I attended the course conducted by Dr. Geraint Wyn Story for GSLS (Graduate School of Life Sciences) PhD students to learn how to write my first year report. I know it is still a few months away before I start freaking out totally about it, but I guess it is better that I prepare myself right from the start rather than stressing myself out not knowing what I need to do when it is time to submit that very report which will determine if I stay or leave Cambridge. To be honest, I am freaking out already despite the fact that the first year report seems to be a very informal event in the division which I am in. Furthermore, the man above has been pushing me to produce results. I feel like a child who is asked to run when I am still learning how to crawl. Yes, the sense that I am stupid exists, and I feel very real about it, though I am more assured after attending the session that it is alright to feel how I feel.
One thing which is encouraged in developing our writing skills is to write regularly as a on-going process. A new concept (maybe not-so-new) was introduced -- "Writing to Prompts". This concept uses question or fragment of a sentence to stimulate the writing process. I do find it beneficial as it helps to focus our mind into writing something. Personally, I tend to break down the things I want to write into subtopics, and then explore the literature and read them accordingly, sometimes making notes based on sections of the same paper.
Another interesting idea is to do "Free Writing" of about 5-10 minutes with a suggested ideal frequency of 3 times a week. Writing without stopping for a duration of time on a certain topic indeed will help to free-up the writer who is bogged by the research and improve self-confidence. When we practised this concept, I came up with a short entry on
"First Year Report Training".
One more concept before I end this post is the introduction of "Writing Groups" to act as a social activity plus an encouragement to help us write, and to make writing fun. Anyone would like to be my partner in crime for this?!
The usual culprits of a good report would the standard format, and everything else is rather dependent on the department. First year report should focus on introduction and future works with some prelim results and methods if there is any. A little about referencing was covered, and the importance of knowing who will be reading the first year report, and who are the examiners, plus the importance of appointing a secondary adviser. Gantt's chart is suggested to be a part of the first year report to give an idea of the audience what I plan to do.
This takes a bit of my time to digest it.
I'm ending this with something from PhD Comics. Cheers!
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