======= Date Modified 10 Aug 2012 17:31:32 =======
Well, I'm not sure what to tell you - but if you don't trust your lecturer's judgement after having taught you and supervised you for a summer studentship, then why would you trust anything that a bunch of randoms on the internet have to say?!

Sure, we are PhD students - but even half of us don't yet know "what it takes" or whether or not we have it. Your lecturer has a PhD, so he knows what it takes, and he's probably created more PhDs as a supervisor since then, so I'd say out of everybody in the situation, he's best placed to make this call.

But, my personal opinion on the matter is that pretty much anybody has what it takes to do a PhD, as long as they have the level of motivation, interest and commitment required. Your ability to gain a PhD doesn't rely so much on your natural abilities for academia and research as it does on your will to persevere and put in the hours.

Nobody, on day 1 of a PhD, has what it takes to complete a PhD. But that's what the 3 years are for - for you to pick the skills and knowledge required as you go along. The only thing you really need on day 1 is some enthusiasm and strong will to succeed and do whatever it takes to succeed. From there, everything else will fall into place.

======= Date Modified 13 May 2012 15:41:02 =======
If you can get to a PhD without the masters, then do it.

In my opinion there is little point taking a year just to end up at the same place as you can end up now... some people say there are experiences in your masters degree that are important and skills that you gain there which are useful for your PhD, but I don't think there's anything there that's absolutely essential that you can't pick up "on the job", as it were.

I went straight from bachelors to PhD and I'm doing just fine - no better and no worse than my PhD colleagues who started with Masters degrees, etc.

Basically, a graduate school wouldn't accept you if they didn't think you were capable of completing a PhD. That means if they accept you with a Masters degree, then they expect you not to be so disadvantaged by your lack of a Masters degree that you will struggle with your PhD.

Certainly, once you HAVE your PhD, whether or not you did a Masters is irrelevant - most employers and academic institutions take the view that you are only as good as your last degree.

In my experience the bias is towards foreign students because:

a) It helps to fill equality quotas; and
b) They pay ridiculously high fees, and universities are all about the ££££££££££££

Nope, definitely not.

I'm a fat, short, relatively ugly bloke with glasses, etc, etc, etc. I've never gotten anywhere based on my looks.

I've also never gotten anywhere based on "who I know", how much money I'm willing to pay (been pretty broke all my life) or any of the rest of it. I'm also a white, British, middle-class male with no physical or mental disabilities, so I don't win on equality quotas either.

I've gotten what I have through hard work, determination, and being good at presenting myself on paper and in person as the right man for the job.

As for knowing that I was always going to get my PhD... no. I never knew what a PhD was until I started University, and coming from the background that I came from, the fact that I was attending University had already been bigged up as the greatest thing you can achieve in life, so I didn't know you could go beyond that.

Even after finding out what a PhD was, I had a look through some theses as a recently new undergraduate and decided it wasn't for me as it all seemed just to specific and, as a result, too dry. It wasn't until the last year of university that I became interested in the idea and found some topics that I liked enough to look at in relative depth.

And now that I've started my PhD, I don't think I can say even now with a great deal of confidence that I'll definitely get one. I'd like to think so, but to be honest the PhD life is hard and who knows how long I'll actually cope.

======= Date Modified 14 Jan 2012 17:44:44 =======

Hi TVready,

I'm just a few months into my PhD, but I'm already strongly averse to a regular office job (or just any type of employment in general), and really don't want to go down that route.

I do find academia interesting and enthralling, but I don't think I fancy it at the career level, where you spend your time jumping through hoops to acquire funding, doing 'fundable' research instead of interesting research, and all in all it seems to be a poorly paid career that has a fairly shallow salary progression until the end 10 years when you make it to professor (which not everybody does, of course!), and even then it probably plateaus at around £80k. Sure, when you're doing your PhD and you're funded, your research is unchecked by the funder, the research is (hopefully) something you've chosen to do, and you are your own boss and the primary decider of the direction of the work, then it's great. And probably if you're a highly prominent professor, then the same rules apply. But the stages inbetween don't really interest me.

Personally I want to be my own boss and have the opportunity to make a lot of money which is not determined simply by how much money I can make for company, but about how much money I can make for myself. I don't want to be a wage slave.

How I will go about this is not yet decided... whether it's by starting up a business, by investing in stocks and shares, or investing in property and other companies, etc, at this stage I'm just not sure. Although one thing is for sure, I probably won't have enough capital to start any of that after my PhD, so perhaps some initial years of 'normal' work is inevitable for me.

I suppose things may be different for the two of us. I'm doing an Engineering PhD and the research group I work within has a lot of industrial contacts with small businesses which were started by entrepreneurs, and there's a large scope (and a large expectation) that the industry will expand by about 400% over the next 20 years, so there may well be an opportunity for me to start a business which operates in the field of my PhD, whereas I don't think it will be as likely that you could do that with a humanities PhD.

But either way, the general sentiment is shared... wage slaving is not for me. The whole idea of employment is that you must produce more value for the company than the company returns to you in the form of a salary. Just doesn't make sense... if I am capable of providing that level of value, why not do it on my own terms and pocket the entire profit for myself, rather than do it on somebody else's terms with them taking a significant chunk of the product and returning a relative pittance for me?

======= Date Modified 14 Jan 2012 16:48:28 =======
I was always good in primary school and loved learning, and in the first few years of high school. During the early stages of puberty (3rd/4th year of high school) I went downhill a good bit, grew my hair, started playing guitar, and focussed very little on my school work, and started being truant quite a lot. My first set of 'proper' exams suffered quite a bit as a result. I didn't do terribly... passed them all and got mainly Bs, but nowhere near what I would have been expected to achieve given how well I did up until that point in my life.

After that I started studying a bit more properly for my 5th year exams, which were the ones that would determine whether I got into University or not, and got the best results inthe school. Although I did keep the truancy bit, and in fact, truancy lasted all the way through the rest of my education.

Once I was in University I was top student getting almost exclusively A1s (the best A) until I graduated.

So in short, I suppose I've always been a good student in as far as getting results and learning the material went apart from the pubescent dip, and have always been a poor student in terms of attendance, but it has never really degraded my performance (probably increased it... I never did learn anything in class or in lectures, only ever in my time of private study!).

So I suppose in that sense I was always a good researcher because almost everything I've learned throughout my education has been self-taught and self-discovered, with very little reliance on teaching and lecturing (which is a good thing too because many of the lecturers at University were awful!).

Welcome to the forum, and congratulations on getting a PhD place.

Isolated already?!?!

First day was today for me!

Fairly easy going day. Just met with the supervisor (and 2 new PhD students on the same grant), had an informal chat, met some people, got my lab space sorted, got handed a bunch of literature, then had an easy afternoon with a seminar from a visiting academic and some chit chat in the empty lab (the rest of the research group is at a conference!).

Nice to get back to a structured and organised life after a long summer of doing not much at all, and already most of my anxieties about starting the PhD have been laid to rest.

Looking forward to the next few years, the ups moreso than the downs, and getting stuck into some interesting research!

Thanks for the replies guys!

In addition to this, I've recently found out that a few of the guys starting PhDs at the same time as me under the same supervisor are 30+ years old, with up to 10 years experience working with some of the biggest companies in the field, and I'm a 21 year old with no work experience, and a Bachelors degree which isn't even precisely related to the field, and haven't yet covered the fundamentals!

Still sure I shouldn't be worried?!

======= Date Modified 27 Sep 2011 20:21:50 =======
The question is in the title!

I suppose a little context is appropriate. I start my PhD next week after completing a Bachelors degree in May.

I graduated in Aerospace Engineering but my PhD is in a specific field of Aerospace that I didn't really meet during my undergraduate degree (my final year project was somewhat related, but it's a whole new field to me in most respects). Although it comforts me to think that even if it were a field I'd been introduced to in my undergraduate degree I'd probably still know next to nothing about it!

I feel a bit silly though because shortly after my finals I e-mailed my supervisor asking him to advise on any preparatory work I could undertake, and he made some suggestions (but also suggested that I take a long break first!). I even went into the University to meet with the post-doc who will be co-supervising and get some book recommendations.

However, for a number of reasons I didn't really get around to doing a lot of preparatory work. The books that were recommended were too expensive to buy, most of them weren't available in my undergraduate university library, and the ones that were proved quite popular so I tried and failed for a number of weeks to get a hold of them. And when I did get a hold of one of them (finally), somebody else requested it and the library asked me to return it after only having it one week.

In addition to that I've had a bit of a busy summer in terms of finding a new place to stay, getting my new accomodation fitted out with all the necessities and adjusting!

Anyway, had I not e-mailed my supervisor he would probably have no expectations of what I will know next week when I start (he seen my CV and interviewed me so he knows where I was at), but now that I've e-mailed him for direction on preparatory work, he probably expects more, and I haven't done much at all! So I feel like I've shot myself in the foot by appearing too eager to prepare, and then not following through with the prepatory advice that was given.

So I guess I'm just wondering what you guys think of that as a situation, whether it will be a big deal or not, and generally how much is expected of you in terms of your knowledge of the field when you start on day one?

My friend recently started his PhD in a similarly unfamiliar field (still within Aerospace), and it seems to me that his first few months are going to be with his head stuck in undergraduate textbooks getting a feel for the fundamentals - will this probably be the same for me?

Thanks in advance!

Been contacted now. I start at 10am on Tuesday the 4th, and the first thing I have to do is meet my supervisor to discuss my studies!

Then I've to get an induction pack and a key for the allocated room in which I'll be working :D. Sounds exciting!

I'm not even sure when my first day is yet!

My official start date is October 1st, but that's a Saturday. Not sure whether I should be going in this week or next week, as a result haha! But my supervisor won't be meeting me until Tuesday anyway, so not entirely sure of the arrangements.

For some reason I'm not even registered at the University yet, because the fees haven't been paid because I'm some sort of special case for funding (scholarship) that the admin system isn't used to dealing with. Great!

Aw man you've put me right in the mood for those now and I don't know where I can get them!

Ah, that's a bit less scary!

They're basically saying you're receive the minimum stipend each year, and at the moment that's £13,590! Hopefully you'll get an updated letter next year with updated minimum stipends!

I thought you meant that your letter made it clear that the minimum stipend is frozen across your programme duration. Bit a relief.