There is one lesson you must learn to complete your PhD: Don’t wait. Do it yourself. Badger him for the details which will allow you to make this so. Badger him and badger him until it is more bother for him to ignore you than to simply make it happen. Make it clear that this is how your entire PhD is going to be. Make specific appointments in his diary.
Remember: pushy and honest.
And one very useful thing you can do whenever you’re waiting on something else: Actually start your thesis. Daunting, I know, but get a template from someone (in science fields, learning and using LaTeX will be incredibly useful in the regard), and actually write your introduction and background/previous research chapters, all properly referenced, indexed, titled and whatnot. It really keeps your eye on what’s important.
While I suspect the degree of disaffection with grad school seen in this thread may be a little skewed, an awful lot of people attend grad school as a way of putting off making decisions about getting a “real job” and hanging on to that undergraduate experience.
Also, having a good relationship with your advisor, and compatible approaches to life, research, etc. makes a huge difference.
I attended a wedding of a friend from grad school a few years back, of the 9 people around the table, I think only 2 or 3 had PhD’s and were working in their fields. 2 had PhD’s but were not “living up to their potentials” and 3 had never gotten their PhD’s.
While that group of us is really skewed towards either the unsuccessful in grad school or sucessful in unexpected ways, the reality is that a lot of people who appear to be happy and successful have made poor choices in the past, that you meeting them in the present are unaware of.
I’m not recommending you drop out of grad school. But I do think that you should be aware that dropping out does not automatically render you a failure, and dropping out sooner will mean that you have dedicated less time to a dead end than waiting until later will.
It takes courage to change course midstream, and courage to recognize that the course you have shifted to may not be the right one.
On the other hand, when I read your OP, I assumed you were in a literary field and boredom with reading about literature struck me as a really bad sign. Boredom with reading scientific literature is a less clear warning sign, as it strikes me that there is more room for stuff that isn’t reading scientific literature in your degree program.
Still, I stand by my advice to be as well informed as you can be about whether this program will in fact in able you to do the job that you think you want to do, and whether the rest of the program is more appealing than reading more quantities of literature.
I toughed out a PhD. Most miserable experience of my life. Lest anyone think it was my fault, we had six graduate students in my lab, and I’m the only one who didn’t leave the lab. Picture equipment being regularly thown at you in a tantrum by an insecure advisor. I left academia for industry right after my PhD (only six months ago), and am beginning to become myself again.
So, my advice is if you are the type of person that can tough it out and come out (relatively) unscathed and you really want a career that requires a PhD, then drag to work every day, and when you leave work, really leave it behind. But, if you aren’t going to be able to do that, then get out now.
What Sentient Meat and others have said. It does get better. I spent the first three months of my PhD doing a literature review, and being bored to tears.
It got better. A fair bit of it was by being pushy and honest, as Sentient Meat said. If I didn’t enjoy something, I said so. It worked. The work I’m doing now is stuff I truly love and enjoy, and getting me noticed in my field. I’ve had to do a lot of it myself – leading observing proposals, forging collaborations etc., but I’ve been able to steer it in the direction I want to. I daresay that as you go through the process yourself, you’ll be able to do the same.
I’d hang in there, once you can steer the PhD in the direction you want it to go in, things will get better.
And now, I’d better think about what I want to put in my thesis – apparantly I have more than enough at the moment…
The lit review isn’t really negotiable, but keep in mind why you are doing it. Firstly to help define the problem you will be researching and secondly to place your research in context. You’ve read a lot of badly written papers saying the same thing. Well that’s potentially one contribution you can make – you’ve found there’s a lot of research out there on this subject, but not of the highest quality. What are the problems with the research you’ve read? Can you see any patterns?
What are you going to do that’s different? If the papers you are reading are all on the very problem you are meant to be investigating, you need to decide what your contribution will be. Are you investigating different materials, for example?
How tightly defined is your subject? Has your supervisor told you that you must investigate this exact area in this exact way? Can you shift focus to something that interests you more? Are you interested in the way things might be done as opposed to the application domain. I.e. aging of insulators might not be the most exiting subject, but how about how the research is tackled? Is everyone else doing the same thing over and over? Can you come up with a better or novel approach to the research?
I know a few students researching into materials, and they’re all far more motivated by the experimentation and design than by the writing up or lit reviews. It’s just something that has to be done.
Sorry, I was venting, without actually thinking.
If you want to get out because you have to do a literature review, then that’s NOT a good reason to leave. Unless the literature is so boring that you now know that you hate the field and never want to produce anything in it. Keep in mind that you will always have to keep up on literature in your field. If that’s so abhorrent to you, you might want to consider a different field.
Good advice. I have a meeting with my supervisor for Wednesday, hopefully I’ll get a few things sorted out then.
I think that what I want out of this is practical experience in a number of materials testing techniques and proper experimental experience to supplement the theory I have learned and am continuing to learn. Part of the problem seems to be that the problem is quite loosely defined at present and part of my reading is to determine which way the research will go. Hopefully in a direction that interests me.
One area of concern that I would appreciate additional advice on is that in addition to EPSRC funding I have an industrial sponsor, who have commerical interests in the research. How much should their requirements dictate the direction of the research? Although I must add that the company representatives I have met so far have been very friendly and helpful.
As many of you have suggested I will endeavour to be more pushy in the future, I hope I am already honest.
Sorry for the delay - one of my PhD students just came in. I’m only her second supervisor so I don’t get to see her that often.
The research council just want to see successful PhDs, really. Is this an industrial CASE award? If so you’d need to get the industrial partner to agree to any changes also. However, it’s best to have a clear idea of what you’d like to change and why – come along with solutions and not problems and all that. I can ask my boss for more info if you like, though not until tomorrow. He was also my supervisor and we still work together, so whatever anyone else says, I know good ones exist. The first supervisor I had, on the other hand …
I think three months in is very early. It’s easy to get bogged down with all the reading. Personally I liked reading crap papers - it made me feel better, it gave me something to criticise and served as a guide to what not to do. I didn’t give a monkeys about the domain I was working in (OO software) I enjoyed the analysis, modelling and experimentation, drawing parallels with previous research (I did a pretty big lit review 'cos I wanted to prove the point that we we’re learning lessons from past mistakes) and picking off the various claims that the guru types made.
It sounds like you should be able to get the experience you want with experimental techniques. I guess as some light relief you could mug up on empirical methods …
Yes it is a CASE award, we have arranged a meeting with the industrial sponsor for the end of the month to sort out a direction for the project that will hopefully be useful and interesting for all concerned (especially me as I’m going to be doing the project for the next 3 years).
I’ve been an industrial sponsor, not for this program but for SRC (Semiconductor Research Consortium) for research funded by my company, and just talking to people on visits. The number one thing you can get from a sponsor is finding out the real state of things in industry, which often does match what is published. I have seen professors say that stuff is not feasible which is done every day with commercial products, and, more frequently, making assumptions that aren’t true. Most sponsors understand that they are not going to get anything immediately usable out of research. Most I’ve seen take on the job because they are actively interested in students. So this contact is very valuable.
SentientMeat’s advice is very good. I’m sure a chapter of your dissertation is going to be on provious work. If you start writing it and outlining it now, you’ll have a good start (though it will have to be revised) you will have a good way of communicating your findings to your advisor, and the process of writing should make all the stuff you’ve read fit into a pattern.
Seeing your area, I’m not surprised you feel bogged down. Edison must have worked on this!
Maybe you should write down nuggets of new information from each paper. If you show this to your advisor, and note that the last dozen had nothing new, he’ll let you stop.
Of course, there are the consquences of not doing a literature review …
By way of background, my own thesis evolved through a series of (in the end) vaguely related topics. As a result, nothing I’d done over the course of the research really constituted a literature review at all. Now, luckily or otherwise, most of my period as a doctoral student had involved spending hours every day locked in debate with my supervisor. I realise that’s probably not actually the most useful experience in the circumstances, but it was fun and I think I possibly absorbed unusually much of what he knew about the subject in general.
About a week before I submitted I discovered that the planned external examiner (this is in the UK, so he’d be crucial in deciding whether I passed or not) had written the standard review article covering the topic of one of the chapters of my thesis. And I’d never read it. Turned out that my supervisor had assumed I knew of it - and this despite the fact that he’d read my drafts multiple times.
In the event, it wasn’t too bad. Precisely because my supervisor had long since absorbed its arguments and I knew his opinions on the matter in extreme detail, it wasn’t too difficult to adjust the text to incorporate this crucial definitive review. But I really should have been aware of it about two years earlier and it was really only by chance that I caught the review when I did.
I’m kind of surprised that your advisor is having you do just straight lit reading for three months. I thought that it was pretty standard to hit the lab from the start for science grad students. At least that’s what I did (chemistry) and have seen in other sciences.
Remember that you don’t have to read everything. I churn through more articles in a week than I did in my whole life before grad school, but I don’t actually look at all the words in order. Read the abstract. Look at the figures. You should be able to tell pretty quickly how useful it’s going to be. I try to categorize literature as I read it, so that I know where to look if I decide that a certain topic that I ignored is actually important.
It may also help to put your list of literature into some program that will tell you how often it is cited. This can give you an idea of what other people think is important. Obviously this may or may not correspond to what you think is important.
I was kind of hoping for more lab time myself, I don’t think I got a lot of good lab experience as an undergraduate except in my final year project where we built an interferometer from scratch.
A friend of mine who’s a lecturer at the university I did my undegrad degree at suggested that this approach was just lazy supervising. He said that his students get straight into the practical side of things which helps with the reading, which you do along the way.
I think if I was splitting my time and gaining practical experience things would be better. Hopefully I can sort this out tomorrow when I see my supervisor.
I have started trying to write up the lit review to become (eventually) a chapter in my thesis and have a few PhD thesis’s in this field to read.
Voyager said:
It’s not quite as bad as that, I’m looking at composites (or non ceramics as they say in the US) and am hoping to concentrate on the material side of things. I think others have pretty much cleared up the ceramics by now.
I wouldn’t say so. Remember, by the end of your PhD, you’re supposed to be the leading expert in your field. You need to have a detailled idea of the background of the subject, so that you have something on which to base your own ideas, and so that you’re not repeating work in the field. Its in your best interests to have a background in the subject before going into the lab, particularly if said going into the lab is going to involve working with materials/chemicals where you can’t simply start over like you can in astronomical data reduction. Besides, a literature review is a good introductory chapter of your thesis – see, you can have one chapter written before the end of your first year. 
The other thing I found with a literature review was that when I ended up changing supervisors, as my first supervisor was leaving (she was a postdoc), my second supervisor had an extensive knowledge of one side of what I do, but knew very little about the other. So, because of the literature review I’d done, I knew the ins and outs of both sides, which helped in feeding my second supervisor information, and steering him away from faintly ridiculous notions.
Even more reason to keep going. It’s prestigious and much better money than your average PhD bursary by far. I’ve just seen my boss, who is running a CASE award at the moment. As long as the industrial partners agree, EPSRC won’t mind. They are simply looking for timely PhD completions.
Any chance of booking lab time yourself rather than having to have your supervisor’s say so? The guys here seem to sort themselves out resources permitting. Again I’ve not one clue about how expensive it all is, but that will have been taken care of in the award – overheads are very generous which is another reason EPSRC grants are popular.
And the term is proactive, not pushy 
I think you’ve all convinced me to keep going. Perhaps this is just a blip. I will try to be more proactive (even though it’s one of those pc phrases that I despise) and will find out how to sort out lab time for myself (if that is possible here).
You are right about the money too, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m renting a place in halls and paying for my mortgage at home then I would actually be better of then I was when I worked full time (prior to my degree).
I’m sure this can be made to work, although I do not have a passion for insulators, I do have a passion for science in general and physics in particular. As long as I can direct the research to areas that I find fullfilling I’m sure things will get better.
Thank you all for your advice, suggestions, etc.
I agree with this completely. Having your own research project gives you perspective and motivation to read papers, because you have context and know what areas are relevant to you and what aren’t. I think your advisor is being lazy which sadly is not unusual, especially with new students.
Don’t hesitate to switch fields and/or advisors. You’re not locked in and you haven’t invested much time at this point, relative to the time left to go. Choosing an advisor and research topic is not that different from choosing a wife – you want to think long-term. If you can find someone to work for whose research is more interesting to you, pursue it.
One thing for sure … you will continue to experience angst until the day they hand the degree to you. At least that was the case for me. There were many moments when I considered chucking it all when the going got rough, but I plowed forward. I saw grad students in my cohort dropping out all around me, but I plowed on. I considered and rejected dropping out to attend professional degree programs. It really helped to have people, like family members, encouraging you. And yes, a good advisor (one who helps instead of hinders you) is a godsend. The thing about grad school is that you are always looking at getting past the next hurdle (seminars, quals, papers, etc.), and the biggest hurdle is the dissertation. I didn’t feel the load off my shoulders until I got that last signature on my dissertation. It was a great feeling until I started worrying about employment post-grad school! With 20-20 hindsight now, I don’t think I would’ve gone to grad school if I knew what was involved. I would’ve chosen a less uncertain route via a professional degree program.
Another thing, Stryfe. A PhD is an excellent opportunity to get into science communication in general, which can be extremely rewarding and makes the whole thing a lot more meaningful, as well as looking great on your CV. Seek out training in presentation skills (you should be being actively encouraged anyway), think about a snappy, general interest science talk (maybe your field, maybe not: the SD itself is a fantastic resource) and get involved with your department’s schools liason or the British/American Association for the Advancement of Science. I’m still involved in this kind of thing myself, 4 years after my PhD.