So what exactly did you do this year?

We're reaching the end of the academic year. Undergraduates are getting their exam results and starting their summer holidays and the school year is nearly over. You might think this doesn't mean much for research students as we, like the rest of the working world, book holidays as and when we want them (or when experiments let us) and aren't tied to the school holidays. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong. While we may be looking forward to a couple of weeks away, there is something else us PhD students need to be looking at doing, the joy of end of year reports where we get down to answering the question, "So what exactly did you do this year?".

At the end of every year of a PhD you have to hand in some form of report. A document that describes what you've spent the year doing, whether its the first year transfer/upgrade report, a second year progress report or the thesis itself. Needless to say, while in many ways summer is our quiet time in terms of teaching, demonstrating and problem solving for undergraduates; it is a hot bed of writing activity. However, not all end of year reports are created equal. Obviously the thesis, handed in at the end of your PhD, is the longest and most difficult to get right, but you'll have the most time devoted to doing it and although you may want to finish by the time they stop paying you, you can keep writing. First and second year reports are normally fitted in around your normal work with a couple of weeks devoted to just writing when your deadlines are fast approaching. In many ways it's this juggling of tasks makes it quite hard to get a grip on what you should be doing especially when your supervisor may have a very different opinion of what should be in your report that your examiners and department.

The first year report goes by many names in different universities. At Leeds it's the transfer report, at Sheffield it's the upgrade report or first year report depending on who your speak to, but the main gist of what you're doing is pretty similar across the board. You are presenting the work you have done in your first year, along with a comprehensive review of papers and books important to your project. This is in effect the first year examination in a PhD; if you pass you are upgraded/transferred from provisional PhD or MPhil status to full PhD, where the expectation is that you will complete a thesis of a sufficient standard to achieve your doctorate. Why do you have to do a report? Well, it has 2 purposes, it's designed to pick up anyone who may not been working hard enough in the year and its designed to spot where there may be a catastrophic problem with a research project. The most difficult thing to navigate when preparing the report is what your supervisor expects vs what the department expects. One of my supervisors told me I should just write and submit a less than 10 page paper for my report as it shows I have made enough progress to create a document ready for publication. However, this contrasted starkly with the guidelines given by my department to include a through literature review and comprehensive report of the experiments I had performed. It's not that easy to be in the middle of! In the end I decided to follow the department guidelines, simply because it wouldn't be my supervisor marking my work (marking policy varies wildly between universities) and I could just picture my examiners pulling my 'report' to pieces. From my first year report experience, I have 5 pieces of advice:

1. Ask your supervisor about the deadline. These can actually be quite *cough*  flexible *cough*.
2. Don't worry about making it perfect.
3. When playing with data and making all the graphs you'll need, don't use a track pad it'll give you RSI, and you won't be able to do anything very quickly. Trust me on this one.
4. Give yourself about a month to write and remind your supervisor if they complain about you not doing 'useful' work that if you fail this you won't be around to do any work at all.

You may think I'm leaving out an obvious bit of advice, "Write everything up as you go along so you'll have less to do later!". Well, I think everyone knows that one. Also, you probably won't have time to write up everything and the things you write up might not actually be that useful. I'd written up my cell culture experiments as I went along, but I used very little of that write up in my report except as jumping off points. I'm not saying don't write up as you go, rather don't expect it to be an assembly job if you do and don't beat yourself up about it if you don't.

At the moment I'm beginning to think about making a start on my second year report although it's currently looking like I don't have to do very much. A thesis plan  how hard can it be? Probably much harder than it should be, but at least it should be useful! Overall, my plan for this report is simple, throw some words down and don't worry about it too much. I also have a plan in mind for if someone complains it's too brief; direct them to my supervisor and throw draft papers at them!