Hi all,

I started my phd today in Chemical engineering which differs from my MSci which was in mathematics. My supervisor came over to explain the mathematics that we will be using and I hadn't used most of it before. I then took a look at some of the material which was impenetrable!

i know it'll take a while to get to grips with everything but it seems quite daunting, my supervisor is really nice but he thinks out loud on a completely different plane to me!
Does anyone have any advice for how to start the PhD in the best way possible? I want to get into good habits right away as I really want to make the most of this and don't want my lack of ChemEng knowledge to hinder me too much.

Thanks in advance.

Set up endnote or some other form of referencing management system! That is number one, at least I'm happy I did it early on

Set up endnote or some other form of referencing management system! That is number one, at least I'm happy I did it early on

I started my PhD last year in a field slightly removed from my original degree. The first thing I did was spend two months working from cover to cover through a text book about the new topic. It really helped me, so I'd suggest trying something similar. Find a book like "introductory whatever you want to learn" and go through it doing all the examples and everything. It's really boring, you feel like your wasting time, but when you've finished you realise how useful it actually was.