Categories: phd
Tags: supervision, PhD
Date: 05 October 2006 12:35:45
I had supervision this morning, for which (as usual) I was woefully underprepared. And (as usual) I managed to blag my way through it so my supervisors seemed pleased with where I'm at at the moment and with the work I'm (allegedly) doing. Which is fine, I've managed to get through another supervision with minimal last-minute preparation and blagging and not get nagged for doing not very much work in the scheme of things, but ...
This is precisely the stuff I nag my 1st years about - don't leave it till the last minute, organise your time, it'll be so much more intellectually satisfying if you spend time really thinking about what you're doing/saying, blah blah - why am I so useless at applying that to myself?
However, one good thing is that (at long last) I'm starting to feel like I'm focussing down to a manageable area to research - because I'm looking at a wide general area (health) there are 20 million avenues I could go down, a lot of which are really interesting, but I'm having to recognise which ones are feasible in the time frame and remit of a PhD thesis and which ones I just need to let go of. I'm feeling a lot happier that I've found an area of health care that is specific enough that I can narrow things down and make my unique contribution* to world knowledge, but wide enough that there is lots of literature and theory that I can draw upon. So that's good. I just have to get off my backside and actually start doing it!
*unique in the sense that probably only my supervisors and I will ever read the thesis. Changing the world starts with small steps you know :)