If you are a postgraduate sciences student at university and you have recently been given your own office, you will no doubt be keen to begin furnishing it with all the necessary items as soon as you can. Unless you have some experience putting together a well-equipped scientific study space, you may need to follow a few basic guidelines in order to ensure that you have everything that you need.

To begin with, you will of course need a desk and chair. Ordinarily, this kind of basic furniture is provided for you and so you will more than likely not need to purchase your own. However, if you are prone to back pain after too long sitting at your computer, you may want to bring in your own ergonomically designed chair all the same.

In addition, you will need a PC or laptop on which to work. Again, your scientific institution might provide you with one of these, however, any extras – such as a larger external hard drive for example – you will need to put in place on your own. In addition, you should also begin flicking through interesting scientific calendars and year planners for your walls: these will help you to keep track of your deadlines.

Finally, you will need to bring a selection of necessary text books for storage in your office. It is important that you have access to the right literature while you work. This will help you to maintain your productivity levels without any slow patches while you wait for a book to come back into the library.

Postgraduate study is an exciting, interesting period of time, and it often comes with a variety of benefits which you might not have been afforded as a student in previous years. You will invariably be given an office in which to do your research and this will require you to think fairly hard about how to organise the space.