Blog – The Start of PhD Year Two

I can’t believe I’m already in the second year of my PhD!

To give you a brief update on where my research is at– I’ve passed my first year review, submitted my ethics application (fingers crossed I get all my approvals in place within the next few weeks) and I’ve had some fun along the way. After a really busy start to the summer, I took my foot off the pedal in August to enjoy the Fringe (for those of you who don’t know what Edinburgh Fringe Festival is- it’s the world’s largest arts festival that happens right on my doorstep for the whole month of August!), have a few friends come over to visit and went home for a week of R & R and to celebrate a family wedding.

With all the students returning to campus in September, I was excited to start the second year of my PhD. It’s amazing what the hustle and bustle can do for productivity and there’s just a buzz in the air of excitement and new beginnings that is contagious. After taking an easy August, I dove into September head first- I was awarded a funded place on the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science’s training hub at the start of the month, I started teaching for the first time (eek!), I attended the Imagination Dementia Cafe and Still Alice theatre performance (a MUST SEE! See here for touring dates), I presented my research at Queen Margaret University and got some invaluable feedback (big thanks to Professor Jan Dewing for inviting me to speak), I attended several welcome events for our new PhD students in the School of Health in Social Science, took a weekend trip to Amsterdam with my best friend AND I am currently in the process of moving flat.

For those of you who read my personal blog, you will know I signed up to run the Scottish Half Marathon in September for Alzheimer Scotland, so you’re probably wondering where my update on that is. Well, unfortunately that wasn’t meant to be. Although my training started off well at the beginning of the summer, I couldn’t seem to get past the 10K mark without experiencing pretty bad hip pain. It was causing me a lot of stress and I felt like I couldn’t enjoy the training process so I decided to pull out of the half marathon 😦

Wow- I’m exhausted after just writing all of that down! Now that you’re caught up on everything, I must admit that a part of me has kept myself busy to avoid writing for my PhD. It’s a daunting task to get back to once you slip out of it for a few months! But, I’m ready to get back on the horse and have set myself the goal of submitting some writing on my methodology to my supervision team within the next two weeks and to submit my narrative literature review for publication by the end of the year (now that I’ve written it here I HAVE to do it).

I was inspired to finally update my blog, after Heidi tagged me to participate in #Blogtober18 (and I have to admit it’s been quite cathartic). Although I don’t think I can commit to writing a blog post every day for the month of October, I think I can commit to writing one every week. So you can expect 4 more posts from me this month (lucky you!)

That’s all for now, folks! I better stop procrastinating and get back to writing my methodology chapter. Let me know if any of you are participating in #Blogtober18 and if you want me to write about any topics in particular!

(Ed: Thank you to Katie for agreeing to share this blog with Dementia Researcher)

Author

Katie Gambier-Ross is a PhD researcher @EdinUniHealth aiming to enhance the experience of people with dementia staying safe when leaving their home. Funded by Alzheimer’s Society

You can follow Katie on Twitter         Follow @kgambierross

Dementia Researcher

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