Well I'm curious as to what other people did in their first year really(write any chapter, conduct studies....etc). I have my upgrade coming up which will mark the first full year of PhD study and I don't feel I have done much at all!

Hi Lemonjuice

I guess this will be different for different people depending on whether your research involves experiments or is purely theoretical and such like. Personally, doing qualitative research in the social sciences, I did lots of literature trawling and reading as I knew very little about my topic area before starting, met with a number of professionals in the field to better understand their role and also to help me get my head around what might be the most useful inclusion and exclusion criteria for my later participant recruitment, did a couple of informal 'pilot interviews' to help me work out my interview protocol, and I also sorted my ethics approval which took a good couple of months in itself. I only did little bits of writing like a few 2-page summaries here and there of my reading on a particular sub-area that I'm hoping I can draw on later. In hindsight I wish I'd done more of that! Other than that I attended quite a few courses offered by the University like generic PhD courses or research methods related to 'prime' myself for the latter stages of the project. What is funny is that like you I didn't feel I'd done much in my first year at all, but now that I've written this I'm thinking I did quite a bit really! 8-)

In my first year I completed the following;

3500 word research proposal (plan of the PhD)
Ethics application for Experiment 1
7000 word literature review
Collected data for Experiment 1
Started data entry/analysis

I'm also part time, however my MSc dissertation was on a related topic so I guess I had a head start!

Wow, Psychbrainiac (have I spelled that correctly?!), that sounds like a lot of work! I agree with Miss Piggy, it really depends on your subject area. I am social sciences, in my first year I completed two 5,000 word chapters, presented a seminar and a poster at a conference, submitted ethics applications to the university and to IRAS, and completed an MSc module. Not to mention the reading! I read A LOT.

BUT! I would hasten to add you shouldn't compare yourself to other students, everyone progresses differently. Presumably your university has a research student trajectory that you will be following, so don't worry! (up)

Thanks for all your feedbacks :) Feels reassuring that I'm on target it seems!