I am roughly 10 months into my PhD now, and I am currently within the break between Christmas and New Year's Eve. I am meant to be relaxing and enjoying the break, but as a PhD student you kind of forget how to.
So where am I currently at? Much change and progress has occurred since my last post back in June, however never as much as I would like to see, nor how much I planned to have done either. A few weeks ago I found out that my Confirmation* is February 2nd and I nearly had a panic attack, convinced that I had done no where near enough work to be prepared in time! When my supervisor found out that Confirmation was coming up shortly I was expecting a 'tough talk' that he gives sometimes in regards to putting more effort in... instead he was the complete opposite, and was quite confident that the work we have achieved thus far would be more than adequate.
This is a bit of a theme that I have noticed of late... I myself am continually questioning the quality and quantity of my work, yet my supervisor never appears very disappointed about either. I trust his opinion immensely, so if he seems okay, then I should learn to be okay also. Well, attempt to!
My last post vaguely alluded to the fact that I had finally settled upon a topic, something which I will elaborate upon in another post. 6 months after choosing my topic, I have to say it has stood up well to the test of time. I am seeing its potential for future opportunities more and more, and still find it quite interesting (especially since it is a field that I am not familiar with at all).
Despite being 10 months in I still don't feel like a proper PhD student. I still struggle to keep my attention span in check, I am still yet to find any proper routine, and my progress seems quite slow (I am yet to finish my Literature Review paper). Some of my PhD peers appear to be almost machine-like in their ability to power through reading of papers, pump out published papers, clarify their research topics... while I'm still struggling to answer the question "So what's your research about" without the word "ummm...", and I'm probably procrastinating with something, like learning to juggle.
But I guess this goes back to what I said above, that perhaps I don't give myself enough credit. Confidence is something that I need to build over the next few months, especially as I will be moving into my second year of candidature soon.
Overall I guess it hasn't been too bad of a journey thus far. In fact, it has been a bit of a breeze. I have been working part-time the entire year so I guess I never really treated the PhD as 'full-time' like I was meant to, but this suits me well as it ensures that I don't get bored of it too easily. Will keep on keeping on I guess!
I'm not kidding about the juggling either. Since starting my PhD, I have now learned how to juggle... I guess that can be one of the skills I acquired during this journey, hopefully it looks good on the CV!
*Confirmation is a milestone of your PhD that occurs around one-year after your commencement date. You must gather all your findings from your Literature Review phase, and give a presentation of your finding to a panel of academics, highlighting what your topic is, what research questions you are aiming to focus on, and a brief plan and timeline on how you expect to achieve this over your remaining years. You are unable to continue your PhD candidature unless your Confirmation is successful.
