Hi guys! It has been nine months since the beginning of my phd... I think it's a good time to gauge my progress to see how much more effort I should put it...

So, how was your first year? Had anyone already submitted paper or attended conference? Did you basically still learn from others (papers, books) or do you already contribute new ideas on your project?

Thanks a lot!!

Hi Icy, I am also 9 months into this experience. I have probabtion report coming up. I have attended a conference and training events but not presented at any conference. I am due to present at department seminars. In terms of progress I dont' feel I have made alot of progress as haven't really started to form any opinions of my own and I am still learning from papers. Each arguement I read seems reasonable and I find it hard to take a standpoint. Still waiting for inspiration!

it's been a full year for me. looking back i'm sorry for all the time spent procrastinating, time i need now! i also feel, however, that i did a LOT of things in that year, although perhaps not always with visible results. not the least of my achievements, i would claim, is settling in to a new country, learning how "my" discipline is different here than what i was taught elsewhere, and learning how to deal with repeated rejections (funding).
i have talked/presented at several small "workshops" - meetings of an international research group, but only 6-10 listeners. i have presented my project to my research centre and my department. in november i'm going to speak at a gradstudents conference, and my abstract just got accepted for my first "real" conference in february. haven't written anything yet, though.

Hi! Thanks for the fast replies... Actually I was quite worried with my progress, that's why I started this thread... I myself have not attended any conference nor have I submitted any papers... I am basically just reading books and papers, try to implement some of the published ideas via simulations and experiments, but I have not yet had any new ideas... Looking forward to some breakthrough!

I think it depends a lot on your disciplines. Apparently in most sciences it's fairly normal to finish your PhD with several publications, some (or most) of them as co-author, whereas in the Humanities it's not so frequent to find co-authored papers and finishing the PhD with 3 publications in peer-reviewed journals is already a quite sensible achievement I think (and many people don't publish anything in any case).
That said, I'm on the verge of officially finishing my first year (I started on 12th October 2006) and have already secured 2 publications in peer-reviewed (although not really "top") journals, plus I've been to 3 graduate conferences and a "proper" conference (I'm in the Humanities). For this year I plan to pace down a bit as the first year was complete madness.

i starts my phd work last week. Students in the 2nd year and 3 year told me that in the first year they didnt make any big achievements ,no papers at all because no good results are obtained. even few experiments are conducted. just try to find the necessary equipment and group the ideas to make a good plan. i wonder if it is normal. publishing papers in the first year maybe a bit difficult. am i right?