Hi

I am nearly finished my second year biology PhD. I only have one experimental chapter completed, or at least have enough data for one chapter I hope! I constantly feel like I am behind however. I have just completed another experiment - but have all of the data to analyze with no guarantee that it will be good enough for another chapter! Is this enough progress for this stage of PhD?

Can anyone give TheOx any advice?

I think it's pretty common so don't worry! I'm guessing you have at least one more experiment planned for another chapter? I didn't have a finished chapter until near the end of my 3rd year as I had huge amounts of samples to process which took two years and then ran experiments too so everything is just getting ready at the same time (not ideal!). Also one of my chapters is a very short one because the experiment I ran didn't have that many results, so even though you may not be able to publish it in a journal because of their bias for positive results, it is still perfectly acceptable to have it as a chapter in your thesis, as long as you can justify it and fit it into the 'story' of your PhD.