1. Perform an exhaustive search through the literature to find all papers, books, unpublished results, letters etc. that are even tangentially related to your topic.
2. Spend days reading the collected literature, carefully noting important findings and listing references.
3. Begin writing a detailed review of the collected literature with multiple references to support each point.
4. Notice that the paper you just spent a page meticulously deconstructing is in fact a poorly performed replicate of an experiment done many times before, much more rigorously, with completely different findings. Rewrite that entire section. Cry.
5. Realise that the paper you were relying on for your central conclusion was retracted by the authors a year after publication for hideous flaws and inaccuracies. Attempt to make it look like you noticed those flaws and inaccuracies yourself by using longer words than the original authors.
6. Decide that you have been too uncritical. Write a paragraph critising a vaguely relevant study for not taking into account the effects of Jupiter’s magnetic field on their electrophoresis results. Cite fourteen astronomy papers to support your attack\pad out your bibliography.
7. Repeatedly cite your own past work with glowing praise for the superlative experimental design and deeply insightful analysis. Attempt to disguise this by referring to “Old Supervisor et al.”.
8. Lose your bibliography. Freak. Find it again. Repeat 15-20 times.
9. Realise that you really should have started reading about past work in the field before you started your experiments. Try to think of a way to reframe “pointless rehashing” as “rigorous confirmation” when your supervisor asks you to discuss this. Plan to steal others’ entire experimental designs anyway.
10. Become so familiar with your university’s online literature access tool that you start clicking the right place on the screen before the page even appears. Be unsure if this is a good thing.
11. Laugh uproariously at a terrible pun in the title of a paper. Then look out the window at some actual people and feel instantly depressed. Retreat away from the searing natural light.
12. Congratulations! You have finished your review. Now spend twice as much time as you did writing it on formatting, proofreading, and fixing your printer. Bask in the look of vague recognition in your supervisor’s eyes when you submit the finished product.