PhD Friend
So campus has been slowly gearing up for the return of the undergraduates. This week international students have been arriving and next week Fresher’s begins, so it’s starting to get busier again. A lot happens in the undergraduate summer break, building work goes on and the campus is generally spruced up (they’ve been painting the […]
Working 9-5
What a way to make a living … a lot of the time PhD’s and also academic jobs are portrayed as having very long hours, essentially we are worked to the bone for not a lot of money, but is this really true? Do we have to work long hours or risk not achieving our goals? […]
The Student Commuter: Episode 2
It’s been a long time since I wrote anything about my commuting life, in fact it was my first ever post on the student blogs site. So how does commuting to Leicester every day feel now, nearly one year on? Mostly it’s fine and definitely my preferred option for travel into Leicester, for anyone about to […]
The Probation Review
This post comes to you from the deep dark depths of the first year report. OK that’s mildly dramatic, the process isn’t actually too bad at all. I’m >5,000 words down (of ~8,000) and I’ve finished my methods, results and discussion and have made a dent on the introduction. I was originally planning quite an […]
Supervision: In my experience
After reading this THE article posted by the graduate school on their facebook page I thought this post should be about supervision and what you should expect from your supervisor. First of all I think it’s important for you to know every supervisor is different, I think that article highlights this. A supervisors style varies based on many different […]
“No I don’t have a Masters”
It’s pretty normal to be asked as a PhD student where you did your Masters degree. I however didn’t do one, and this seems to come as a shock to most people (probably because a lot of the people asking are Master’s students), but no I didn’t do one. So how am I here in […]
Life is terrifying
OK so that probably sounds a tad dramatic but at the moment I feel like I’m always doing something to terrify myself. This isn’t a bad thing, and it’s definitely something I’m getting better at. The reason things are terrifying is because the are new/unknown, and personally I find the unknown petrifying (I imagine most […]
A really busy non-PhD week
This week I feel like I’ve done so much, but I don’t really have anything to show for it if we’re talking about lab results. Don’t worry I haven’t just caved in and given up on PhD work, I’ve just had A LOT of other work this week! So to give you a quick run […]
Perspective
You always here all sorts of stories about the mental health of PhD students, I don’t personally believe we’re all the jibbering wrecks we’re made out to be in newspaper articles but that doesn’t mean that a little perspective isn’t useful to us all sometimes. We are, after all, in the process of dedicating ourselves to one […]
The things you never learn as a PhD student
Campus has gone quiet again with the arrival of the Easter holidays, althought definitely not as quiet as it was at Christmas, I’m taking an educated guess that there may be a fair few final year students hanging around getting a head start in the library before their final dissertation hand ins and exams. I […]
Recent Comments