For all of those who have today begun their life as a PhD student - hello to you! It was incredibly weird to wake up today and not rush off to work. Instead, I have typed up a 6-week plan, organised a meeting with my supervisor, and am arranging which books I will hopefully be purchasing this week on Amazon. Classic FM is on in the background, and I am now just opening the first pages of a book on my particular topic.

Life is good!!

,-)

Hiya

My first day will be next Monday. Have you organised a meeting with your supervisor already? My uni says that I'm not scheduled to meet them til Wednesday. It is a good idea to be proactive and contact them before this do you reckon, or just wait til Wednesday?

What is your PhD in?

I'm not even sure when my first day is yet!

My official start date is October 1st, but that's a Saturday. Not sure whether I should be going in this week or next week, as a result haha! But my supervisor won't be meeting me until Tuesday anyway, so not entirely sure of the arrangements.

For some reason I'm not even registered at the University yet, because the fees haven't been paid because I'm some sort of special case for funding (scholarship) that the admin system isn't used to dealing with. Great!

Hello, I also start mine on the 3rd, my letter also said the 1st but my supervisor emailed me to ask when I started and I said the 3rd as no one would be in on the 1st. Since then my supervisor has been in touch with a detailed description of what my first day will entail, inductions, meetings, having a look around etc! Sounds like fun!

Good luck everyone else with your first days!

I officially start next Monday, but this Thursday and Friday i have induction things including meetings with my supervisors. I have already met my supervisors a number of times concerning this project in particular, and getting to know one of the supervisors who i didn't know before.
So yeah i would say i have been in constant touch with both of them about this project idea for a good while now, and knew one of my supervisors from my masters. We will figure out what day our official weekly meetings will be between us but we will basically be in constant touch every day, we need to work together on many things and we are all in close proximity.

I can't see myself making a 6 week plan, i think that will be too long for me, everything will change on a shorter lifetime than that. I know my first task is to review the research. I can't really make any kind of plan until that is 100%. Then i need training on some equipment that i have never used before (new equipment). After those two things i should be on my way to producing devices for testing- which would then have many problems designing new equipment capable of testing the devices (will have to design equipment and kits, order everything and make designs for the workshop- that kind of stuff always takes forever, and being a physicist i am not necessarily the best design engineer lol). But of course all the theoretical stuff will be mixed in there, and hopefully learn computing more for simulations.


There are books i am considering buying too, but i don't have any money yet, so can't buy them, each book in my area is always about £100, i can't afford that.
All of my work will be done from the university, all the experiments and lab work, and even when i am just doing research that will be done at my office in university, so i wont be able to play classical music i don't think (other doctors in the office), so maybe i should buy an ipod or something.

Been contacted now. I start at 10am on Tuesday the 4th, and the first thing I have to do is meet my supervisor to discuss my studies!

Then I've to get an induction pack and a key for the allocated room in which I'll be working :D. Sounds exciting!

This is my first year (and first post!), too. I have already met my supervisor once, who I knew from my Masters programme. I am currently revising my proposal, with a view to narrowing my focus. I have been reading a lot for the past six or so weeks, but am looking forward to settling on a topic, even though I know it will evolve over time.

Is anyone else starting a humanities Ph.d?

I get the feeling my day one will be a while away, ahaha.

I was offered the PhD yesterday (and I accepted within a few minutes of getting the email...obsessive), and I notice my uni's postgrad introductory stuff has started already! I'm in Scotland and the uni is 400 miles away in England, so I'm thinking my day one might not be for another month!

I still need to get all the admin stuff sorted (which involves proving my qualifications), then there's registration and all the other complexities. It's weird to think most people are starting already! I hope I don't end up left behind and feeling outcast >_< /paranoid

Hi all,

Sounds very exciting - glad we could all start the 'journey' together.

I too knew my supervisor previously from my Masters, which seems to be a common trend here.

I must admit, I went from 'life is good' on Monday to 'life is weird' as the extremely unstructured nature of a PhD has quickly become evident. I feel like I'm missing a seminar or should be calling in sick to work, or something. I have a postgraduate drinks-and-nibbles thing tonight so I think I'll feel a lot better when I can meet and chat to other PhD history candidates. My batch of books has still to arrive from Amazon too, so once they hit the door step and I have a lot more to do, I'm sure I'll be more comfortable sitting at home on a Wednesday!

As my subject is history, I can't really get in to my version of a 'lab' (archive) until I really know what manuscrupts I'm going for - and that can only be done through general reading and theory in the first few months.

Anyway, nice to meet you all and good luck starting out these next few weeks.

Hi all,

I too start tomorrow, feeling a bit lost at the moment as I'm used to structure! Hope we can all help each other over the next three years :-)

I wish this thread appeared 3 days ago! I started Monday of this week. It feels daunting as my supervisor keeps coming up with all these amazing things that I could do!!!

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