Writing Up As You Go Along – Why It Really IS Worth Doing! #PhDtips

We all know the ‘classic’ PhD timeline: Cram in as many experiments as possible over a few years, then suddenly panic, down tools and try and write it all up as a comprehensible thesis.

Certain enlightened institutes try to persuade us to, ‘write up as we go along’ but what with experiments, seminars and career workshops to attend to (not to mention the vestiges of a social life to keep intact), how many of us actually put aside regular time to craft our thesis? But it IS worth doing – as I’ve found, making an early start on writing up can actually improve your time in the lab.

This month, I finally returned to my PhD course after being on leave of absence for a year due to long-term health issues. I’m not allowed to do any practical lab work until the new year, so I have been using this time to write up my methods in full, converting what results I have so far into ‘thesis-worthy’ graphs and figures.

Although it doesn’t feel like ‘proper’ work, going back through my experiments and redefining my objectives has had considerable benefits:

• It’s helped me to regain my focus and see the way ahead. Relating my results back to my hypotheses has shown me the best way to move things forward. I am often guilty of letting my research questions wander off on tangents, instead of keeping everything centred on the key question. At the end of the day, a thesis should be like reading a story where each development builds on the one before: not a random mishmash of half-finished headlines.
• It’s improved how I design experiments. Getting down to the nitty-gritty has revealed some gaping flaws in how I performed my early work, including control populations I didn’t think to include. Designing your experiments from an analysis point of view (i.e. what do I need to do to make sure my conclusions are as robust as possible?) means you are less likely to miss out a vital element that forces you to repeat the whole assay again.
• It’s perfected my lab book techniques. A good lab book should be both instruction manual and historical archive. Writing up methods and conclusions has truly emphasised what key information I need to detail as I do each experiment – and also the extraneous fluff that I don’t need to include: in my efforts to appear busy, I like to note down all the seminars and extra-curricular activities I do but this makes it even harder to find the important details! In future, my lab books will be leaner, cleaner and much easier to understand.

It’s clear that writing up isn’t an exercise in isolation, but it develops awareness that spills over into your practical research. It would be a shame to only refine your lab skills in this way at the very end of your course – especially if you don’t continue with a research-based career and so never have a chance to put them into practice. So I would encourage you to make a start now. If you’re not sure where to begin, don’t be afraid to do things out of chronology! Does the idea of writing the introductory chapter put you off? Then start with your methods or touching up your results into pristine graphs. Most PhD’s change direction to some extent, so the best context to introduce your thesis may only become apparent at the end.

So don’t be afraid to get stuck in – knowing it’s not time wasted!

Caroline Wood is midway through a PhD studying parasitic weeds at the University of Sheffield. When she’s not agonising over her experiments, she loves to write and will cover most scientific topics if they stay still long enough.

In her spare time, she enjoys helping at public outreach events, hill walking and escapism at the cinema. She blogs at:

http://scienceasadestiny.blogspot.co.uk/