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reading page |1|2  I've done well academically so far. Can I
expect to sail through a PhD?  Not necessarily. A doctorate is a
whole new ball game demanding different skills from those that
have brought you success in your education so far. For most of
an undergraduate or master's degree you will have attended
lectures and done coursework prepared by someone else. You will
have followed someone else's route map covering known territory
to get to a predetermined destination. But in a PhD, you'll be
the one asking the questions and devising ways to answer them.
It is a bit like the difference between scaling a climbing wall
and conquering an unclimbed mountain. Sometimes students who
graduated with a first-class degree do not cope well in this
unstructured environment, whereas their colleague with a 2:1 may
thrive.  What does doctoral research involve?  There is an
element of truth in the old quip that when you start a PhD you
know a little about everyt