In My Expert Opinion...Wait...What?!

I realise that as a now, nearly, third year PhD student I should be pretty much 'on it' when it comes to my research topic. By the time this thing is all wrapped up, bound and gathering dust on my bookshelf I should  consider myself an expert on the whole shebang. But that all feels very distant and far away at the moment, or is that the denial kicking in?

With as this 'supposed' expert status rapidly approaches it just seems so hard to believe after spending the last two years asking for help. It doesn't seem that long ago since me, my luggage, my Northern-come -Scottish accent and I arrived in the South with not a scooby doo on how to go about this whole PhD malarky. It felt like I was having to ask absolute everyone on what I should be doing, and how I needed to do it.

How does the ethics system work here? How do I recruit schools for my study? How does the Research Participation System work? Could I please have a copy of your paper Mr/Mrs Bigshot Academic? What methods did you use for your research? How do I analyse the data? Which conferences should I go to? Where can I get funding? What do you say to a tutorial full of students that haven't done the reading? Who knows about this area of research? Who can help me with....*insert endless list of needs and questions here*

So it makes a nice change when someone comes to me and asks me how to do something on the expectation that I'm likely to know better than they do! My fellow PhD intake buddies and I got a flavour of this when last year's PhD students started, and I'm sure there will be just as many questions when next year's batch start in September. We had somehow acquired a year's worth of semi-useful knowledge and when people start to ask you things, and you start to be able to answer, you realise just how far you have come.

Last week, and again today, I got an e-mail from two Post-Doctoral Researchers asking my advice and opinion on a study they were putting together. They also were keen to know more about my own research in order to help them write a paper, asking if I had any papers that they could read and cite! (Unfortunately I haven't written any papers yet but I was able to send some data summaries to help them out and I think they may cite my conference presentations instead!).

They've been where I am already, they've done the whole PhD thing BUT they haven't done it in my area. So, even though their experience and knowledge will far outstrip mine in many areas, it seems I've somehow become a 'go-to' person on refreshing testimony and that's both encouraging and terrifying first thing on a Monday morning.

I wouldn't consider myself an expert in anything - other than maybe Disney or Harry Potter but few professions will find that kind of information anything other than geeky - but it is nice to be paid the compliment of someone asking.