When you applied for your PhD, were you given an actual question or title to work with for your proposal or was it a vague topic on something related to your area of interest?

Cheers

I had a vague research area and only now (at the beginning of my second year), am I 80 % clear on what my direction is.

So Andy, tell me what you have been doing in the past year. Is it a case of starting your reading fairly basic and broad and then delving into more specific publications?

Cheers

For the past year I have been consuming an unhealthy amount of coffee and read a lot of papers starting with some very broad reviews (which are great at directing you to specific individual papers), coupled with some basic experiments. My project has been fluidic, changing with successful and unsuccessful experiments.

As the year progressed I gradually read more and more specific papers, although I still read quite a few loosely related papers because some ideas are transferable. Although my project started with no specific question, which did unsettle me at first, I have come to enjoy the freedom it has allowed me to develop the project into one I enjoy and can develop (with my supervisor's help of course :-)

I had a topic title and a kind of plan. Since I started though it seems to be pretty flexible

I think my problem is that i have not been given a title/question as such. therefore, i feel like everything i read is irrelevant even though i am unsure of direction to take.

hey lunch man. yeah i get the feeling that the PhD comes in either format. you have been given clear instructions on the approach and direction where as i have been left to work it out myself. not sure which of those i prefer. how do you feel about it?

I got a title and a rough draft of my proposal! I would still like to find out what I'm supposed to be doing as I have only a vague idea! I'm testing whether the plan will work at the moment using one of the techniques I plan to do. Hopefully once we establish this I can actually find out in more detail as I'm kind of in limbo at the moment!!