======= Date Modified 14 41 2008 21:41:31 =======
Hi all,

brief question: How much did you write in your first year? I dont mean notes you write from books/papers, but themed constructive writing? Were these in pieces? all together? How many words of good and useable quality by year end? Also, how often did u guys submit written work to your sup? How did you structure these pieces and how long did they have to be?

best

P'Bug

I write in sections, doing little reviews (about 4-5,000 words) on different subject areas. ALthough, I only wrote about 3 or 4 of these in my 1st year. I did however, do a lot of data collection.
This year I am just starting pulling my work together a bit and finding it all a bit easier now I have a purpose - to back up what I have done and going to do. As when I first started it was just aimless writing and felt a bit pointless. However I am starting to look at my 1st year work again and steal things from it for my current work - although I find i have to go through all the references to make sure they say what I said they say (if that makes sense) cos I have a habit of shoving a load of references in to support my point, even if they don't! :$

Hmm so when you say 4ooo word pieces are these themed pieces or general writing? Also how much do u show ur sup?

stressed good u r here....can u gimme the answers to my questions? i am getting slightly freaked out...

Lol, I'm with you there! First few weeks too ;-) From what I can see from having spoken to students who are a bit ahead they tend to do varying amounts. I know I have to submit something that is about 5K words on a lit review to my sup in December - then it gets a bit bigger from there. He reckoned for me personally I won't do much writing as such early on, but I'll have 2 official submits a year but can submit more to him in the meantime if I wish. What freaked me out was another of his students came in during our meeting (unofficial, had just dropped by to say hello) and she'd just started her second year, but was saying the paper she had prepared was 50 pages (including illustrations.....- by my reckoning thats around 10K words!) He was saying that some of what is written in the first year for boards and things can be slotted into the final thesis with a bit of revision, but it seems to be very much a personal thing.

I spent 2 months of the first year doing preliminary fieldwork (social science phd) then wrote two chapters - a 'history of institutions' chapter and a lit review chapter (which was more like 'history of ideas'). They were both around 12,000 words each. I'm now in the third year and haven't looked at these chapters since year 1 because my supervisors take the line of write a draft, put it aside and move on, then we can put the whole thing together at the end and see what needs re-writing. I would say that the lit review chapter is basically ok because the focus of the thesis hasn't changed too much, but the first chapter will need a lot of re-writing because I have since decided to take an interpretive approach to the research so the tone of the first chapter is all wrong. And although I think the leave-it-to-the-end approach is ok, I am a bit disheartened about having to start from the beginning and do a lot more writing... it's quite hard to summon up enthusiasm this far down the line, especially if it means getting the same books out that I was reading years ago!

As to sending stuff to them, they only wanted to see stuff when there was a full draft in place, before then I was asked to summarise my thinking for them so we could discuss the general direction each chapter was going in. That suits me quite well because I *hate* sending unfinished drafts - I'm a bit of a perfectionist!

I was told that you shouldn't think of anything you write in the 1st year as finished, as when you have an overview of the subject, i.e. in your 2nd/3rd year you will scrap everything anyway and re-write. This is why I was told to write little reviews of each subject. Basically it acts as a memory jogger for me and a starting point for my lit review which I am jus getting to now.

One of the reasons I was told to do this was mainly to get in the habit of writing as well. But I think it depends on your supervisor. Mine didn't ask for too much althoguh I think he assumed I was doing writing lol.

Do you have to do a first year report? Thats 10-15 000 words you'll have to write. Also, everything I did was written up as a report, maybe once every two weeks, which formed the basis of my chapters. Of course it is completely correct that you will scrap 60% of it. I did a week long field experiment in my first year, and now I'm writing up I've realised it is completely rubbish and distracts from my argument, but I still can't bear to take it out though I know I have to...

I did a project overview in my first term of which I've used about 500 words in the write-up. I also did a couple of funding applications for research costs and I've used about 5-600 words from those. After my second year I co-wrote a book chapter during my maternity leave which was a blessing in disguise as it will form the basis of my lit review, after updating. My co-author and her sup gave me ruthless feedback on it, so at least I nkow it's been thoroughly checked (my sup didn't read it of course).

What is frustrating is not how little I wrote during the first 2 years - it's trying to read and organise my scrawled notes from that time.