When you first start a PhD, you may feel excited or nervous. Most probably you feel a little bit of both, with a massive question mark hanging over your head. I have just completed my first week as a PhD student, and I felt the exact same way. This post will give you a few tips of what to do in your first week.
Enrol online
If you are starting your PhD at a new university, you will most likely have to do some sort of enrolment online to get your email address and login details, and possibly your student card. Before you start, check your university’s website to see if you can enrol before your start date. This means that from day one you will have your login details and can start using a university computer, WiFi, library resources and a whole host of other exciting essential PhD things!
Seek Out Your Supervisors
If you do not have a formal meeting booked to see your supervisors on Day 1, it may be worthwhile finding their offices and saying a quick hello. Most likely some of the anxiety you have about where to start will be alleviated once you have talked to your supervisors. It’s okay to ask them where they think you should start. A good bit of advice I received was to Mind the Gap, meaning do a lot of reading and think of the gaps in relation to context, theory and method. Also, write at least 80 words a day and you’ll be sorted!
Download Software and Get Organising
If you are one of the lucky ones and have got a computer and allocated desk then you are starting from fresh. For example, there is something lovely about seeing a completely new and empty inbox of your new university email. So, it’s important to start organising and get some software that will be essential to your research during the first couple of weeks.
Enjoy
Most important part of starting a PhD is to enjoy the experience. It’s a new chapter in your life, with lots of adventures to come. Make the most of it and good luck!
Picture by uditha wickramanayaka under CC license.
![[INFOGRAPHIC] Top Ten Hints On How To Manage Your PhD Supervisor](http://www.itsnotyouitsyourdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/How-to-Manage-Your-Supervisor-header.jpg)
Does studying student experience affect how you structure and plan your own student experience? Also, did you want to participate in the Erasmus to study the experience first-hand or did you go on it for other reasons then find it so fascinating that you wanted to learn more about how Erasmus affected students in more detail?
Hi Jacob,
Thanks for the great questions! For your first question, I guess studying the student experience has made me more conscious of my own student experience, rather than actively structure or plan it. I’ve also have a range of experiences, from being the most passive undergrad who stayed at home, attended the occasional lecture and spent more hours working part-time jobs than studying; To being extremely proactive, where I was an elected student officer at the students’ association for two years. This means that I can relate to the concepts and theory behind student experience such as consumer versus partner as I have been both!
For your second question, becoming a class rep and then a student officer were the main reasons why I became interested in studying higher education, and specifically students in more detail. I stumbled across the Erasmus Mundus Masters website, where I found that there was a Masters programme on higher education as a field of study. Before that, I had never realised one could actually study explicitly study universities as a subject. Studying abroad was just an added bonus! Having been a transnational student, and finding that there is very little discussion of these sorts of students in the literature and policy discussions, made me want to research them in order to increase their visibility and help enhance their experiences of studying a foreign degree abroad.