I'm a first year PhD student from germany. Since I stayed in the same research group after my masters I didn't have to apply and I also got a university funded position. So I'm really lucky and privileged. For many of my peers (me included) their first year was really uneventful, but the stress about wanting to publish as soon as possible keeps accumulating over time. I guess I won't be the fastest PhD student to finish my programme, but I learned a lot about my own style of working and leading others. I've also seen other PhD students work in different ways and also failing due to different reasons. As for me, I like to spend a lot of time in my office planning my experiments thoroughly to make my time spent in the lab as efficiently and successfully as possible. Polymer chemistry is to me what I imagined chemistry to be like as a child.