What the f*&$ should I be doing?????

[NorksAkimbo]

I could use a little advice from any PhD students...

I am in my first year (and quite literally first week), and a little concerned at the lack of work I seem to be doing; I am reading an awful lot, taking some notes, but I think I'm used to working in environments where at the end of the day, I have something to show for what I've done all day. This is a little unknown and weird for me!

So, is reading and note taking pretty much the right direction from now until I'm ready to start writing up the lit review and methodology? I'm doing Information Science (topic is school libraries in England), btw, so no lab work; I will likely be doing case studies in yr 2. I am scheduled to do a few seminars ( I have to do 10 per year), but other than that, I think I'm just feeling a bit at a loss for what to do.

Any general advice would be helpful, thanks!

Bumping this for you NA. I've no experience to offer but FWIW it sounds perfectly normal to have a period of finding your feet, creating your own structure and so on.

Good luck :)

It is quite normal to feel like you are floudering in the sea with no idea of what direction to start off in! I felt completely at a loss when I started my PhD as there was no structure. All other courses I had completed had timetables and learning objectives but a PhD is about your research (of course) but also about you devising and designing your learning journey. Even down to the managing of your supervisions/supervisors lol.

My best advice is to find out what paperwork needs to be in and when, what training/seminars need to be attended and mark all of these things on a planner. From this you can work out what your deadlines are for corresponding work. For your research, it is about searching and learning the relevent literature base which hopefully will spark an interest in an understudied area. This will be the basis (probably quite broad at this stage) of your research from which you can define a small but significant pinicle. The research you undertake should resemble an inverted pyramid, broad field of study in the earlier stages and getting more specific as you progress. Start from now with recording your relevent references on a reference software as this will save an enormous time later at write-up. Likewise any writing up you do early on with methods, lit reviews etc can be modified later for your thesis. Publications along the way will help show your research is of a peer-reviewed and credable standard.

Good luck, it will all take shape and become clearer in a few months!

This is excellent advice, 2plus1, thank you! I am feeling a bit better now that I'm a month in; I've signed up for some training seminars, and already attended 3, so I feel like the 'admin' part is going well. My supervisors are great...I told them I was floundering a bit, and they immediately rallied and gave me a couple of weekly meetings, just so I could verbalise my process.

Your advice was very realistic, though, particularly the pyramid scheme of reading...it's kind of what I've been trying to do, but you put it into words! :)

I'm getting there now...I still feel slightly lost, but last week I started bullet pointing and writing up the notes I have so far, and I was pretty amazed at how much I already had! I am looking to start some open interviews after Christmas, and I know that the planning for that is really going to help things take more shape.

Thanks...I'm sure I'll be back again!