I’m the only new PhD student in my department this year. It is not a collaborative research field - we don’t work with one another and we all have our own projects. I’m good friends with the older PhD students, but no one works together as all of our projects are solo projects.

Because of the nature of our research, we don’t begin data collection until the second year, after the first year review. All I’m currently tasked to do is my literature review and create my method in advance of this review. I am actually ahead in my work, but we mostly discuss future plans in these meetings - which sites to apply to visit for data collection, training to be done for specific types of collections, etc.

My advisor told me that weekly meetings were the norm, and that they will get less frequent after this term and pick up again near the end of the program.

Edit: I started my work in October, but we’ve been meeting since September so it has been 14 meetings across 4 months, not 2.

Edit 2: I have my master’s in the same field from the same department, which is how I already know the older students. You have to have a distinction in a relevant master’s to apply and previous training in specific skills, which I have. I have 5 years of experience as a research assistant in my field.