Hi all, I'm looking for some general advice if anyone is able. i am hoping to begin my PhD soon but am wondering the first year what is actually spent in your day? What do you do as such? Sorry if i come across as naive below but I'm not actually getting the answers i need to prepare myself really and need help!

Im assuming much of the first year is writing your methodology and preparing the practical research alongside writing the literature review....correct me if I'm wrong please?!

So assuming your researching previous literature/research in your topic area do you each day....search journals for articles, search for books on topic and other research e.g.. home office papers, charity research publications..newspaper articles about your topic etc. and other days do you then read all these resources, making notes, notes and more notes in preparing to then months later put the notes altogether and write the literature review?

If i am thinking on the right lines that would be great!

Thanks you

Misspaws

Hi, there was a recent thread about this here

http://www.postgraduateforum.com/threadViewer.aspx?TID=21820

I'm nearly 18 months in now and during my first year I spent the first 3 months reading, reading, reading and doing more reading and also making lots of notes! I then had to submit a 7k word lit review after 3 months. After that I began learning how to use the software for my project (I do computer modelling), then running some simple experiments to understand how things worked and also developing my methodology. At my uni you have to 'upgrade' from an MPhil (everyone is registered as this in the beginning) to a PhD student. This involved writing a 13k word report to be submitted after about 8 months followed by a viva. Not all uni's go through this process but you should have already been told about it if your uni does something similar. After all that (I passed) I just carried on with my experiments and collecting data from them.

Hi, I spent my first year doing a lot of reading, and then a lot of summarising, plus meetings every month or fortnight or so with my supervisor. I have a background in education and my PhD is in History (!) so as you can see I had a lot of reading to do. I had a chance to present part of my study at university level and I was quite nervous but I guess that's just part and parcel of doing PhD !

I think it all depends on your subject and your own style. A lot of people, if unfamiliar with their field, will take the first year to ease into it, become familiar with the main areas, and do extensive reading. Those who are more familiar have the advantage of jumping in and, if their supervisors are active, even writing some chapters.

Good luck!

Hi all, thank you for your replies it has helped me to understand more about whats involved. Deadlings omg! ahh!! I can see def now how ill be studying and that my ideas were on the right track. Are there any tips you could offer about writing these reports and papers?

x

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Hi Misspaws, depending on your research, you might also be preparing an ethics submission which needs to be submitted and approved by a committee prior to collecting any human (or animal) data. This can take quite a while and when it is  finally approved may be subject to  'amendments' which would have to be fixed before the permission to collect any of this data would take place.

You would be reading and refining the lit review material ('the lit review is never over' to quote my Master's supervisor) but also really improving on and finetuning your research proposal which eventually becomes part of Chapter 1 (also subject to amendment, once you have collected data and written discussion). You do a lot of writing that is used in the final thesis but which tends to be (no matter how polished it seems to you) pulled apart and rewritten to eventually form a cohesive thesis.

I think that you are aiming for professional (academic professional) standards in your writing even for these things that you KNOW ( with a mind-sickening certainty) will be pulled apart and will have to be re-written. Meaning the writing should be clear and logical, analytical and critical, with all key statements or assertions verified and justified within the research, noted in your writing, and your citations should be accurate. It's a bit tricky isn't it because to some extent supervisors give a few hints and suggestions but you really have to write up your own plan and then (the hardest bit) try to stick to it with mainly only yourself as taskmaster (plus the threat of a supervisor meeting in a few weeks) to spur you on.

I need to spend time on improving my use of endnote programs and bibliographic/reference material because sometimes I vary in my meticulousness when collecting material and I want to save myself the hours of rewriting this at the end. Personally, I also need to be more meticulous in my note taking as well so that is something I plan to improve on in the next few months.

My personal goals for this year are to: (I am part-time by the way so this year is more like around 7-8 months)
1    have really nailed my research proposal (introductory chapter). This was completed in my application and finetuned in first couple of months but the thing is I seem to be changing my research question, so need to do some more research and writing for the latest proposal.
2  Have completed and submitted ethics application to ethics committee
3  Made a substantial inroad into my lit review-covered several if not most of its major subheadings in different chunks-and I want these to be with really organised and planned notes both hardcopy and virtual.
4  Have worked out methods (related to ethics application-and methods statement there)
5 Supervisor wants me to be ready to collect data
6 University require all PhD students to present a 'paper' at their postgraduate colloquium thingy in November-based on what you have done in first year.

I have to do all this to complete the Grad Research Certificate (concurrent award) course work so these goals have been helped along by the university process-I think left to myself I would have been a little more openended and vague.

Good luck and thanks for a great post-after having read the other poster's replies and then written this, I have now spooked myself into getting back to work!
:-):-( (Sad face was supposed to go after 'spooked' btw-not sure what's happening there!)

Hi,
A very good answer fom Pjlu, as it is pretty much what I ve done during the first year.

Good luck!

Piju, that is excellent advice thank you! I hope its given you the boost you wanted too. i am more certain now of what I'm going to be expected to do and it is scary!! I hope over the summer I can get things organised. I've already started in terms of journal articles downloading articles i think will be relevant for me literature review and formulating the methodology, ethics and research questions i want to be asking. Im taking advantage of free access to palgrave journals right now! At least this might save me some time in researching!

Is it true that you should always throughout that first year writing the research be seeking out any articles/books/chapters relevant to your topic area. eg. its september and you notice an article published even though you are nearing the end of writing the lit review chapter. but you could still read it write notes etc because it may have an impact on your findings throughout the project. i guess what I'm asking really is whilst you are collecting the data (year 2) and analysing it/writing project up (year 3) are you still reading articles/papers/books/research act in your topic area to be adding comments and analysis to the project/disscussion chapter(s).

Thanks again for all of your advise on this page, I can't show my appreciation much but it is helping my amazingly since I've had almost 2 years out of study with working.

Miss paws