As we set out on a new academic year, Kate Spencer-Bennett, an Academic Writing Advisor in the Academic Skills Centre, reflects on her experience of taking stock at the start of her research programme.
Will you be ‘taking stock’ at the start of this term? Whether this new academic year finds you starting out on your PhD or continuing your studies, could it be useful to take stock?
In the autumn of 2014, I had my first PhD supervision meeting. Having just tied up the loose threads of my Master’s dissertation, I was now wondering how I go back to the beginning. What I should be doing with my time? Where should I begin? Friends setting out on the same path reported leaving their first supervision meeting with long reading lists and longer to do lists. To my relief, I recall my supervisor telling me in that first meeting that the run up to Christmas should be a period of ‘taking stock’. I liked this phrase and, despite – or perhaps because of – its lack of any sense of urgency, I found it very motivating.
Continue reading “Taking Stock”
Everyone who starts a PhD comes into it with expectations; as is the way with expectations, some are correct, and some are way off. This post gives a few tips for people in their first year of the PhD, helping with work, and surviving the process. I am two weeks from submitting my own thesis, and so I thought this was a good point to pass on tips that I have picked up in the process.
Whenever you start something new, whether that’s a new job or joining a membership society for the first time, there’s a lot of learning to do. What are the requirements? What are the expectations? Do I have the equipment and/or the skills that I need? Where can I find out all this stuff? Much of this learning is set out for you through formal channels, but often we learn some of the most valuable information informally, stumbling upon it while looking for something else, or while gossiping with a peer.
No-one is born as the perfect researcher, so new researchers have a lot of knowledge, skills, and behaviours to develop over the next few years (as, indeed, have all researchers as they move through their careers!). This blog, and other support available across the University, will hopefully support that process. Of course, this blog is also quite new, so we’ll be learning and developing together. 
UoB PGR Development 