Hi all

I've just started my PhD two weeks ago and am starting to have my first panic. I have an appointment with my advisers (supervisors) tomorrow and I need to show them what I have been doing over the last week.

I am really worried that I won't have done enough research. I am in communications and have written notes on about 10 papers from the last week. These notes will of course be the foundation of what I put in my literature review. And I have looked at other stuff and dismissed it. How do I justify. Oh dear, do I sound a bit panicked?:$

======= Date Modified 12 May 2010 09:38:58 =======
Hi Iolande,

Don't panic! 10 papers in a week seems pretty good going to me. And of course you can dismiss papers with reason- that's what you're meant to do, in fact! You can't read everything in the world so you need to be wise with your time.You can still put those in your biblio, as you have looked at them but not extensively. And it will take more than a week to write your lit review ;-)

I STILL haven't written my lit review and ive got 6 months to go! Don't panic! - best thing to do though is write as you go, otherwise it will all disappear out of your head (well it has from mine) - luckily I wrote little essays on each area of the literature, so I now only have to go back to them, update and mash them all together.

Hey! Don't panic! It took me ages to do my lit review and I spent months just reading papers and making notes on them! As long as you can tell your sups what you have been reading about and basically show them that you have been working for the last couple of weeks you will be fine! I did two lit reviews and I think in the first I had about 60 references and about 90 in the second (obviously this can vary a lot, depending on how much has been done in your area!) so they are very time consuming both to prepare for and to write, you will not be expected to do it in a matter of weeks! So take your time and get a good handle on the stuff you are reading- it's really important to get a good grasp of the background literature and it will pay off later if you do it thoroughly now. And yes, it's fine to dismiss some stuff too- as long as you have a reason for dismissing it! Good luck with it, stay calm! Best, KB

Don't worry! By the sound of it this is your very first draft of the lit review. It doesn't need to be perfect. The initial draft of lit review is meant to form a base that you then work on and develop further later on. In the course of your PhD you'll come to realise what other things you could add to the lit review, and what to cut out. You will be in a better position to judge what/how much literature to cover and which angle to approach them from once you've done some empirical work (if you're in science)/more reading + writing (if you're in humanities). So for now just try do your best and remember that it doesn't need to be perfect because you'll have to work on it again and again in the future - that's just the way it is.

Good luck!

I started in December (part-time) and haven't even started my lit review.  I've completed my research proposal and have presented a paper at an international conference and so can demonstrate I am engaging with the literature but apart from some vague section headings have nothing to show for it.

Thanks for the replies. Meeting went quite well. Some of the other PhDs at my school said I sounded like I had done a lot so that made me feel better!