Hi

I'm in the same position as I don't live near my university and tend to work largely from home. I'm also considering taking part in my first departmental research seminar; I've not until now taken part due to lack of confidence and wondering whether it was worth doing because I haven't completed fieldwork yet. Talking to others in the department who have participated however, I am led to believe that its actually a really good way to organise your thinking whether at an early or later stage of your PhD, and even if you don't feel particularly organised, its usually a fairly informal setting where people are most likely interested in hearing about your topic area, and may in fact help organise your thought process by offering insight and suggestions of how to enhance your research. With this in mind, I'm thinking of leading a seminar now, mostly because it might help me reiterate or refocus my research direction, and because I've been told its not nearly as scary as you think with most participants at ,or round about the same stage as yourself. Plus if you've taken part in larger postgrad conferences, the seminar series might not be as bad as you think; being usually smaller and informal in nature. Good luck!

Hi

I just wanted to ask what a typical daily workload/schedule looks like for other PhD students? Would be particularly helpful to hear from PhD students who work mostly from home, like myself. Sometimes, not unlike many PhD students I'm sure, I worry about how much work I'm doing/ should be doing, or what research activities to be doing on a daily basis (particularly at the pre-fieldwork stage) from home, and whether this may differ if I worked from my office in university. In between writing/submitting documents (summaries of literature consulted etc), I sometimes wonder what other tasks/how much I should be getting on with. I think I'm just over worrying really, but would be nice to get some reassurance from others in a similar position!
Thanks!