Monthly Archives: February 2010

Year 2 PhD – Feb 2010

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Well the second year has commenced. I would have liked to have been much further along than I am but c’est la vie. If I wasn’t trying to squeeze 9 days work into a 6 day working week would probably have been easier.

We spoke to the people just starting the doctoral program at UTS this year, used to think would feel better when I was  no longer the person who was just starting but it really makes no difference where you are compared to other people, in the end it is just your project, your work and what you need to do that is your focus.

So I need to finish reviewing the literature I have gathered and spend some time finalising methodology. Let’s see how it goes over the next month!

The uni sent us this info about the different supervisor roles:

> Your principal supervisor is the person who will take direct responsibility for supporting your studies. This person must be registered as a category 1 supervisor. They will get a small workload allocation for supervising you, which is allocated on the completion of various milestones.

> Your alternate supervisor is a category 1 supervisor who is supposed to take over supervision from your principal supervisor if he/she is on leave, has resigned, is ill or has some reason for not being able to continue with the supervision. The alternate does not get a workload allocation while in the alternate position. Consequently, they are not required to have input into your studies apart from possibly reading papers for your stage 1 and 2 assessments or doing a final reading of your dissertation.

> Joint supervisors share the supervision with the principal supervisor and are expected to be involved to some extent throughout your candidature.

> Co-supervisors may be supervisors that are being mentored to become principal supervisors or they may be people who can help with a specific aspect of your work. Depending on whether they are the former or latter, they will either attend all meetings and be fully involved in your supervision or only be involved at particular periods when they can help you.