When I completed my first year in my PhD course, I took time to reflect on the year that had gone by. When I started to jot done my achievements and regrets, I had a long list on either side of the column. It made me want to share my thoughts with others. Especially the ones who have just started this journey. May be they could learn from my mistakes and avoid disappointments.
To begin with, I would suggest to you to begin your long doctoral journey with a lot of passion in your heart. The journey is such that, it has a lot of phases, ups and downs. If you lose passion and drive you may not be able to sustain the pressure. To add to it, you should be passionate about the topic you want to research upon. If there is no passion, surely you would lose interest in the long journey of PhD. Another important suggestion is to read a lot around your topic before actually embarking into the journey. You may get the maximum amount of time only in the first year of your PhD to read. The subsequent years consume a lot of time in data collection and analysis. I am saying this, more so because I was not very planned with my reading habits in the first year so a lot of things did not make sense to me at the initial stage.
Another suggestion I have is to make a more judicious use of the supervisors. This is only possible when you take them as members of your team and so take initiatives to meet them and share ideas, collate on topics and attempt collectively to find solutions on existing topics. If you simply sit and wait for your supervisor to get in touch with you, you will miss on to very precious time, my dear friend!! Lastly, I would want to tell all my friends to manage yourself and life much better and remember the master key to success is nothing else but “SELF DISCIPLINE”. Life and society is full of temptations and distractions and it is up to you to keep yourself focused amongst all the deviations.