) data and results. The project is therefore mostly going well. I breezed my first year annual review, and I generally have a good working relationship with my supervisor.

However. I struggle in many other ways. First, I seem to have completely lost my ability to write method and results sections. For example, I recently did the wrong analysis in part of the results and forgot to clearly include critical information in the method section. I am also very poor at consistently labelling figures, formatting and generally making the papers look good.

My style got me through undergraduate and my MSc, but now it seems I need to learn to not be so careless. Has anyone experienced anything similar, where the hurdles are the small stuff, not the big picture? Or does anyone have any hints or tips on how to fix these problems?

Thanks in advance,
Elizabeth

Wrong analyses in results and omissions from methods are common, so I wouldn't worry about that. It's part of the refining process.

Consistency though is a bigger issue, mainly because I can't understand how this happens! Can you not double check effectively? If you can't, then could you ask another student to do this for you? Like you said, it's the small stuff that people often don't mind helping with.