PhD student? for a good start

PhD student? yes..you can , but… one of the most important issues i found when starting the PhD program, is to pay a special attention to: 1. plan literature review 2. plan your research 3. plan the needed software that you will use throughout your journey 4. care about your time management 5. pay attention to your health habits: enough sleep, healthy food, any sort of excercise 6. control your stress level 7. know your self and your skills, so you can update the needed ones 8. and yes..believe that you are a phd student these are general advices for those who are starting a phd program. however, there are more advices about how to do your research and how to choose your topic, how to choose your supervisor, your committee members, and so forth. all these topics have been mentioned in different places, but what i would like to mention today here is about your research. one of the most important issues to focus on from the beginning is your research..i know it is too early even to think about it, and it is not even the time to pay any attention to it. but if you are considering it, give it a thought, then you will save yourself time and effort and headache when it comes to prepare your proposal. the points you need to put in mind: 1. what is your research topic including research problem, research questions and the audiance 2. what kinds of research you want to do: is it descriptive? the research design is a very important step in formulating the research. it lead to the next step which is: 3. type of analysis: what kind of data you want to (should) collect to answer the research questions: is it quantitaive? 4. the next important step is to pay a good attention to the research instruments. these instruments are the agents that will get you the needed data to answer your research question…usually researchers spend a lot of time of the instruments knowing if they got it right, they can sleep at night. but the most important issues is to keep believing in yourself, and your skills and that you can fix any problem through your research journey, but can you still smell the flowers? or you are the kind of person who is just running along the road?