PhD Journey: Week 4

This has been planning week. I set my aims and objectives last week, now I need to know how to do it. The final thesis is a long way away, and slightly overwhelming, but breaking it down into steps feels a little bit more achievable.

Goal Setting Plan

When I first saw this planner I hated it. The design doesn’t appeal to me at all — I expected to see one of the boxes labelled ‘live, love, laugh’. I filled it in at the Getting Started with Research session as commanded, though, and it was actually extremely helpful to focus on some controllable goals. Something I’ve been thinking about is how to make sure that the research papers that I will have the opportunity to write don’t detract from my thesis, so I’ve given myself a goal to design a process that makes sure that doesn’t happen.

Look for best practice and be ambitious

My supervisory team are looking ahead to the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2027 / 28, and my PhD and papers around it look likely to form part of any submission — so we need to be thinking about what that will look like. The nice thing is that the REF is looking for impact, and setting aside arguments about how effective the framework is at capturing and judging that impact, this is exactly what I want to achieve with my PhD. With that in mind, I’m starting with the impact I want to have:

Improvements to the way that universities engage with small businesses.

Small businesses feeling like they are learning from experts in a way that is actually helping their business to grow.

Then we’ll work back from there.

Start thinking about what comes after the PhD

This really seems silly, considering I haven’t done a month of a three year project, but I was at a presentation from the British Academy and they were talking about grants for early career researchers. The application needs to go in ahead of finishing PhD but when the viva date is known (and with an expectation that the thesis will pass) — so I’ll need to be thinking about this within the next 12 months. I’ve included it in my longer term plan, and parking for now — but a good reminder to keep my eye on what my PhD might lead on to.