I am PhD student in Chemical engineering. I have been on it for 20months now. I am however afraid that I am not making enough progress. I was working on an industrial project with the aim of delivering a prototype for the first year in my project. After 1year i realised this was not going to earn me a PhD as i was basically follow orders. Still this gave me very useful experience and because of the industrial nature of it all it was fast paced and results were obtained. Now i have been asked to just create my own PhD from the project which I have struggled to do a bit. The experiments dont seem to be working very well. Also the areas I am looking to work on seems to have been covered before but supervisor feels since new materials are been used and different technique then its Novel despite similar results been obtained. Just need come perspective if what i am going through is normal or am in real trouble. It should be noted that I passed my transfer Viva so its not been all negative

Thanks really helpful. Please what are the milestones and what are your advice on how to get past them. Also will like to know what options PhD graduates have outside of academia. Are they readily employed and what type of jobs? I mean graduate jobs or higher paying jobs. Thanks

Thanks it helped. Will keep you informed on how it goes. Also is it normal that I have no clue what is going on at the moment?

I started my PhD programme yesterday at UCL. I am working on fuel cells. Any tips/advice that will help me in adapting to this new environment and also to this type of work.