The last few weeks haven’t been particularly successful and I have started to wonder what actually makes up a PhD. I thought I would have more time to think, read and ponder. More time to really explore a subject. At the moment the vast majority of my time is spent ‘doing’, in the lab, trying to get experiments to work in order to test the hypothesis I have. It is incredibly frustrating to have lots of ideas but not be able to prove or disprove any of them. Precious time is squandered going round in circles dealing with what are essentially, logistics. I suppose that is how you become a ‘master’ though, you have to master the ‘craft’ in order to gain your PhD….
So I have created a % of what a PhD is made up of (from my point of view, at this particular point in time)
5% Thinking
65% ‘experimenting’ doing things that didn’t work and will never make it into the thesis
15% of actual experiments that have worked and have revealed something
15% Luck
Not sure what everyone else thinks about my little percentages. I probably should have included a procrastination % too, although that could be included in the ‘doing things that will never make it into the thesis section’.
