I'm in a similar boat, started mid pandemic and feeling a bit isolated, I don't have much advice to offer but just posting to say your not alone in feeling this way.

Twitter seems to be highly recommended, I'm not on there for this reason so can't comment on socialising but I did find some PhD student discord via twitter. Maybe worth a look/ask? I think I found them with #phdchat.

I've recently met a few others (virtually) from subject specific research groups as well. I don't know if you have some in your field?

Thank you both for your replies!

@Pheonixfortune I've heard good things about this book, it's been sitting in my amazon wishlist for a while, will hunt down a pdf version now.

@malvor87 this is so helpful, I hadn't even thought of 4 but I imagine that can be extremely helpful. I'll ask about this next time I talk to the supervisor.

New PhD student here, excited but the closer it gets the more I feel very unprepared. My start has been delayed so I'm now on my second set of newbie worries having spent a few months reading up on the topic area and methodologies after work.

I was wondering what do you wish you'd known or done before starting? Either relating to your PhD or more general academic life. I'm mostly wondering what was helpful in terms of adjusting, understanding the process, ups and downs etc.


I was also wondering if anyone had any book reccomendations about the PhD process or books you wished you'd read at the start? (Podcasts also welcome).

(Also any good reccomendations on books for systematic reviews and writting the literature review would be hugely appreciated. I had a module on these during my Masters year but a readable good reference book would be nice. I still really like having a hardcopy book to flick through and work with as well as online resources.)

Thank you!