Hi all,

I just firstly wanted to introduce myself. My name's Dave and I started my PhD programme at the University of Nottingham Business School (NUBS) last week. A wee bit of a background... My PhD's in 'co-creation within HE' and am based within the marketing department of the Business School. I was reading the thread earlier for new starters on a PhD... It would be great if there's fellow people within the East Midlands region who are in a similar position.

Anyway, I just wanted to ask if anyone's had a similar problem to me or if I'm just 'wierd'. I've done plenty of studying in the past (last degree was a taught MSc in Marketing) but not really sure at the moment how to almost start my actual work. I'm on a 1 + 3 ESRC quota award meaning I'm doing an MRes in Business and Management in my first year and, whilst I've got my taught modules that I need to complete, I just don't know where to start in the initial stage! It's as if I've got this 100,000 word project to do over four years but what are people's tips for initially starting? Am I as well to just read around the subject area? Make notes? Or just literally start writing my thesis immediately? Apologies if this doesn't make sense, I'm just a wee bit concerned that I'm floating along.

Thanks in advance and best wishes to you all.

Regards,

Dave

Hi Dave

Don't start panicking yet - you've got 3 years to panic!;-) It can seem really daunting, but just take it little by little. I assume you did a proposal to get accepted into the PhD program? Didn't you have to do a time line for this? If you didn't, you need to get a plan in place. First year, classes and reading, developing detailed proposal, doing a lit review, second year field work, third year writing up (and going nuts). Just do a rough plan to start with.

And really, your supervisor should be telling you what they want you to work on. Have you met with them?

And I think that most of us started with the literature review, reading around the subject, developing the question/hypothesis. So, start with gathering and reading key articles in your area, make some notes, try and identify gaps, then eventually start writing what you've found. But your supervisor should be giving you guidance at this stage.

Hi Dave,

Welcome to the forum! Firstly, you're not 'weird' at all; it's intimidating to have those four years stretching about you and having to start making your own way through it. Thinking back to when I started, my supervisor asked me to roughly sketch three or four ideas I'd be interested in following up- I took about two weeks to do this. This can be very, very broad at this point. I then went back to him, we had a chat about which ones might work and I started pursuing some ideas which EVENTUALLY became a chapter.
It's up to you how you want to approach things but I think that writing right from the start is generally a good idea. Even if what you do write is very basic it means you're starting to build up a backlog of material which you can then build upon. Keep showing these basic drafts to your supervisor and he will recommend books and articles and suggest different directions your work can take.
It took me at least 6 months to work out what my fundamental argument was likely to be, and it took me about another 6 months to refine that and actually work out how I could make a thesis out of it. In these first few weeks and months your ideas will fluctuate and change and you should be open to following different routes. Eventually some patterns will begin to emerge.
Finally, I would give you the same advice I give everyone: get Joan Bolker's 'How to Write your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day.' It's a bible for many of us round these parts.

Hope I've helped and best of luck.

Hi all,

Thanks very much for your feedback. To answer your question Sue yes I have met with my supervisor who has been great. She was also in touch last night (I did contact her to raise a couple of issues related to my worries) and we've agreed to a meeting next week which has put my mind very much at ease.

If I'm honest I obviously need to almost return to my detailed proposal set out previously (that I submitted in order to secure the funding). Yes I did have a detailed time line and if I'm honest just looking back over that stuff maybe I was potentially panicking too much.

Thanks very much both of you for your time. I look forward very much to contributing on this forum over the coming months ahead.

Regards,

Dave :-)