Thanks everyone, very interesting. It's a strange thing to moan about I know. Anyhow it's early days yet, got a lot of work ahead of me no doubt.

I think this will spur me on a little bit. One way of looking at it is thinking how pleased my sup would be if I actually did a decent week's work... Only one way to find out...

Hi all.

I am currently three months into my PhD in chemistry. So far everything has been a breeze and my supervisor seems overly pleased with the written work/results. It's just I feel I haven't really done any proper work yet. My sup is fairly hands-off and my life generally consists of coming into the lab whenever I please and occasionally emailing him what I have been up to and chatting if we are in the lab at the same time. Sometimes I will get bored by midday and simply go home for the afternoon, and noone is any the wiser. Although everyone (even my industrial sup) seems pleased with my "progress" I can't help but feel like I could have got to the stage I am now within a month if I had really tried.

Has anyone else had this, the sensation of just cruising along and not deserving the praise you get for seemingly little work? Should I count myself lucky and enjoy things slotting into place while I can, before things inevitably go pear shaped and I am forced into 12+ hour days e.g. when experiments simply do not work? I really enjoy my topic, but for some reason I find it hard to motivate myself to give that little bit more, I am satisfied with doing the bare minimum to keep my sup and others happy.

Any comments/thoughts?