A little reminder about the (already dead ?) 2nd year PhD report.

The original pdf file explaining the purpose and contents of this report can be found (in French) in the attachments below.

In a few words (and in English), the purpose of this report was to reinforce the thesis follow-up process with a sort of a progress report written by PhD students alone during their fourth semester. It would have to be destined to the direction, team direction, CST/GAD and the PhD supervisor(s) [..]. Contents: fact elements; scientific context and general issues related to the thesis (1 page); scientific summary of the advancement (2 pages max); calendar for end of thesis (2 pages max); conference(s) participation; difficulties encountered; post-thesis wishes.

It was approved by the Lab Council on January 30th, 2014 (see here: http://ipag.osug.fr/doc/public/IPAG-MIN-14100-1356_v1.pdf). To quote the Council: " [the report] will be optional in 2014; if the result is convincing, the half-thesis report will become systematic for the next years."

Obviously, it did not work in 2014 and (in my opinion) will not be put in place in 2015. None of the former 2nd year PhD students (including me) found the time or the envy to write it, so we can consider it a failure.

Reasons (these are the reasons I can imagine for this failure, but you can complete):

• redundancy with the yearly report for the Ecole Doctorale
• too much focused (again) on the science and not enough on the other problems (relationship, integration, career?)
• the fact that it would have been read by the supervisor(s)
• ...

-- SimonBorgniet - 08 Jan 2015