Perspectives of a 2nd Year Biomedical PhD Student

Last week I passed my PhD transfer viva, meaning that I could upgrade from MPhil status to PhD status, and continue onto my third year of lab work. This is something the majority, if not all, PhD students have to go through around the middle of their research. The purpose is to defend your work, prove to your assessors that your research is PhD level (perhaps even publishable), and worth continuing to invest in. In light of this, I thought I’d share an honest post of my thoughts as a second year PhD researcher.

As a second year student, you are no longer in the honeymoon period of your PhD, where everything is new and your main focus is to absorb as much reading as you can in your subject area, and become familiar with lab techniques. This is the year that you should start to generate some meaningful data and become considered a specialist in your field. Although this comes with lots of pressure, you also learn A LOT about EVERYTHING, and not just about your chosen subject. I’m talking about yourself, your supervisor, your University, your fellow PhD peers. Personally, the end of my first year was quite stressful and overwhelming as I hadn’t quite got to grips with how I worked best in a research environment, how to deal with even slight changes in my project (or experiments) and what things made me most productive – these things can make PhD students feel very lost and trapped in a cycle of spiraling guilt.

However as my second year started, I tried to take the pressure off myself by learning (read: forcing) how to prioritise the things that were essential for my project to progress. Essentially, I stopped spending lots of time worrying or perfecting minor tasks that could wait. I stopped feeling guilty for every lab experiment that failed (which in turn got rid of lab dread), stopped being an obsessive perfectionist, accepted that imposter syndrome was a thing, and I loosely PLANNED my days so that generally my weeks were more focused without being too rigid (who knew planning would be so effective, right?). As well as this, I received some enlightening advice from a newly graduated PhD student – 

‘Even if you can’t be super productive every single day, just try do at least one thing each day that will make an overall contribution to your write up. This could be an experiment, some data analysis, or even writing a few paragraphs for your introduction’.

The thing about a PhD is that it is really different to any other type of academic work or job as your progress is extremely hard to measure - you aren’t graded often or have daily/weekly deadlines from a manager, so it is really easy to feel like days, weeks and months of work is being wasted. In addition to this, I started my blog; this has really given me a push, as I now feel overall much more self-motivated as I am doing something that I enjoy which also incorporates my research/scientific knowledge. This results in overall better output, the feeling of small bursts of success, which then pushes you to do more.

In the lead up to my transfer viva, I spent a lot of time writing a succinct and thorough summary of my research accomplished to data as well a comprehensive literature review. I included all of my results and troubleshooting work to highlight how much work had been done within my 2 years. I really did use this as a practice for writing up, and again tried to be as efficient as possible. Once this had been submitted, I made sure to read around my subject and practice answering some model answers. Most importantly, my advice to any other PhD student is to not stress – I know this is easier said than done, but focus on what you know well, the future of your project, and how you plan to finish your research. Stressing is almost guaranteed to push out any existing knowledge from your brain, and will limit your ability to think on the spot!

My viva lasted an hour and a half, and did two things - 1. Made me feel like I had actually achieved something in 2 years, and 2. Pin-pointed what things need to be improved or need more attention to move forward. The process was a learning experience, not something to fear or beat yourself up over!!

I hope you have found this post helpful. As always, let me know your feedback or your experiences!