Natalie Lamb and the start of the PhD

Today I began the first day of my PhD. I have an approximate title and I know that I will be paid for a few years but that is about it. Is it daunting? Of course! Did I scour Google for advise? Unfortunately! I am now sat with 26 tabs open, all about PhD advise and how you can go terribly wrong and what horrific thing will happen to you if you don't do all 1000 things suggested by the article you have just finished reading. One thing that does keep reoccurring, though, is that many PhD graduates wish they had completed a blog about their journey. So I am going to give it a go.

I think my difficulties really lie in the fact that I am industry based. It is a very important part of my project that I am in close contact with my sponsoring business. My MSc was completed purely through research and almost completely in industry. I think that in total, I visited the university five times (including an open day and my final viva!). But it does leave you in a position of relying on internet searches to get the experiences of other students. Don't get me wrong, I love being in industry. It feels a lot more "real" to me, allows me to see all the real world outcomes of my projects on the business, provides me with a great chance of getting a job after my studies and really helps me to connect with all sorts of people I never would have met if I would have been hanging around with students in a university somewhere. But for my PhD I intend to go to the university much more frequently. I have not quite decided yet how frequently, but definitely more frequently than twice a year!

In the mean time, I intend to write this blog every two weeks or when I am looking for a bit of inspiration or when I just fancy it, just to keep in the habit of writing, really. It would also be great to look back on this post in four years time and maybe (hopefully!) I will see that I have accomplished a lot.

Note to self: The Science Cafe in Cardiff is excellent for blog inspiration!