A PhD can seem overwhelming

I haven’t written very much about the progress of my study – my PhD in Politics here at Adelaide.

While others have been majorly disrupted by COVID-19 and our ensuing societal restrictions, I honestly haven’t been. My work consists almost entirely of desk research and I have found I have adapted fairly easily to working from home. Fortunately, I am thoroughly enjoying and am consistently interested in my topic, something which other PhD students assure me is not always the case, but is absolutely essential to success.

One thing that I have found, irrespective of COVID-19, is that these early stages of such a big research project can be a bit overwhelming. There is simply so much to learn, so much to read, so much to analyse and, above all, so much to write! 80,000 words is a lot!

I find I get particularly overwhelmed when it comes to reading the literature on my topic. As with any PhD topic, there is so much of it and it is constantly increasing. It takes time to read articles, and seeing the list of sources I have compiled to be read as part of the literature review can be very daunting. It can have a paralysing effect – I sometimes find myself thinking something along the lines of ‘well I’ll never be able to read all of it, so why even start.’

This pattern of thinking is, of course, plainly self-defeating, but sometimes hard to overcome. I find one trick that helps me maintain a good mind frame is to select one particularly crucial article (from what I can tell from the abstract) each night that I will start with first thing the next morning. Often, once I have one reading done under my belt, I can get on a roll, and the large list no longer seems as daunting.

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