I am just started into my second year of my PhD. My first year consisted of a lot of reading, practicing sampling methods, optimizing protocols and planning future experiments. I passed my review to officially become a PhD candidate last September. I have now optimized large parts of my assay and have refined my sampling technique, but have not generated any usable data as yet. Therefore, I then sent some optimized samples to be analyzed in a lab overseas, and through a couple of small complications, it has taken a long time for the results to be returned to me. I am quite frustrated as I have now been out of the lab for almost 2 months, whilst waiting for my results to come back. In the meantime, I have written up a draft of my introduction/lit review chapter, which my supervisor has reviewed, and started writing up my chapter on the samples that are being analyzed.

I had a meeting with my supervisors before Christmas, and they were happy with my progress, but I am worried that if my sample results come back and the data is unusable, or of poor quality, that I will just have wasted a couple of months. If that does happen I feel it will be hard to motivate myself to go through the process again! I come in to the office each day and read papers, refine my first chapter etc, but because i'm not in the lab I feel that colleagues think that i'm being lazy. I am not - I am just waiting for results that will hopefully contribute to my thesis!

I would greatly appreciate any advice that people on this forum could offer.

Thank you

Hi MicroWest,

It sounds like you are making some admirable progress writing your thesis. I am a little concerned though, as to why you are so heavily reliant on results from a distant, overseas lab? Is this a sequential project, where you need one set of results to decide how to proceed with the rest? You will presumably be generating your own results later... (?). If you need the results quickly, you need to be proactive and put that across to them - tactfully, of course.

You should nonetheless be encouraged by your supervisors' feedback. Give yourself credit for what you have already achieved. But be proactive in chasing this up. Oh, and if there's one thing that doing a PhD taught me, it's not to worry what others are thinking or even worse, fall into the trap of comparing yourself with them: all projects are very different... and if they've got time to sit with their fingers up their a***s wondering why you're not in the lab, they're the ones in trouble!

I hope you get it sorted soon.

seriously, I would be happy, if I were you.
What you need to concentrate now is to spend more time in lab to get useful results and write more journal articles.

Thank you for your help

I have received some of my data back from my preliminary analysis. It looks promising, so I am hopeful that I can use this and that it can form my first proper chapter of my thesis (or at least part of it).

I was only dependent on this data as I hoped it would be usable, and could confirm that this is the method I would use for my next experiments. It now seems as if I am on the right road, and can plan the next steps.

Thank you