So to set the scene...

I have just started a PhD in London at the start of October after leaving a graduate scientist scheme in government to pursue this qualification and experience. During my time on the grad scheme, despite only being there for a year, I got involved in some amazing science and research very quickly and had a hands on role where I got to do lots of my own work.

My PhD is with a brand new supervisor who is known to be up and coming in her field but has only just returned to work from maternity leave and only properly started at this university a few months before I did. There is also a post doc who is helpful and answers all my questions but despite working all hours of the week, doesn't seem to get much work done and I question the quality of. The three of us are a 'lab' but we are inside a much bigger open plan either lots of other labs but are very immunology based whereas we are more cellular biology and epigenetics.

So my predicament is, I am in an environment which I find very alien, not that friendly and not very proactive. My supervisor makes time to chat to me about ideas but I often leave meetings with more questions and confusing than before and no clear direction. My phd grant seems to overlap with another larger project budget and it seems at times that a lot of the parts of my phd I would like to cover have been allocated to the post doc or to a masters student project. I also feel highly impatient as I have not spent much time in the lab at all except for helping with the post docs work and the odd tiny bit of work that I've managed to think up for my own project. We are also still waiting on the delivery of equipment and ethics/MTA type paper work which is halting my work.

It may be impatience in that I have come from a busy working environment but I am feeling increasingly anxious about lack of progress and urgency, especially echoed by the fact that other phd students in nearby labs who are on 4 year funding (I am on 3) are already producing data and in the lab lots!!

Any advice/reassurance/comments would be hugely appreciated...

Can anyone help rachb07905

The beginning of any PhD can be a bit 'slow'. I started my PhD in October, but because I am a field biologist I couldn't begin my sampling process until April the following year. So for 6 months I was left to read papers and practice techniques but I couldn't produce any data. I think this is often the case in science PhD's so I wouldn't worry too much about it. The other people in my institute who started at the same time but are desk based and so could hit the ground running aren't that far ahead of me (I'm just in my fourth year now I got 3.5 years funding so have 5 months of funding left). Although they have produced papers whereas my field samples needed 2 years of analysing in the lab before I got results so my papers will be post-hand in!

Anyway my point was that PhD's are all different and so you may not be able to be in the lab straight away, but this may be a good thing as you get to perfect your ideas, and many may look like they are getting data but it might be just preliminary studies which are not used in their thesis. Once you get into the lab it will be all steam ahead and you'll yearn for the days when you had time to feel bored haha!