Hello everyone!
It has been a while since my last post, but things have been pretty hectic, what with a house move, Easter break and a really busy time at work. But that is how it is when studying part time right? Life gets in the way and you have to learn to manage a balance, whilst not losing your focus.
Incidentally, this is what a lot of the discussion focused on in the part-time PhD support group I attended today. I realised, with ten minutes until it started, that I had booked onto this weeks ago and forgotten, oops. Whilst initially I panicked and worried about all the work I would be delaying to take these three hours out of my day to attend, man am I glad I did?!
The small focus group was really friendly and we spent some valuable time discussing the positive and negative forces at work which can affect our PhD research. Our facilitator, Martyn Walker, encouraged us to create a visual representation of these forces and to take some time thinking about how to address them.
In the image above, I have listed the positive forces first on the left, then covered the negative forces next on the right of the first PhD bubble. Then, I have made some notes in green on how I might tackle these negative forces.
I would love to hear about other peoples experiences/thoughts on this process.
The misadventures of Dr Beech... 