I seem to remember panicking myself around this stage... Of course I was not helped by the fact my final 18 months I was working full-time as a teaching fellow, as well as trying to complete the PhD experiments and write-up. So I had a full teaching load, and I must admit in the last couple of months before I gave my supervisor my final draft I was working 100 hour weeks at times. The security guards at uni. got used to finding me in my office when they came round sometime after 10pm to check that lights were off and doors locked.
As to literature reviews - my field moves so fast that although I had some written from my transfer report I pretty much started again from scratch. However a lot of my background material was originally taken from a research report I had written for an industrial project I had worked on while I was a RA (I worked all through my PhD). The reuslts from the project formed the initial basis of my PhD work and as I ahd written two thirds of the report I was able to use a lot of that to form some of my early chapters.
That said I advise my new PhD students to start off with a lit. review, which they can keep updated as the field moves forward. And I tell them to write-up - at least in draft format as they go along. But that alkl comes form my own bitter experience
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Date: 2006-01-18 12:46 pm (UTC)As to literature reviews - my field moves so fast that although I had some written from my transfer report I pretty much started again from scratch. However a lot of my background material was originally taken from a research report I had written for an industrial project I had worked on while I was a RA (I worked all through my PhD). The reuslts from the project formed the initial basis of my PhD work and as I ahd written two thirds of the report I was able to use a lot of that to form some of my early chapters.
That said I advise my new PhD students to start off with a lit. review, which they can keep updated as the field moves forward. And I tell them to write-up - at least in draft format as they go along. But that alkl comes form my own bitter experience