Ebb and flow

Starting anything new can always be a daunting prospect and the idea of three years study certainly fits the bill. What if I can't do it? What if I'm not good enough? What if I don't come up with anything original etc. ad infinitum are the general feelings I suspect most people probably have and are certainly the ones I am most accustomed to at the moment.

Armed with such questions, I spent my meeting with Dr Hydon today discussing the ebb and flow of a PhD and tried to establish what to expect over the course of my work. The initial feeling, he said, was one of disorientation — trying to find a place amongst all of the literature and determining where to get started; this is the first thing anyone has to do to begin with, and it can prove to be the most difficult, especially if you don't like things mounting up.

This was something I was certainly aware of: a very good (and bright) friend of mine with whom I had spent the majority of my undergraduate classes had started a PhD, but found it hard-going to keep up the work whilst not really having anyone to talk to about it. The combination of such factors can make for quite a lonely experience, which is surely the one thing everyone associated with postgraduate study, and in her case, it proved too much (to the point where she preferred to get a job!).

The second phase was one of a lack of confidence: having familiarised yourself with the literature, you then have to embark on making your own contribution to it. In many cases this is the single most difficult thing: how do you possibly go about such a task? Such a question is normally dealt with in the transfer report (as discussed here) and leads on the next phase: hard work, and plenty of it.

The 'hard work' phase generally accounts for the entirety of the second year, up until the fourth phase, which is most-often termed the 'panic'-phase, since it involves the prospect of bringing together all of the hard work into some sort of tangible, legible document (commonly referred to as a thesis). At this point, results need to be proved, altered, fashioned and generally manipulated to show that the last year hasn't been a waste and that the whole point of this process — the contribution of original material to the academic landscape — might actually be achieved.

The fifth and final phase — the one in which the whole thing is supposed to come together — is designed to be as short as possible, depending upon the success of the previous four stages. It is inevitably the longest phase.

In much the same way as reacting to a relationship break-up, therefore, a PhD can be very roughly split into five distinct phases. I am very much in phase one, and a slightly more technical overview of my work is in need, to which we look to a future time.