ABSTRACT
When I met Holly she was a failing research student. The difficulties she was encountering surprised both Holly and her supervisors. Before starting her three-year independent research programme she had been a straight A student throughout the first four years of her medical degree. Because she was judged to be very academically able she was invited to complete her medical degree by becoming a research student. Her first research task was to read all the relevant journal papers, write them up as a summary, and identify the theme she wished to research in depth. She failed badly in this task. When I met Holly she said her major problem with undertaking the necessary reading and writing was procrastination: ‘I invented procrastination.’
