{"id":164,"date":"2019-09-15T22:16:38","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T20:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/?p=164"},"modified":"2022-09-21T09:57:41","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T07:57:41","slug":"advice-from-a-former-phd-student","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/2019\/09\/15\/advice-from-a-former-phd-student\/","title":{"rendered":"Advice from a recent PhD graduate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lucy A. Taylor, a recent PhD graduate from the University of Oxford, wrote an interesting career-column article in the Nov. 6, 2018 issue of <em>Nature. <\/em>With the title, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-018-07332-x\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twenty things I wish I\u2019d known when I started my PhD,&#8221;<\/a> this article obviously appealed to me! (Thanks for the tip, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nmbu.no\/emp\/curt.rice\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Curt Rice<\/a>!)<\/p>\n<p>Luckily it&#8217;s not loo late to implement her suggestions, e.g.:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Invest time in literature reviews.&#8221; I did a literate review early on, but didn&#8217;t use enough time reading what I&#8217;d found. That&#8217;s why I missed a recent study where another researcher created a survey very similar to the one I&#8217;m making.<\/li>\n<li>\u201c&#8217;I don\u2019t need to write that down, I\u2019ll remember it&#8217; is the biggest lie you can tell yourself! Write down everything you do \u2014 even if it doesn\u2019t work.&#8221; How true! Right now I&#8217;m struggling to recount exactly how I performed a factor analysis &#8211; I should&#8217;ve written a more detailed account of the process as we proceeded.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;It\u2019s never too early to start writing your thesis.&#8221; In fact I was doing just that when I got the tip about this article, but I probably should&#8217;ve written more by now.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Break your thesis down into SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely) goals. You will be more productive if your to-do list reads &#8216;draft first paragraph of the results&#8217; rather than &#8216;write chapter 1&#8217;.&#8221; This is brilliant, and I never would&#8217;ve thought of it myself. Hurdles become smaller, making it easier to start on tasks.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The nature of research means that things will not always go according to plan. This does not mean you are a bad student. Keep calm, take a break and then carry on. Experiments that fail can still be written up as part of a successful PhD.&#8221; How true that things won&#8217;t go as planned. I&#8217;m experiencing this right now, in fact. The deadline for collecting survey data from my main informants, a class of 220 students, is in <strong>one hour<\/strong>! I&#8217;ll be following these students for the next 3 years, so they&#8217;re incredibly important to my research, but as of right now, only 65 have answered! \ud83d\ude41\u00a0 I was hoping for <em>at least<\/em> 150! I have a meeting with my supervisors tomorrow, and we&#8217;ll decide which changes now need to be made. I have no idea how to proceed from here. (Argh!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In addition to Taylor&#8217;s 20 tips for new PhD students, I have 3 more bits of advice that may also be useful:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Record all of your sessions with your supervisors. When you listen to the recordings later, even if it&#8217;s just later on the same day, you&#8217;ll realize how much you&#8217;ve forgotten, or just didn&#8217;t process then and there. This is SO useful, and if you have supervisors like mine, you may find yourself smiling throughout the entire recording.<\/li>\n<li>Strap yourself in, and get ready for the roller-coaster-ride of a lifetime! Ups and downs are the norm. On some days you&#8217;ll feel like giving up, but on other days you&#8217;ll feel on top of the world. If you hang in there, even on the worst of days, you&#8217;ll get through it! (So I&#8217;m told?) I&#8217;ve talked to people who have &#8220;wasted&#8221; over a year on experiments that didn&#8217;t work out and couldn&#8217;t be used, but they still completed their PhD&#8217;s.<\/li>\n<li>Realize that being a PhD-student is as difficult psychologically as it is intellectually. Stay positive and try not to worry about things that you have no control over. (That&#8217;s what Tove tells me, but not many are as positive as her. \ud83d\ude42 )<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-165 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/158\/2019\/09\/IMG_2420copy-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"158\" height=\"106\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/158\/2019\/09\/IMG_2420copy-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/158\/2019\/09\/IMG_2420copy-768x514.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/158\/2019\/09\/IMG_2420copy-1024x685.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 158px) 100vw, 158px\" \/>(photo taken today)<\/p>\n<p>So wish me luck with somehow collecting about 90 more survey responses in the next hour! I&#8217;ve tightened the straps just in case, and am prepared for the roller-coaster plunge of the year&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lucy A. Taylor, a recent PhD graduate from the University of Oxford, wrote an interesting career-column article in the Nov. 6, 2018 issue of Nature. With the title, &#8220;Twenty things I wish I\u2019d known when I started my PhD,&#8221; this article obviously appealed to me! (Thanks for the tip, Curt Rice!) Luckily it&#8217;s not loo &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/2019\/09\/15\/advice-from-a-former-phd-student\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Advice from a recent PhD graduate<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":260,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,3,4],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-curt-rice","tag-lucy-a-taylor","tag-tove-dahl"],"featured_image_src":"","featured_image_src_square":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Ellen Nierenberg","author_link":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/author\/ellen-nierenberg\/"},"rbea_author_info":{"display_name":"Ellen Nierenberg","author_link":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/author\/ellen-nierenberg\/"},"rbea_excerpt_info":"Lucy A. Taylor, a recent PhD graduate from the University of Oxford, wrote an interesting career-column article in the Nov. 6, 2018 issue of Nature. With the title, &#8220;Twenty things I wish I\u2019d known when I started my PhD,&#8221; this article obviously appealed to me! (Thanks for the tip, Curt Rice!) Luckily it&#8217;s not loo &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/2019\/09\/15\/advice-from-a-former-phd-student\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Advice from a recent PhD graduate<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a>","category_list":"<a href=\"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/category\/uncategorized\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Uncategorized<\/a>","comments_num":"1 comment","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/260"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":371,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogg.uit.no\/eni081\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}