What I learn from 'my 1st year PhD journey'.

As I reached the first birthday of my unborn PhD thesis, I was asked to submit a Confirmation of Status (CoS) report. It's the prime time for me to show (off) to my supervisors and other members of the faculty what I have been doing and try hard to cover the things that I haven't done (but to no avail). 

Writing a report of a minimum of 10K words was among the biggest hurdle. But, alhamdulillah, my supervisor advised me to chillax and take it easy and kindly gave me a tip, which was to write the report according to the structure of the thesis, and he asked me to produce one in 2 hours time (so much of the chillax moment!).

And so, this was what I came out with.. my CoS skeleton.

 

My supervisor accepted my CoS Skeleton Proposal and I was asked to 'beef-it-up' in 4 weeks.

Having this skeleton did help me to focus on my 10k journey of CoS. The lovely thing about having this skeleton was, I could start on whichever point I wanted. Meaning, I could beef up the 3.7s though my 2.3 was still boney (to be honest, the literature review haunts me till now!!).

Hence, I learn that I need skeletons in my PhD life for clear and distinct directions. Thanks to my supervisor for introducing this concept. Now I know that I'm one of the Vygotsky-ans.

Oh by the way, my uni only wanted me to produce up to the (3.7) Research Procedure bit. Yours might be different, but at least, if you're just starting your PhD journey, you could have the fast-forward ticket by doing this from the very beginning! You'll be the model student for your professor, I bet!

All the best to us! May Allah eases our journey to gain beneficial knowledge and excellence, aamin.