Thanks a lot for your comments. It's certainly helpful. I did think about going abroad for the course as well, incidentally.

I'll definitely heed the advice to keep writing and clarifying my research further.

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Hi All,

My name's Izzy. I've just started a PhD in international economic law and I'd like some advice. First off, are there any other first years -- particularly in law? If so, please introduce yourselves and do tell a little about what you're working on, what your uni's like, your supervisors, etc. (I'd like to know I'm not alone!)

My experience so far is that I find the PhD experience very, very different to the Bachelors and Masters in that I feel isolated. I had mates on the other degrees and people I could moan to and, of course, go to the pub with, but now it's just me. Literally just me. I roll a bunch of books into uni, sit in the library for a bunch of hours and go back. In fact, most of the people I went to uni with don't understand why I decided to go further by doing a PhD. I'm still trying to articulate a sensible reason as to why I'm doing it to myself as well.

In addition to the isolation, another thing I find is that I am not really clear as to what I should be doing? I would really love the second and third years to advise in this regard. The only thing I'm doing at the moment is putting words on paper. While doing my Masters I found I am unable to 'research' and then write subsequently -- so now, I'm just putting words on paper and trying to add clarity to my research questions, objective and what I envision in my head that my thesis would look like. Is this sensible or totally off? I have no teaching responsibilities and I'm moderately certain, at the moment, that I don't want to be an academic -- so I'm not too fussed about writing for journals, etc. I am only concerned about passing my PhD and writing an excellent thesis.

So, from the forerunners, any advice would be very, very helpful. As for the newbies, please introduce yourselves.

Thanks.