Hi all,

I have just come across this forum and it's great. Wish I had found it earlier! I am about 20 months into my humanities based PhD. I am currently having a bit of a bad period having taken some time of recently due to family stuff. Now I have come back to it I feel a bit lost. I was wondering what stage other people were at at the end of their sencond year? Started writing analysis? Lit review perfected? Would be really good to gauge how I am doing with others if you are willing to share!

Looking forward to reading all the other threads, looks like a good excuse for yet more procrastination! :)

:)

Welcome aboard Charlie :-)

Honestly - comparing yourself to others is the slippery slope to panic! Everybody does things at different times and it all depends; depends on your topic, your supv, your own work patterns, your outside interests etc etc.

Where was I after 20 months? Not a thing written thesis-wisw as I'm part of a graduate education programme and had assignments and modules to complete. I'm in the social sciences so I devoted my 2nd year to fieldwork which I finished just before the start of 3rd year. 3rd year I have spent trying to catch up on all the stuff I wish I had written in 1st and 2nd year! I'm now a few months from submission (I hope!) and have a draft done. I wrote from A-Z in a few months and am now editing it. With the benefit of hindsight, would I follow the same pattern? Em, probably not! Having said that, a draft is a draft and it's done and 'only' the editing left to do. With each stage I used to think 'if only I could get shot of this stage, everything would be fine and things will flow'. In reality I lurched from angst to angst about what I was doing.

My advice is to compare yourself to yourself! Draw up a list of what you need to do and then break it down into more manageable chunks. For example, by the end of the summer you might want to have 'x' achieved. Therefore what do you need to do to get that done? Work it out week by week and then daily, draw up a to do list.

Good luck and yes, as a vehicle for procrastination, the forum is a Ferrari! That said I have gotten some really useful practical advice and tips from it :-)