what to do before starting phd

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CAREER COLUMN
06 November 2018

Twenty things I wish I’d known when I started my PhD

Lucy A. Taylor 0

Lucy A. Taylor earned her zoology PhD from the University of Oxford, UK. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at Save the Elephants in Nairobi, Kenya, and a visiting researcher in the Department of Zoology at Oxford.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Starting a PhD can be tough. Looking back, there are many things I wish I’d known at the beginning. Here, I have curated a list of advice from current PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from the Department of Zoology at my institution, the University of Oxford, UK, to aid new graduate students.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07332-x

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged. You can get in touch with the editor at [email protected].

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PhD FAQs – A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Doctoral Study

Tempted to do a PhD but have lots of questions? Hopefully this collection of popular PhD FAQs will help you to tick a few off the list!

Note – If you’re already sure that you want to do a PhD, and are looking for guidance on the applications process, check out my post on How to apply for a PhD which includes advice from successful PhD applicants. My post-PhD reflections on the things I regretted from my own PhD may be useful for you too, you can find that post here .

Let’s start with the absolute basics of PhDs!

What does PhD stand for?

PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy. Doctor of Philosophy ? No matter which subject area your PhD is in you’ll become a Doctor of Philosophy because philosophy derives from Greek to mean “Love of wisdom” which make a bit more sense.

What is a PhD?

A PhD is a type of research degree classified as a doctorate. You get a PhD by doing original research into a topic, typically for at least three years.

There are loads of other types of doctorate and a PhD is simply the most common. EngD is another which is relatively common for industry-funded engineering students here in the UK.

PhD & DPhil what’s the difference?

There is no real difference between a PhD and DPhil, they’re both Doctor of Philosophy qualifications. A small number of historic institutions in the UK such as Oxford and York offer DPhils but the degree itself is equivalent.

How common are PhDs amongst the population?

Approximately 1% of the working population (25-64 years old) have a PhD. This varies a lot by country:

Can you call yourself Doctor with a PhD?

Yes you can. Though to avoid confusion with medical doctors, rarely will PhD-holders use the “Dr” title outside of their workplace.

Sometimes PhD-holders will add the abbreviation PhD after their name if they want to make it clear they are a non-medical doctor, for example “Jeff Clark PhD”.

What have I done about my title since getting my PhD? Nothing so far!

Why do a PhD?

Unlike a lot of other degrees, most PhD students get paid to study . Read more in the finances section below.

There are lots of potential reasons to want to do a PhD. The PhD students from our monthly PhD Profiles series said the following:

Sara found research the most enjoyable part of her undergraduate degree and a PhD was a way to carry on with research.

Ornob wants to pursue a career in evolutionary biology so began with a PhD in the field.

Vivienne has aspirations to be a professor so a PhD is a job requirement to progress in academia.

Jeff (me!) had an interest in the field and enjoyed research. I wrote a whole post with a deep dive on why I decided to do a PhD here .

Floor had enjoyed research during her Masters and didn’t think that she wanted a career in industry, so decided to do a PhD.

It’s important to mention that you don’t need to have a desire to stay in academia to do a PhD. In fact, even if you do want to go into academia afterwards, it’s probably good to know early on just how competitive it can be. Many people sadly cannot make a career out of academia long term.

Enjoy the subject matter and want to spend a few years researching it? That is reason enough to do a PhD. I’ve also now written a whole post about the benefits of having a PhD .

Applying for a PhD

Do you need a masters degree to do a phd.

No you don’t necessarily need a Masters degree to do a PhD as long as you can demonstrate you’d be suitable for a PhD without it.

For a more in-depth answer see the separate post here :

Can You Get a PhD Without a Master’s?

If you don’t have a Masters, I’d recommend checking out Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) which offer combined Masters + PhD courses. We have discussed CDTs with a graduate in Floor’s post here .

What grades do you need to do a PhD?

Entry requirements for PhDs can vary. In regards to the UK system usually you’d generally be expected to have at least a 2:1 from your undergraduate degree, plus some research experience.

My experience : I (narrowly) got first class honours in my undergrad (MEng) which certainly does help. But if you can demonstrate aptitude in research you usually don’t need a 1:1. It would be expected for you to have done well in any research projects. If you can get your name on a publication then even better!

The easiest way to find out what is expected is to check the PhD advert for entry requirements. For details on applying for a PhD, including how to find PhD adverts, check out my guide here :

How to apply for a PhD

I work in industry, can I come back and do a PhD?

Absolutely! I worked for almost four years between finishing my first degree and starting my PhD.

A PhD is more similar to a job than any other point in your education, so if you’ve spent time in a structured role it can provide you with a good work ethic. If your time in industry adds relevant skills and experience to your application, even better!

I’ve met loads of people older than me who are pursuing PhDs. If it’s your dream, it’s never too late to start a PhD!

What is the social life of a PhD student like?

Let me get this out the way first: PhD students should be able to have a life outside of the lab! If a PhD student has no time away from research I would personally suggest that they were doing things wrong.

Even if you really enjoy your project, it is good for your mental health to have a social life!

No matter the size of your research group there are often departmental and university-wide events. Plus, besides everyone you may meet through your research and department, PhD students can still join societies and sports clubs through the students’ union. I spent one of my birthdays during my PhD on the beach in Morocco with the surf club, don’t let being a PhD student put your off getting involved!

Check out the full post I’ve written: Do PhD Students Have a Social Life? Sharing My Experiences Making Friends and Avoiding PhD Loneliness

If you do go on to do a PhD, make sure to make the most of all the opportunities ! Your time as a PhD student is fantastic for personal growth.

How much holiday do PhD students get?

Sadly unlike undergraduates, PhD students don’t follow fixed semesters. This means no more three month long summer holiday, sorry!

However most departments recommend PhD students take 7-8 weeks of holiday a year , which is more than practically any job outside of academia.

I kept track of all the time off I took during my PhD and you can find the details here , including a month by month breakdown:

Do PhD Students Get Holidays? Sharing How Much Annual Leave I Take

Getting a PhD

How much work is a phd.

For a month I tracked how many hours I was working and what I was working on, so you can see a breakdown of my calendar here . I found I was working for roughly 40 hours a week. Now that I’ve recently finished my PhD, I’d say that that amount of hours was pretty representative of the whole PhD.

How Much Work is a PhD?

I do of course know some people who worked much longer hours, but most PhD students were on a similar schedule to me. Working roughly 9-5 on weekdays. Treat it like a job and you’ll be fine. PhD students don’t need to be slaving away long hours.

I managed to be strict with my time, largely avoiding work late nights or going in at the weekends. One of the main perks of doing a PhD is that you have autonomy and can be flexible with when you work. As long as you get the work done, any reasonable supervisor won’t mind when you’re there.

Yes I’ve heard stories of PhD students having to clock in and out with an expectation that they spend a certain number of hours in the office. I personally think this is stupid and doesn’t build trust. Try to speak to current PhD students from the group when choosing a supervisor .

How is a PhD assessed?

What you submit at the end of your research varies between universities and countries. Sometimes it’s a thesis and other times it can be a bunch of published papers. In all situations you give some kind of presentation and answer questions about your work.

In the UK you usually submit a thesis in preparation for a viva voce . The viva is an oral exam where you discuss your research with several academics and at least one will be an expert in your field. My viva wasn’t as scary as I thought it might be, but nonetheless it was five hours ( FIVE HOURS! ) long. At the end of your viva you’ll get told the outcome of your PhD with any changes to be made to your thesis.

There is often no requirement , to publish your work in journals during a PhD in the UK but it does help.

In other countries you may have to publish a certain number to pass your PhD and effectively these can be submitted instead of the thesis. This approach makes much more sense to me.

How long does it take to get a PhD?

In the UK, typically between three and four years to complete your research and submit the thesis. It can then take a few months for the exam (viva voce) to take place and then for any corrections to the thesis to be made.

Nosey about my PhD? For me personally, I started the PhD on 1st October 2016, submitted my thesis on 17th February 2020, had the viva on 25th March, submitted my minor corrections on 30th March and had the email to say it was officiated on 1st April 2020. Yep, April Fool’s Day…

When you realise your degree certificate will forever say your PhD was awarded on April Fools Day! #academiclife @imperialcollege pic.twitter.com/hKsGFyuc0x — Jeff Clark (@savvy_scientist) April 14, 2020

We cover all the stages of a PhD here, including putting the length of a PhD in the perspective of a whole career:

How Long Does It Take To Get A PhD?

Are PhDs really difficult?

No, well not how you might think.

You don’t need to be a genius, but you do have to be smart with how you work. Here I go into how a PhD is pretty different to all the prior years spent in education:

How Hard is a PhD?

Check out my new post covering academic challenges and failures relating to my own PhD: Overcoming Academic Challenges and Failure During a PhD

Money-Related Questions

How much does a phd cost.

If you have funding, which is explained below, all your fees are paid for by the funding source. If you are looking to self-fund, then you’ll have to pay bench-fees/tuition fees, which are usually approximately £4,000 a year for home students in the UK.

Fees vary massively depending on both the country the PhD work takes place in and where you’re from. For example, I believe Australian universities charge around $100,000 in fees to overseas PhD students. Of course ideally you have funding which covers both this and pays a stipend!

Do PhD students pay taxes?

In the UK, PhD students do not pay income tax, national insurance, council tax and student loan repayments. This means that if you can secure funding, even though you may earn less than friends in typical jobs, you get to keep all your earnings!

Do PhD students get paid?

Most PhDs, at least in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) get a stipend: basically a tax-free salary.

How much do PhD students get paid?

At the time of writing, most PhD students in the UK get around £16,000 a year . Doesn’t sound like a lot, but:

As mentioned above, you don’t pay income tax, national insurance, council tax or make any student loan repayments. My most popular post is this one , comparing the income of PhD students vs grad jobs and the difference really isn’t that big. Plus it’s only for 3 to 3.5 years!
You’re getting paid to learn science, working on something you’re really interested in. It’s amazing.
You have a lot more freedom than practically any “proper job”.
You’re getting paid, to be a student…

PhD Salary UK: How Much Do PhD Students Get Paid?

In summary, PhD stipends are really not that different to grad starting salaries. Please don’t be put off from a PhD simply because for a few years you might be earning a bit less than if you were working in another job.

Depending on what you want to do with your career, having a CV may lead to higher salaries. What is 3 years of lower wages out of a 40+ year career? The answer: nothing!

Where do I find PhD funding?

Getting funding will likely be the biggest hurdle for you to secure a PhD. I have a post here detailing the different types of funding and how you can find a project with funding attached.

How to Find PhD Funding in the UK

Can you self-fund a PhD?

Yes you can self-fund a PhD, and some students are in a position to do so. Just be careful that you account for university fees and not just your living costs.

Are you allowed to have another job at the same time?

Most universities encourage you to get involved with work within your department as a graduate teaching assistant (GTA). Some countries even insist that you work a certain number of hours as part of a contract for your monthly stipend.

Working as a GTA you might be invigilating exams, helping in tutorials, marking coursework etc and at Imperial you usually earn around £15-£26 an hour.

If you’re looking to work a full time job in tandem with your PhD (and doing the PhD full time), it is best checking your university’s policy. Some may have regulations against you working over a certain number of hours which could impede you from concentrating on the PhD.

There are extra ways to make money on the side which I address here :

How to Earn Money Online for Students

Can you get a mortgage as a PhD student?

Since I did my PhD in London I didn’t even consider buying somewhere during my PhD. I’m not interested in being tied into a massive mortgage for 25 years to buy a shoebox!

If I’d accepted my PhD offer for a CDT at Leeds I certainly would have tried to buy somewhere with my partner. I found this page useful when doing research. Buying a property with a partner who has a normal job would definitely make the mortgage application a whole lot more successful.

Will a PhD help your career?

This depends on what you want to do with your career. Some example scenarios:

Staying in academia – a PhD is usually required
Certain technical jobs in industry – a PhD may be required or a big bonus
Non-technical jobs – a bonus

I do not imagine any scenarios where having a PhD is worse than not having one. It is true though that for certain careers there may be other things you could do which would be a better use of your time, for example gaining more direct work experience.

If you want to do a PhD that shouldn’t stop you though, and considering the length of your career taking a few years out for a PhD is inconsequential.

Whichever career path you fancy taking, if you are at all interested in doing a PhD I think you should at least apply.

PhDs in London

Can someone afford to live in london as a phd student.

Yes! I lived in London for my PhD and actually was able to save money every single month while taking many holidays and not living in a tent.

I have a few posts sharing my experiences living in London which you may find useful:

For a month last year I tracked all my expenses to get an idea of my costs living in London as a student, you can find it here .

Sharing my monthly living expenses as a student in London: September 2019

Related to reducing costs, I learned to cycle in London and loved it. It saved me about £100 a month too!

Learning to cycle in London: my first 1000 miles

On top of that, for the whole of 2019 (third year PhD) I tracked my money, and the report is here :

My personal finances report for 2019

Where is good to live in London?

I’ve lived in three different houses during my PhD in London and have a pretty good idea now of good places to live in London. You can read this whole post talking about living in London as a student and the associated costs including a breakdown of rent :

London student accommodation: Breaking down the cost of living in London for students

Bonus: Read the journeys of PhD students

Before I started my PhD I had a ton of questions and nobody who I could ask about their experience. The reality is that many of these PhD FAQs have a variety of answers as everyone’s PhD story is different. Therefore if you’d like to hear first hand from people who are going through the journey check out my series of PhD profiles , with a new profile every month. You can also discover some of their top tips for applying!

If you’d like personalised help with your PhD application I am now starting to offer a small number of one-to-one sessions. Please contact me to find out more or click here to book a call.

Is there anything else you’d like to know to help with a potential PhD application? Let me know and I’ll write about it! You can subscribe to stay up to date here:

PhD Salary UK: How Much Do PhD Students Get Paid Compared to Graduates?

5th February 2024 5th February 2024

The Benefits of Having a PhD

7th September 2022 30th January 2024

My top PhD regrets: 10 lessons learned by a PhD grad

21st April 2022 25th September 2023

Privacy Overview

Ecologist and environmental social scientist

Funders and Collaborators

Five tips for starting (and continuing) a PhD

On 4th September 2020

In Advice for other students

Lots of the specific stuff you learn as a PhD student, as well as general approaches to your work, begins with informal advice rather than formal training. I’ve received lots of advice from others during my PhD, since the very early stages of my project. This has helped me both build a PhD project that I’m happy with, and actually enjoy my life while I do my PhD (the two, of course, being closely but not entirely linked!). As it’s the start of the academic year I want to share a few of my own tips along those lines, to help get your PhD off to a good start, and keep it on a trajectory you’re happy with:

1. Keep notes on everything you read

My PhD, like many, kicked off with lots of reading of textbooks and academic papers. My reading has ebbed and flowed, but not really stopped, since then. Reading is a big thing during your PhD. It’s useful to keep track of what you’ve been reading because you won’t remember all of it, but you will want to come back to a lot of it.

My system for keeping notes on my reading is highly unsophisticated, but it works: I have (currently) three Word Documents, called Reading_[insert year here] stored on Dropbox so I can access them anywhere. I’ve got a separate one for each year of my PhD because 1) each document is a bit more manageable than one scary enormous one, and 2) I find it surprisingly easy to remember when-ish I was reading different stuff because my reading has gone through some quite distinct phases (e.g. more stuff relevant to study design early on, more stuff about analysis later) so it seemed like a reasonable and simple way to organise my notes.

The notes I make on what I read vary a lot: at my laziest, I just copy and paste the paper title, first author and abstract into the doc, and I’m done. If I’m feeling enthusiastic, I make more extensive notes on the paper and my thoughts on it, or copy specific sections that are especially interesting or relevant to my work. I make sure that each paper title or reference is formatted as a heading so that I can scan through the document easily, and create a contents page for each document. Now, if I want to find a specific paper or read publications on a particular theme, I can Ctrl+F to find key words in my Reading documents.

2. Read a couple of theses

I’m going to disagree with tip #2 in Five Tips for Starting Your PhD Out Right and say you don’t need to read them cover to cover – I don’t think this is necessary in the early stages in your project, unless you really want to do so, or if you feel that every chapter is highly relevant to your own PhD. But I do think it’s helpful to flick through and see different thesis structures (trends in how to structure a thesis evolve over time, and also vary by subject area, so look at recent graduates in your field for ideas of what’s likely to be appropriate for you).

Theses might also contain some specific content that you didn’t realise you’ll need to add to your own thesis (such as more detailed methodology than you usually see in a published paper) or useful references if the PhD is closely related to your own work. I think it works well to look through the theses of recent graduates in your research group, your supervisor, or others working on similar stuff to you. But you can also search for theses online, for example by using EThOS .

3. Start a Word document called “Thesis”

You can use other people’s theses (see previous tip) as a guide to add appropriate headings and subheadings to this document which will act as your own thesis structure / outline. Okay, I did this in third year, not first year, but I reckon it would have been helpful to start this earlier. Since I started this document, I’ve made good progress on actually organising my thoughts and even writing a few things down. And if you’ve got this document ready from early on in your project, you can populate it with notes and ideas whenever they occur to you at any point during your PhD.

Recently, I’ve been going through my Reading documents (remember tip #1) page by page and copying across notes from papers that I have read (and often forgotten about) into the appropriate sections of my Thesis document. It’s surprising how quickly my rough structure has been populated with ideas and material for literature review and synthesis, and how this has helped me link different ideas together i.e. stuff I read in first year and forgot about, with stuff I’ve been reading recently, with stuff that’s coming out of my own analysis. Actually, now that it’s getting quite full, I’ve split my Thesis doc up so that I’m just working with one document per empirical chapter. In first year, a simple thesis structure in a single document is a good place to start.

4. Think about how to make the flexibility of your PhD (and your control over it) work best for you

This one’s quite big-picture, and I’m kind of cheating the list-of-five by squeezing several tips into one. But I think that the general principle of this tip is important, and can be interpreted in different ways to suit different people: PhDs are often inherently flexible, in how you set your daily, weekly and monthly schedule, and I think that you should make the most of that.

The nature of your PhD flexibility and your control over it depend on the details of your project, how you’re going to be working with your supervisors and institution. But there are usually opportunities for flexibility, even if you have to be in the lab most days. PhD-life-flexibility can be exploited for your professional or personal development, to maximise your productivity, to create opportunities that are fun or useful now, or allow you to flex creative muscles you haven’t had the opportunity to flex before.

Below I list the kinds of things you can think about to best use the flexibility of your PhD. These are all things that can work alongside the core research / write / defend thesis requirements of your PhD, and while you definitely don’t have to make any firm plans on day one, I think that it’s really valuable to think about ideas like this (and any more you have) early in your project. It’s all about what you want to get out of your time whilst doing your PhD , including but not limited to the PhD itself, and how you want to structure that time:

How do you want to set your daily schedule, where do you want to work? What’s going to be most pleasant and productive for you, and fit in with your home life?
What things do you want to do outside of your PhD (sports, reading non-PhD-related books, joining local clubs and groups, always protecting weekends off) to actively maintain a healthy work-life balance (which is better for both your wellbeing, and the state of your thesis)?
Are there times when you’re going to be working extra hard (like fieldwork)? How do you want to balance that with rest and recuperation afterwards (an extended post-fieldwork holiday…?)?
Do you want to take an interruption from your PhD for an internship or job?
Do you want to practise writing by starting a blog or try a bit of science journalism ?
Do you want to get involved with science outreach?
Do you want to build a professional profile and network by making a website or getting on social media?
Do you want to teach undergraduates or Masters students?
What training courses would you like to do (and where do you find out about them)?
Do you want to try turning one or more of your chapters into academic papers?

5. Talk to people, lots, in both general and specific ways

Starting a PhD can be overwhelming, and knowing where to start, or where to go next, can be really tough. Having conversations with other PhD students about what they are working on, how they are finding their PhD, what kind of training they have received, might point you to interesting new research topics, training opportunities, or just give you a bit of a general feel for what it’s going to be like doing a PhD in your new department. These general conversations are important because they can provide you with nuggets of wisdom you didn’t know you needed and, crucially, help you feel connected to and supported by your colleagues and peers.

Asking your supervisor or others specific questions like are there any academics whose work you recommend I look into? / do you recommend any textbooks on [planning a research project], [planning fieldwork], [fundamentals of landscape ecology], [fundamentals of development research] [insert another topic you’re not sure about yet but want to learn about]? / are there any conferences I should look out for? can give you some useful starting points for directing your own learning in the early stages of your project. So, think specifically about what you need at the start of your PhD, and ask for help with it.

…And one bonus tip: read advice from other (ex-) PhD students

There are similar posts to this one with advice on starting your PhD here , and I particularly like the twenty top tips from Lucy Taylor here . There are actual full guides to PhD life like The A-Z of the PhD Trajectory and The Unwritten Rules of Ph.D. Research which can be very helpful to read through at any stage of your PhD (though I guess you maximise your use of them if you read them early!) and to use as reference books as and when you need them. There are lots of people blogging about their past and present PhD experiences, which can offer great advice and comfort at every stage in your PhD. Personally, I love the Thesis Whisperer and like to check in with it semi-regularly. Reading TW feels a bit like my tip #5: it’s about seeking out help and advice, sometimes when you didn’t even know you needed it.

Practical tips on how to be an interdisciplinary individual

It all depends.

Add Comment →

Doing an internship during your PhD – Ellie Wood

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10 (more) things you should know before starting a PhD

A while back, we asked some of our students to reflect on what they would like to have known before starting a PhD.

Their animated responses were boiled down into our essential listicle, 10 things you need to know before starting a PhD . Thousands of people have read it and, we hope, have been helped in their career journeys as a result.

But there were so many comments we couldn’t fit in, and plenty of new reflections that have arisen since. So, considering how important a decision it can be, we thought we’d give that article an update for 2023.

We spoke to our current students to find out some more of the things they think you should consider before embarking on this journey.

1. Choosing an institute or a university

Many PhD students don’t consider the differences between a supervisor who works at a research institute or one who works at a university. There are advantages and disadvantages to both….and it’s worth thinking about this, depending on what you want to do with your PhD.

A supervisor based at an institute will usually have more time available to focus on research, rather than teaching undergraduates, and hopefully they’ll be more available for you. This can be ideal if you’re looking to move into research yourself.

On the downside, it may be more difficult for you to get any teaching experience. If that’s important to you, be sure to ask questions about the teaching opportunities available.

Colleagues from the Patron Group gathered around a table during their weekly lab meetings.

PhDs at the Earlham Institute

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PhD life at the Earlham Institute: what our students say

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10 things you need to know before starting a PhD degree

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Six Things I wish I knew before starting a PhD

Our PhD students share six things they wish they’d known before they started their PhD, from taking advantage of every opportunity to knowing when to take a break.

In this blog post, we have put together six bits of advice that will help you make the most out of your experience, whether you are considering applying for a PhD, are about to start one or recently began your journey.

1. You won’t get these opportunities again… so put yourself out there

Make us e of all the resources that the university offers you . Whether that be going to a conference or participating in the social events that have been organised within your building - take it, because you won't get that opportunity again.

“ Your PhD isn't just about doing experiments, getting results and being in the lab. It's also about building on your own skills, personal development and opening up doorways for your future. So whenever you see an event or a challenge or a talk, something that looks interesting - make the most of it, grab onto it and it will help you develop in so many ways. ”

Phoebe, PhD Tissue Repair

2. You will wish you had taken better notes

Photo of a female student working on a laptop

A lways write your protocols as you go along, gather your results up nicely, make sure you're on top of it from the beginning and you'll make life a lot easier for yourself when it comes to writing up !

“Write down EVERYTHING. This refers to your daily notes such as lab book notes. At the time you’re going to think such minor details are not necessary or you will remember these things anyway, but when the perfect antibody you are using stops working all of a sudden, you’re going to need all the lot numbers. Writing down exactly what things didn’t work is often more important than what did as this can be very helpful in troubleshooting.”

Priya, PhD Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre

3. Really get to know your supervisor

Try to have a good open relationship with your supervisor, because they are w ho can really help you when times are tough, and they'll help you make the most of your PhD.

“ Build a strong relationship with them and tell them who you are. Make sure you get to know them well. Because your supervisors will not only advise you during your PhD time at the university but they will also guide you for the future - for your next step, in your jobs. So make sure you use those resources well. ”

4. You don’t need to be working 24/7

“You need to have other interests, hobbies and pursuits other than your PhD project. If a table has only one leg to stand on, it’s easy to get all wobbly once that leg becomes damaged.”

Theoklitos Amvrosiadis , PhD Precision Medicine

It is common for PhD students to feel guilty for not being sat at the desk the whole day but taking breaks is crucial to stay productive and motivated. Although it is important to work hard, it is just as important to go out and enjoy your time with others. Make sure you don’t isolate yourself and keep a strong support network of people around you that will keep you going through the adversities you will find along the way.

“ Because as international students, when we don't have anybody to go back home to it can be so easy to keep working for long hours in your office or in the library for instance. So make sure you have decent work hours in the day. Make sure you take breaks, make sure you go out and enjoy the beautiful city. So yes work hard within the lab but also try and get out of the lab. Make sure you get that social interaction with your friends . ”

Genevie, PhD Population Health Sciences

5. Sometimes things won’t go to plan… Learn to accept failure

"At the beginning of my second year, I experienced the worst imposter syndrome I had ever felt. I was tasked with setting up a pretty complex expe r iment and didn’t really know where to start. After many failed attempts I started panicking. “Maybe I just can’t do it” I thought as I pictured myself being kicked off my program.

A few weeks later, however, it was done. I learned a lot from that experience, mostly about 2-photon calcium imaging, but also about myself. I was the right person for the job not because of my expertise in imaging (which was non-existent!) but because I can be resourceful and creative.

But in reality, no matter how confident and skilled I am, sometimes experiments fail. Be it a mistake, an accident or a simple stroke of bad luck, it happens. And the only way to overcome a fear of failure is through exposure therapy. After a couple of rather spectacular failures, I have realized that there’s always a valuable lesson to learn from them. I won’t by any means say that I enjoy failing, but I can definitely say that for me, it is no longer the stuff of nightmares."

PhD students in the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine

Michelle, PhD Integrative Physiology

“It is easy for us – PhD students – to become attached to the outcome of our latest experiment, the submission of a manuscript or a funding proposal, or our academic career in general. We often forget that the outcome is something we cannot directly control.

There has to be a shift in focus from the goal (the paper, the grant), which relies on many factors outside of our influence, to the process (conducting experiments properly, reading and understanding the literature…) which is the only factors we can actually control.”

6. You will get there!

“Realise that no matter what happens, you will be ok. Didn’t get into your desired PhD programme? There are countless others, you will be accepted somewhere (speaking from personal experience). Did you fail your PhD? Life certainly does not end outside of academia and your personal worth is not tied to two letters before your name.”

All PhD students will experience many obstacles and crises in their journey, and this is okay. Stay motivated by accepting that whatever happens, it won’t be the end of the world. Struggling is normal and expected and y ou will finish your degree !

"When everything seems to go downhill, don’t lose hope. I just started to work on my project and it gets desperate at times. If you are feeling overwhelmed like I was (am), don’t let it out on your project, you’ll get there. You’ll fix it. You’ll get your results. You’ll have a thesis. Just give it time! And in the meantime, embrace the opportunity that you have in your hands. How many people could say that they were brave enough to do the same thing as you’re doing?"

Madalena, PhD Evolutionary Biology

Should I do a PhD? 4 things I wish I knew before starting my PhD

Editor’s Note: This post is by Alon Loeffler, co-founder of Find My Pathway, who is completing a PhD in Physics at The University of Sydney after an undergraduate degree and honours in Psychology .

So you’ve finally finished 3-5 years of an undergraduate degree . Maybe an honours year too. Perhaps you’ve even taken a year off to travel and find yourself.

What now? Should you take on another 3-5 years of study, and take on the daunting task of doing a PhD?

Here are 4 things I wish I knew before ultimately making the decision to pursue my PhD.

“A night out with PhD colleagues at a bar, you might meet the next Nobel prize winner”

1. A PhD will give you so much more than just a career pathway

During my first year as a PhD student, I learned a lot about my new field. Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence and Nanotechnology were not areas I had much experience in from a Psychology background. Pursuing a PhD in the school of Physics opened me up to a huge range of new topics, technologies and people, which I never would have been exposed to previously. Choosing to move cities from Melbourne to Sydney to undertake my studies also impacted my life drastically: a new house, new friends, and new experiences.

I learned more about myself in the past year than I did in the entirety of my undergraduate degree. Before my PhD, I never thought I could gain complex skills and adapt to a new discipline so quickly. I had to throw myself into uncomfortable, sometimes awkward social and professional situations. From all of this, I came out a better person – and much closer to the real me than I was before.

So many people I know opt to travel to find themselves, which is great. But for me, one year of a PhD did more than a lifetime of travel ever could (although travel is also a huge part of a PhD).

Pursuing a PhD will help you understand your limitations, both good and bad. You will learn how much better at learning new things you are than you believe, and you will face and overcome challenges that you didn’t even think possible. You will hone cutting-edge skills while meeting incredible people who have powerful, and deep-reaching connections.

At a night out with friends at a bar before your PhD, you might meet some fun, interesting people. But at a night out with PhD colleagues at a bar, you might meet the next Nobel prize winner .

How will a PhD help you in your career?

Visualise your career pathway and get personalised career guidance, opportunities and insights.

2. There are many different paths into a PhD

I’ve been asked many times about the requirements for pursuing a Doctorate degree. Are there qualifying exams for a PhD? Do you need to complete a masters degree to start a PhD? Can I do a PhD while working full time?

The answers to all of these questions will depend on which institution you apply to, and your personal circumstances. In Australia, there are no qualifying exams for PhD degrees. Having a masters degree might help you receive a scholarship for your PhD, but is not necessarily a requirement. Many Doctoral programs in Australia only require a year of honours as part of your undergraduate studies.

However, there are many exceptions to this as well. Most universities should allow you to start a Masters degree, and then switch to a PhD after one year. If you’re working full-time or part-time you can also pursue a PhD on a part-time basis, where the workload is much more manageable, but the duration of the program is increased. You might also be able to undertake an industry PhD program, where your company partners with a university to sponsor your doctoral candidature.

Interested in finding your pathway into a PhD? Take a look at the Pathways page and select your field.

3. What you plan to do is not always as great as what you accidentally do

Before you even start your PhD, you will be required to write plans about what your research will cover. Planning is a crucial component of completing a PhD within the time you are allocated. Without to-do lists, or general ideas about what you will be working, or search for during your doctorate, you will certainly be lost.

I use a really great note-taking and to-do list app called Typora which offers a markdown editor with support for LaTeX styling.

Plans and to-do lists will help you keep track of your goals and research. But things don’t always go according to plan. There will be times where you get sidetracked and go off on a reading tangent about topics that seem unrelated; or situations where an unexpected result might push your research in a completely unexpected way.

When these serendipitous events occur, don’t be afraid to chuck out your plans and follow the unexpected. Some of the most important inventions to date happened completely by accident, many times during research on a completely separate topic (Penicillin, microwave ovens and Cornflakes are a few examples of this).

However, abandoning all your plans and pursuing an entirely accidental discovery could also be very costly. Plans can and should be broken when it is important to do so, but new plans should take their place, and help shape the altered course of your research as soon as possible. Make sure you meet regularly with your supervisor to track and update your plans, so that when something accidental and lucky does happen, you will feel comfortable enough to test it without losing all your hard work.

4. Everyone feels like they are inadequate sometimes

Imposter syndrome – my old friend. Imposter syndrome is the niggling feeling in your mind that you just can’t seem to get rid of, like an itch at the back of your throat. It’s a sensation of dissatisfaction and inadequacy in everything you do.

Imposter syndrome can be the hardest part of a PhD.

Sometimes you try and read a research paper, or a book, and the words all seem to blur together, none of it sinking in. Other times you might accidentally delete important data, or have a conversation with another student or professor who seems to know so much more . You might feel like you will never be as good as that person, or that you are so far out of your depth and you’ve forgotten how to swim.

On the brighter side, imposter syndrome is incredibly common, and not just in PhD students, but even CEOs of major companies.

It took me over a year to realise this and come to terms with this feeling. I wish I had known to expect it before starting my PhD, and how to deal with it.

How do you deal with this feeling?

A lot of practice. Determination. Hard-word and self-kindness.

It doesn’t matter if your experiment didn’t work the first time, or if a guest speaker seems so much more knowledgeable than you. I guarantee two things: 1) They too have felt this way once, or still feel this way, and 2) You will one day be looked at by other people in the same light – an expert in your field.

Be kind to yourself. Believe in your process. Open up to your friends and supervisors regularly, and work to fix what you don’t like. If you do these things, imposter syndrome will become the easiest part of your PhD, and that means you’re in a really good place!

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PhD Stories

14 Things you need to know when starting a PhD

Posted by by Kristin The PhD
30. September 2019
7 minute read

You will never get it all right. Still, there are some things you should know when starting your PhD. This list will help you getting as much right as you possibly can. Welcome to the circus!

1. Doing a PhD is tough.

In many fields, doing a PhD will take you a long, long time – most likely anywhere between 3 and 7 years. In this time, you will accumulate a good few bathtubs of blood, sweat, and tears. Doing a PhD is a serious commitment. Check-in with yourself is you are ready for a rough adventure.

If you are, there are many great things ahead: Amazing people to meet, your own scientific discoveries, and a title at the end. Still, be prepared to spend a large portion of your time being frustrated, because nothing ever works as planned.

To get through your PhD, you will need to face a lot of bullshit and frustration. The good news: Once you are done, you will have nerves of steel and nothing in this world will be able to stop you any longer.

2. It’s normal to feel stupid.

All PhD candidates hear a voice inside of their heads telling them they are stupid, incompetent, and not worthy of their position. Some feel like they got their position out of sheer luck, and that they are only days away from everyone figuring out. Ironically, as a PhD student, it is normal to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Once this self-doubt starts raising its voice, it might never go silent again. That’s okay. So many academics are struggling with the feeling of not being smart, competent, and productive enough, that we even have a word for this: Impostor Syndrome. Welcome the voice in and choose to ignore it. Let your unwanted houseguest have a cup of coffee while you work at getting better.

3. Nobody expects you to be an expert on your first day.

As a rule of thumb, you are granted at least the first half year of your PhD to catch up. When starting a PhD, read up on with literature about your topic, understand your experimental/analytical methods, and fill in any other gaps you might find while starting out. Read papers, go to a conference, ask your colleagues and supervisors about everything that is unclear to you. If they see that you are making an effort, they will be patient and understanding. However, really DO use that time to get up to speed. After the first half year, you will be expected to know what you are doing.

4. You might be expected to work on weekends.

Some (though not all!) supervisors expect PhD students to work overtime, in some cases even during weekends. The best you can do to figure out if that would apply to you, is to talk to your colleagues before starting . What is their typical workday? Is weekend work required/expected/a personal choice? Make sure you know what to you are getting yourself into.

In most cases, you will not have to work crazy hours and weekends if your supervisors are content with your output. If long hours and/or weekend work is the norm in your lab, set clear boundaries for yourself. How long is it really okay for you to stay on a long day? How often can you really afford to come to work on a weekend? To be a good researcher, you will need time off the job to recharge, get inspired, and to keep connected to your friends and family. Taking time for yourself outside of work is not a sign of laziness – it’s a must to stay sane in this business.

5. You will go from prodigy to disgrace and back countless times.

When you start, you never screwed up an experiment, you never asked a weird question, and your professor will congratulate themselves for the great new hire. You’re the new Golden Student!

Enjoy it while it lasts. At some point – no matter how hard you try to please – your professor will be annoyed with you. Maybe you forgot to cite a paper, came late to a seminar, or were simply the first person they saw after receiving bad news. You are suddenly cut off your professor’s affection.

It’s going to hurt – but also, it’s going to pass. Things will go back to normal almost always on their own – with the next batch of results or the next department mood swing.

6. You are responsible for your own growth.

While your supervisor should be your mentor and guiding light, this may not always be the case, for many possible reasons. Do not expect your supervisor to seek out new opportunities for you. If they do – great! If they don’t, make sure that you always have your own back .

Look for university courses or graduate school workshops that teach skills you want to get better at. For specific problems, don’t be afraid to ask your colleagues. Find conferences that interest you. Convince your collaborators that it is time to write a paper.

Be prepared to be your own mentor for a large part of the way. This can be hard – learn more on how to own your growth in this article .

7. Write EVERYTHING down.

Empty notebook with blank pages, open, with pencil on top

When starting a PhD, also start a personal notebook in which you collect everything project-related, even if you don’t know what it means yet. From organisational to-dos, manuals of the new analytics software, to your personal ideas about the project and anything your professor mentions. This notebook will save your ass over and over again in the future.

8. Make your meetings count.

Meetings will be the backbone of your research. Whether it’s your supervisor stopping by the lab or strategy brainstorming with your professor, meetings will pave the way.

Especially in the beginning of your PhD, talking with your supervisors may be intimidating. You will not understand everything that is being said, and that’s okay. When it comes to meetings, make sure to:

Make notes.
Ask all of your questions.
Find out exactly what is expected of you.
Find out who can help you with these tasks.
Thank everyone for their time when the meeting is over.
Summarize all agreed points in an email to everyone involved.

The last point is crucial, because supervisors tend to have horrible memory. Write a recap email for every important meeting. Get the discussed milestones and strategies written down and shared. This will avoid misunderstandings and save you a lot of future headache.

9. Make the important people your friends.

Yes, your professor and supervisors are important. However, the really important people are the members of the non-scientific staff.

Secretaries, technicians, and librarians make the world go round in every university or institution. Still, their work is rarely appreciated. BE NICE TO THEM! Introduce yourself. Say hello when you see them. Smile. Say please and thank you.

From quick help with any technical problems to a secretary check-in about your professor’s mood – building a good relationship with the staff will make your PhD life much easier.

10. A community will help you through the toughest times.

We are human beings, and as such we have an obsession with feeling horrible about ourselves. For your PhD, the best remedy for this is to be an active part of a community. A good PhD community is a group of PhDs and/or Post-Docs that you feel safe with and that you admire. By talking with them, you will see that everyone has their pitfalls and learn how you can deal with your own.

Your community may simply be your colleagues at work. Other communities may be local PhD associations, Meetup groups, or research schools. Nothing in sight? Talk to PhD students that are working close-by and join their lunch breaks. Becoming a member of a supportive circle will help you get through the tougher times.

11. Outside friends are gold.

Make an effort to find and maintain friends outside of work. In frustrating times, these people will be your little islands of happiness – because they will be able to get your mind off your anxiety-inducing PhD project for a little while.

If you are new in town, join a sports class, a book club, or a brunch Meetup. Do whatever you enjoy that will get you to hang out with people outside of your work bubble.

12. There is mental help if you need it.

There will come a time in your PhD when things won’t go well. If this affects you psychologically, find support before you are too far down the hole to reach out.

Sit down today, as you have a clear head and are optimistic, and make a list of where you can get help if needed. Think of it as an emergency list. Who could you turn to if you are treated disrespectfully? If you are discriminated against? Where do you ask for help if you feel depressed, frustrated, or overwhelmed? Who is there if you are on the verge of burn-out?

For any of the above, there is somebody in charge at your institution that will hear you out in a private session. Possible allies could be the student union, PhD representatives, equal opportunities officers, and scientific counsellors. Many universities offer free psychological counselling. Make a list of names and email addresses now. Your future self will thank you.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you think about reaching out for help, stop thinking and simply go. Don’t wait to reach out until it’s too late.

13. You can always quit.

When bad comes to worse, quitting is an option.

This is not to say that you should leave your PhD at the slightest problem coming up. Keep struggling through your challenges, but always know that you are not trapped in this job. You have the option of leaving if you don’t want to go on. There is no shame in doing that. You are in control. Keep this in mind and it will be easier for you to deal with difficult situations.

14. Starting a PhD: A few practical musts.

Backup your data. Be honest to your supervisor. Express any scientific concerns. Always ask questions. Don’t be shy to ask for help. Have an organisation system. Take any chance to present and discuss your science.

And, most importantly: Allow yourself to make mistakes.

If you find this list helpful, share it with someone that is just starting out with their PhD.

What are things that you wish you would have known when you started your PhD? Which things surprised you most? What did you learn along the way? Let us know in the comments below!

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A Guide to Your First Week as A PhD Student

By Zebastian D.
November 23, 2019

A Guide to Your First Week as a PhD Student

It will typically take you at least three years to complete your PhD, which equates to 156 weeks! In this time you’ll have many ups, some downs and hopefully some fun too! Within the first few months, you’ll be getting your teeth into your project and your days will be filled with paper reading sessions, experiments, meetings with colleagues and collaborators and many more things. But how should you spend your first week as a PhD student? Here’s my guide to help you get started on your journey:

1. Make Your Workspace Your Own

Whilst your work environment will depend on your chosen university and research group, you will need to set up a comfortable workspace for yourself. This might be at a dedicated desk space alongside other students in the group or an office space at home. Either way, make sure you spend some time making your space a place where you want to work; find a comfortable chair that’s ergonomic and will be gentle on your back after hours of writing. A lamp with a soft light for focused work is a great tool as is a calendar for planning your days, weeks and months.

2. Get All the Forms Sorted

Before starting your PhD and in the early stages, you’re likely to receive many pieces of paperwork that need to be processed. These may range from ensuring the university has your correct bank details for making stipend payments, to getting your email address and university logins established. These have to be done so try to prioritise this paperwork in your first week.

3. Make Sure Your Access Cards Work

After registering with the university, you’ll receive your student ID card. Make sure that this card allows you access to all the buildings across the university that you will need to use, including the library and any labs you’ll be working in. Additionally, find out what the department’s rules are for building access out of normal office hours and ensure your card will work at these times. You’ll likely have some downtime during your first week as a PhD student, try to use this time to explore as much of your new working environment as possible.

4. Get to Know the Admin Staff

You’ll get to know your supervisor(s) very well over the course of your PhD but also make friends with the admin staff in your department. They’ll often be able to help you navigate the complex paperwork questions that will come your way and also how best to make use of the resources available to you as a student.

5. Start Reading Papers

You may still be waiting to have your first proper meeting with your supervisor(s), where you’ll discuss and craft the direction of your research project so you need to approach this meeting with some background knowledge fresh in your mind. A simple search on ResearchGate , Google Scholar or PubMed can help you find some relevant papers to read. It’s also a good idea to be familiar with your supervisor’s recent publications.

6. Meet Your Supervisor(s)

During your first week as a PhD student, it would be ideal to set up a meeting with your supervisor(s). Some supervisors prefer planned meetings scheduled in the diary regularly whilst others will leave it to you to reach out to them as and when needed. Early within your PhD you are unlikely to know their preference, which is even more of a reason to meet them during your first week so you can establish a clear means and frequency of communication.

7. Get to Know Others in Your Research Group

A PhD is a large body of independent work, but that doesn’t mean that you should spend three years in isolation! You’ll likely be surrounded by other students at various stages in their PhD journeys and it can be a substantial help to have colleagues to bounce ideas off of, or just to vent to! You’ll all be going through similar experiences – remind each other to enjoy life outside of research too!

Once you are ready to start your work, check out my tips for new PhD students to make sure you continue to use your time effectively and set yourself up for a successful programme.

Impostor Syndrome is a common phenomenon amongst PhD students, leading to self-doubt and fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. How can we overcome these feelings?

This post gives you the best questions to ask at a PhD interview, to help you work out if your potential supervisor and lab is a good fit for you.

The scope and delimitations of a thesis, dissertation or paper define the topic and boundaries of a research problem – learn how to form them.

Join thousands of other students and stay up to date with the latest PhD programmes, funding opportunities and advice.

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80 things I wish I knew when I was doing my PhD

Jun 8, 2020

things-I-wish-I-had-known-when-I-was-doing-my-PhD

There’s one thing that is often missing from guides and books written on how to do a PhD: the human dimension. Often they fail to fully appreciate the person behind the PhD, the person who struggles and worries and wonders what it is all about. This article is for you. In it, I draw on my experience as a PhD coach , thesis proofreader and academic to outline 80 things I wish I knew when I was doing my PhD .

A lot of this I had to work out the hard way, and I know from my conversations with PhD students that many of you struggle with the same issues. Often, the difference between unnecessary worry and successfully muddling through is having someone on your side who can tell you that what you’re feeling is normal and reassure you with good, practical advice that speaks to the core of you. That is the goal of this article.

Each of the eighty pieces of advice below refers to things that I only wish I was told earlier. Some may be common sense to you, whereas others may be eye-opening. You can read them in any order you wish and refer back to them for inspiration and motivation when you’re having a bad day. I encourage you to bookmark this page for that very reason. I also encourage you to share this post with your friends on social media. You can find shortcuts to do that at the bottom of the post.

However you approach these tips, know that you’re on a tough, relentless journey. You’re learning as you go and you won’t always get it right. Try to have faith in your abilities and be aware of your inner critic becoming too powerful. Most importantly of all, have fun.

1. You’re never going to please everyone

There will always be people who disagree with you. There will always be people who can find holes in your argument. There will always be people who think you’re doing things in the wrong way.

That’s the nature of academia. Indeed, this entire industry is built on people critiquing one another’s work. What this means is that, no matter how hard you try, there will always be things ‘wrong’ with your writing. Your literature review will always be incomplete, your theory framework will always annoy someone somewhere, your methods will no doubt be flawed, and your discussion could have been framed differently.

What’s important to remember is that perfection in this context is elusive. No matter how hard you try, someone will always find a problem.

But rather than feel defeated, see this as empowering. It means that you can stop striving for perfection and instead strive for ‘good enough’. Work in the way you think best – and ensure that way has the proper grounding in the literature – and be prepared to counter any criticisms should they come up in your supervision meetings or viva.

2. To succeed, you need to embrace failure

When you tell people you’re doing a PhD, they probably think that what’s required to complete one is a superhuman intellect.

But it’s not. The key attribute to succeeding isn’t brains or even creativity. You need them, for sure, but they’re not key.

No, the key attribute is being able to deal with failure. It’s being able to show up each day riddled by the plague of defeat and uncertainty and keep putting the hours in, even if you’re not sure you’re on the right track or that what you’re doing will lead anywhere. It’s failing over and over again and each time ending up more committed.

In your PhD you’ll fail at lots of things many times. The further you go through the journey the more you’ll fail and the higher the stakes will be. Those who make it to the end are those who can pick themselves up, learn from the hardship and carry on more determined than before.

Keep failing, keep messing up and keep making mistakes, but be kind to yourself while you do so.

Keep doing that and you’ll be a Doctor in no time.

3. You need to know when to move on

Your PhD is a performance with many acts. It’s important not to get stuck in one scene.

Writing a PhD isn’t a linear process, but I often treated it like it is. I often thought, ‘When I finish writing the literature review I can move on to the theory framework and only when I’ve written the theory can I move on to methods, and so on…’

The danger of working in this way is that you can get stuck. You can spend so long trying to make one chapter ‘perfect’ in the mistaken belief that you can’t progress until you have done so that you fail to progress in your thesis.

The PhD writing process isn’t linear. Parts of the literature review or theory framework chapters, for example, may only become clear to you when you’ve written your conclusion, but for as long as you treat it linearly, you cause an unnecessary headache.

What’s the solution? It’s easy: write as much as you can of a chapter or section before moving on, but if you find yourself struggling with a particular line of argument or to make something fit, leave it and come back it later once you’ve worked on other parts of the thesis.

You’ll likely find that everything becomes clear at a later stage when you’ve ironed out details in other chapters. Make the problem your secondary concern and move on to other parts of the thesis. You’ll find things just ‘click’ into place.

Draft chapters are just that: they’re drafts. Accept that a draft is unfinished and only needs to be ‘good enough’. Move on to another section and chapter and make a note to come back and revisit the sticking points at a later date. You’ll be amazed at how simple the problem seems when you do.

4. Be sceptical of boasters

There is no one quite like you. Your PhD isn’t like anyone else’s, you work in ways that suit your unique temperament and you have your own challenges to deal with.

This is part of the reason why you shouldn’t compare progress in your PhD (or life in general) with that of others. They’re different to you.

I say it’s part of the reason because there’s also something more sinister to consider. In this age of social media one-upmanship, your feed may be awash with those boasting of how easy they find their PhD, how great their experiments are going, or how they submitted early, got that prestigious job, had three papers published and raised kids.

Don’t believe any of it.

Whether deliberately or otherwise, people tend to avoid sharing their failures and setbacks. What looks like progress and success on the glossy social-media outside is likely cloaked in struggle, failure and personal challenges. The trouble is, those never get shared. Then, to the outside, their PhD looks far more straightforward than yours could ever hope to be. The result? Anxiety and worry about not being ‘good enough’.

Your challenges and struggles are real, valid and understandable. Don’t focus on what others are doing. Question whether their boasts are true, and look inward at your own progress. Understand that social media has the power to misrepresent reality and that it isn’t a good means through which to assess your own capabilities.

Then you can keep doing things your way, irrespective of others.

5. Recognise your own brilliance

We often give ourselves too little credit for all the good we do. We often spend so much time looking forward – to where we’re heading or think we ought to go – that we forget to look back and take stock of how much progress we’ve already made. We often get so wrapped up in our perfectionism that we fail to acknowledge everything that is working or everything that is perfect about our imperfections.

We spend so much time surrounded by intellectual and professional over-achievers that we convince ourselves we’re not ‘good enough’ or haven’t got what it takes.

And over time we’ve learnt to talk to ourselves in a negative tone that we would never dream of using with a friend or loved one.

Spend a moment right now reminding yourself that life is not about how inventive or creative you are, but about noticing what you’re already a part of. Reflect on the incredible journey you’re on and on all of your positive attributes. If you struggle to think of any, think harder – they’re there, I promise you.

A PhD is a cruel, unforgiving exercise. Don’t let it colour your worldview such that you stop noticing the incredible gifts you have and the incredible trajectory you are on.

6. Really think about what it is you are trying to say

If you struggle to find the thread in your chapters or your thesis as a whole, here’s some advice: think hard about the key argument you are trying to make in each chapter/the thesis. Then, don’t over-complicate things.

Broadly speaking, the term thesis itself means ‘a statement or theory that is put forward as a premise to be maintained or proved’, so it stands to reason that your PhD thesis as a whole exists to elaborate upon one or a small number of central points. Its job is to make the case for something, whether a new theory, new insight and new methods.

Looking at individual chapters, they all have a specific job to do: the methods is there to show how you conducted your study, your theory framework is there to show the hypotheses/concepts that informed it, and so on.

In other words, in each chapter, there will be a central, core argument or point you want to get across (e.g. the lit review: there’s a gap in the literature; the methods: this is what the study looked like, and so on). Sure, you’ll have lots of smaller arguments that you’ll be developing in each chapter, but they’ll all be nested in a key, central argument.

So when you next struggle to find the thread in your writing, sit and think: what one key point am I trying to make in this chapter?

Once you answer that question, you can structure the rest of the chapter around developing and backing up that point.

Your PhD Thesis. On one page.

7. know that you’ll get there eventually.

It may not feel like it sometimes, but one day you’ll be done with your PhD and it will all be worth it.

All the hard work, the uncertainty, the perseverance, the never quite knowing. It’ll all come to fruition and you’ll look back on it all in years to come with a sense of wonder and awe.

This is true regardless of whether you complete your PhD or whether you decide to leave it in pursuit of other endeavours. All we can do in life is try our best and do so with the best intentions and best information we have available at the time.

If we do that, then whatever happens in weeks, months and years to come is the natural course of things, and you can look back at your former self and think: “I tried my best”. With that attitude, everything will be worth it because you’ll end up exactly where you need to be.

Failure is a horrible word and comes in varying degrees. We may succeed in our PhDs, but we may fail to do so in the way we had hoped. We may fail our PhDs entirely. We may fail to live up to any number of the expectations and demands we place upon ourselves, even when we are, to outsiders, very much succeeding.

But whatever your failure remember that it is often through defeat that the greatest accomplishment stems. It’s when you’re tested and when you’re forced to retreat that the real magic happens, even if it may not feel like it at the time.

8. You can be both dedicated and struggling

You can be passionate about your PhD and dedicated to your research but still struggle with productivity and struggle to stay motivated. You’ll have days where you procrastinate or where you question the path you’re on, but that doesn’t mean your passion or dedication has disappeared. It’s just harder to access, that’s all.

Struggle is a part of life, not least during a PhD. It comes and goes like waves on the surface of the sea. But underneath the waves, the sea remains more steady.

Your passion and dedication are steady in the same way. Like the waves, your procrastination and struggles will pass in time, creating space for calmer and more focused moments.

Be patient and…

9. Keep steady on your path

During your PhD, you’ll have days where nothing seems to make sense.

You may question why you’re doing your PhD at all, or you may look towards the future with anxiety and doubt as you wonder whether you’ll ever be ‘good enough’ or whether you’ll ever ‘make it’.

It’s on days like these that you may begin to think about dropping out.

On these days, lean into your discomfort and have faith that you’re exactly where you need to be and doing exactly what you need to do. Remind yourself that, although your anxious mind is fearful of the future, you’re on the right path. Having that faith in your direction can help you to keep on going in spite of the doubt and anxiety.

Keep muddling through even when you don’t want to, but do so knowing that in calmer, less anxious times you put yourself on this path with all the best intentions. Have faith that those intentions will get you where you need to go.

Keep your head down, keep turning up and you’ll eventually see sunnier days.

10. Some things are worth fighting for

Underpinning every PhD (and PhD student) is a personal struggle. Something worth fighting for.

On the cold, dark days where nothing seems to be going right or you can’t escape the PhD-blues, it is helpful to remind yourself what this fight is, and of why you’re here and why you decided to start your PhD in the first place.

You see, you may not like to admit it, but every PhD student is fighting for something, whether that’s to prove something to yourself, to placate the perfectionist in you, to make your parents proud or to show everyone who ever told you that you can’t (that last one was my fight).

Whatever it is, reflecting back on this bigger cause can give you the little boost you need when you’re about to jack it all in.

It can show you that the PhD is worth fighting for, no matter how tough things get.

11. It’s okay to take days off

It’s okay to take days off.

It’s okay not to be productive every day.

Having less productive days doesn’t mean you’re failing or that you won’t succeed.

Learn to embrace unproductive days as a necessary part of the PhD journey. We all have ups and downs and we must learn to both recognise them and work around them. Don’t try to fight yourself when you’re unmotivated; be kind and self-soothing instead. The world will keep on spinning if you stop writing for a day.

12. There’s more than one way to write a PhD

It’s hard not to compare yourself to others. We do it all the time, often with disastrous results.

Never is that more true than during your PhD. We all know that PhDs are lonely, frustrating places, but it is precisely because of that hostile environment that we seek solace in comparing our progress to that of others. It’s a way of seeking out reassurance and finding out whether we’re doing our PhDs in the ‘right’ way or whether we’re as far along in the PhD journey as we’re ‘supposed to be’.

But each PhD is unique. Beyond the obvious differences in discipline and subject material, there is a unique personal story behind every PhD and within every PhD student. You are doing a PhD for different reasons than others in your department, and you’re facing different circumstances and challenges. What’s more, you work in different ways, have different priorities and may wish to take a different route to achieve the same goal and reach the same destination.

So all these differences – in subject material, personal motivations and challenges, and ways of working – all mean that there is no one ‘right’ way to do a PhD. Everyone is going to be working in their own unique way.

This means that comparing your progress to that of other PhD students is futile. You’re unique, and so is your particular PhD journey. You may be at a different stage of the journey to a colleague, but that doesn’t mean you’re doing it ‘wrong’. Learn to have faith in your workflow and recognise that as long as you do your best and work in a way that is true to your motivations and personality, you’re doing everything just the way you’re supposed to.

13. Should is a dangerous word

What ‘should’ you be doing, feeling, thinking of achieving right now?

The short answer is nothing.

The more realistic, longer answer is that your mind is probably awash with ‘shoulds’. You may feel like you ‘should’ be further along in your thesis, or you ‘should’ be more esteemed, richer, more loved, or myriad other things that we convince ourselves we need for a full and complete life.

Let’s take the PhD journey as an example. You may feel like you should have a better study, or better data, or that you should be as successful as your non-PhD friends. You should be writing, you should be procrastinating less, you should be better. Should, should, should….

We can become attached to what we should be doing. So much so that we are never satisfied with what we have.

That’s because this notion of what we should be doing, thinking, feeling, and so on, is an illusion. Everyone’s sense of should differs, as it is a product of their internal wiring, upbringing, life experience and environment. Put somewhat simply, depending on where and how you grew up, you will have a particular brand of should.

By becoming attached to this notion of ‘should’, we limit our ability to enjoy what’s happening right now. Practice letting go of this attachment. This is hard, and something that requires practice, but it essentially revolves around the idea of noticing when your mind is convincing you of what you should be doing or feeling and focusing the mind instead on the present moment, on your current reality.

The more you do this, the more you’ll realise that you’re attached to illusions about an imaginary future and the more you’ll start to realise all the wonderful, beautiful things you’ve got going on right now.

14. Don’t become attached

If you were to describe what it’s like living with your brain, you’ll probably describe a scene with an internal dialogue, perhaps an internal critic, and a seemingly never-ending stream of emotions, worries, thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears and anxieties.

This inner-working is part of being human, but often PhD students find that the negative dimensions of their mind – the inner critic, the self-doubt, the fear of failure, the perfectionism – dominate proceedings.

It can feel like a real burden. A struggle even, as you navigate your PhD carrying the weight of internal mental struggle.

Spend a moment now to pause. Breathe in deeply and think – really think – about how you are feeling in this moment. What’s on your mind? Are you worried about anything? Is that worry serving you or are you serving it? Can you drop the worry and focus instead more mindfully on the present moment?

15. What’s your inner-voice saying?

I bet you’ve got really good at convincing yourself you’re an imposter/not good enough/going to get found out/a terrible writer/and so on?

Well, that’s your inner voice doing its best to undermine your capabilities.

For some, their inner voice is on their side and sings in harmony. For others, the inner voice can take over and start to rule their life. It can get really good at convincing you you’re not up to the job of completing your PhD.

Stop all activity for a moment. Be still. Notice what your inner voice is saying. Do you hear anything? Is it telling you you should be writing? Is it worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow, next week, next year? Listen carefully.

Check in regularly with yourself and ask yourself what that inner voice is telling you. Listen for your self-critical inner voice that tells you that you are inferior to anyone else. Listen for your inner judgments; listen to your inner voice of defeat that tells you that you are incapable of succeeding.

Gaining awareness of what that voice is saying is revolutionary.

16. Know it’s okay to fail

You’re going to fail over and over again.

You’ll get things wrong, you’ll say the wrong thing, you’ll act against good judgement, and you’ll behave in ways that you’ll be ashamed of.

That’s just all part of being human.

Instead of seeking and craving perfection (and then being disappointed when you don’t achieve it), learn to embrace your fallibility. Try your best not to fail, but expect to do so from time to time and be kind to yourself when you actually do.

If that seems like a terrifying prospect, then consider this. Think back to a time in your life when you actually did fail. Picture it vividly, recalling how you may have felt immediately afterwards. Now ask yourself what you learnt from that mistake and what positives it may have had in the longer run. When seen in this way, failures don’t seem as terrifying as they first did and oftentimes are an opportunity for growth.

When you next fail at something – however big or small – remind yourself that to do so is to be human and that it is through our failures that we learn, grow and develop.

17. Understand that you can’t control everything

This is a useful time to remind yourself of the distinction between things you can control and things you can’t. All through life, there are things you can’t control – the job market, university bureaucracy, and so on, but there have also been things you can control.

There is little point worrying about all the things outside of your control.

Keep focusing on what you can control. Try to put everything outside of your control to one side.

18. Enthusiasm can make up for inexperience

There will always be things you don’t know and as you first set out on the PhD journey you’ll suffer from a lack of experience and expertise.

But the more enthusiastic you are, the easier it will be to navigate this inexperience. Remain enthusiastic in your reading and learning. If you don’t know something, find someone who does and ask them. If you’re confused, tell someone. Keep an eye out for opportunities to polish your research skills and sign up for them when they come along. Say yes to new responsibilities where possible and never let your inner critic tell you you’re not good/smart/competent enough.

What you lack in experience you can more than make up for in enthusiasm.

19. Realise that nobody really knows what they’re doing

Next time you wonder whether you’ve got what it takes to finish your PhD, or you think that you’re an imposter that’s about to get found out as a bumbling idiot, remember that no one else really knows what they’re doing.

There’s an all too prevalent assumption that as adults we should have everything worked out and that we should know exactly what we’re doing and where we’re heading. But no one really does. At best, we’re making it up as we go along (particularly if we’re at the start of our studies/careers) whilst bumbling from one decision to the next. All the while, we’re hoping we don’t mess up.

Over time, as you bumble from decision to decision in your PhD, you’ll start to realise that this muddling through approach works well. You’ll stop assuming that you should know it all or be good at it all. You’ll stop trying for perfection and start accepting that you’ll make mistakes.

You’ll start to settle for uncertainty. And you’ll start to be satisfied with good enough.

So bumble away and make it up as you go along. That’s how all this works.

20. You’ve got to fall over occasionally

If you’re not falling over and stumbling from time to time it means you’re just coasting.

It’s when you push yourself, go outside your comfort zone or try something new that you make mistakes and stumble. That’s no bad thing. It’s part of the learning process, and the very fact you’re making mistakes is a sign of progress and a sign that you’re pushing the limits of your capabilities. It is at this stage that you grow.

So next time you struggle with something in your PhD or you find a new part of the PhD journey hard, remind yourself that you wouldn’t have made any mistakes at all if you were just coasting through. Instead, you’re pushing yourself and you’re growing as a result. Your mistakes are a testament to that. Embrace them.

Hello, Doctor…

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21. Separate creation from improvement

We’ve all had moments where we can’t seem to write enough and, as we put words on the page, we label them terrible, delete them and end up back where we started.

This to-and-fro of writing and editing is a serious impediment to productivity. You can’t do both at the same time, as they are two distinct activities that require different skills. If you try to write and edit concurrently, you’ll do both ineffectively.

A far more effective way to overcome writing hurdles is to separate the process of writing and editing.

So while you write that first draft, do so free of judgement. Just focus on getting words on the page. Only once you have a draft in front of you do you go back and start judging and editing.

Freeing these two tasks will mean one thing: you’ll write more words, more quickly and more competently.

22. Don’t be so damn hard on yourself!

PhDs never, ever, ever go to plan. You’ll make mistakes all the time. You’ll realise six months down the road that you messed something up, or went down the wrong path.

But don’t be so harsh on yourself.

You’re human, and humans make mistakes.

Show yourself loving-kindness, and see the mistakes as part of your ongoing development as a scholar and PhD student.

23. You’ll have to navigate Shit Valley

At some stage, every PhD student ends up in Shit Valley.

You normally find yourself here around halfway through the PhD journey. You’ll know you’ve arrived when everything you can see around you looks like it’s covered in shit.

You’re knee-deep in the data, you still don’t really know what’s going on and your levels of self-doubt are sky-high. In front of you is a mountain of hard work – also covered in shit, incidentally – and behind you is a wake of unproductive drafts, wasted time and lots and lots of confusion. Nothing in your day to day life gives you joy any more and there doesn’t seem to be a way out, no matter how hard you look. Because you’re halfway through your thesis when you get to Shit Valley, you’re about as far away from an exit point as you can be.

Shit Valley isn’t a nice place to be and nothing anyone tells you will make it any easier. It’s shit after all. Your workload is immense, you’re still figuring out what goes where, and you’ve got no motivation to do any of it.

But do it you must, because the only way out is to keep on journeying though. Have faith that you will – eventually – get out of the valley and that, when you do, your workload will be more manageable, you’ll start to know what you’re doing, you’ll have more motivation and you’ll wonder what all the fuss was about.

Keep ploughing on through, try not to look at all the shit around you and know that one day you’ll find the exit.

24. Settle for good enough

Perfectionism is hard work.

It makes life challenging because no matter how hard you try or how well you do, it’s never good enough.

If you’re a perfectionist, you’ll recognise the guilt, anxiety and stress that can accompany everyday life, particularly when things aren’t going to plan.

You may feel that you have to meet every deadline, exercise as much as you do normally, eat healthily and be as productive as you are in normal life.

But the pressure is self-imposed and doesn’t reflect reality. There’s no such thing as perfect, and by striving for it you’re working towards something that is unattainable. If you keep doing that, you’ll never be satisfied and will always be stressed.

That’s why this is a perfect time to embrace being satisfied with ‘good enough’. Cut yourself some slack, stop expecting so much from yourself and recognise that to be human is to make mistakes.

You won’t always be productive, you won’t always eat healthily and you won’t meet every deadline. And that’s good enough.

25. Work with tiny texts

One of the biggest challenges you’ll face when writing your thesis is staying on message and making sure that your writing is punchy, coherent and flows logically.

When you’re writing such long chapters it’s easy to get lost in the detail and go on tangents. What started out with good intentions may end up going astray as you veer off message and your argument gets diluted.

A really effective way of avoiding this is to write a short introductory paragraph that summarises the key points and arguments that the rest of the text will develop. Someone should be able to understand broadly what your chapter is about just from reading one of these introductory statements.

They don’t have to be long. Typically they only need to include two or three sentences. Their job is to summarise the argument and present the top level, headline detail. ‘This chapter will argue….’ or ‘The purpose of this chapter is to…’, and so on.

They have a number of benefits.

First, they force you to stop and think about what exactly you’re arguing. By stripping away all the bloat and being confined to just a couple of sentences, you’re forced to crystallise your thinking.

Second, they make the reader’s life easier by priming them for what is about to come. With these introductory statements, you’ve told them what the point of the chapter is in the first paragraph. Because they know where you’re heading, they can more easily follow along as you get there.

Third, they help you structure the rest of the text because they serve as super-condensed chapter outlines.

So next time you find yourself struggling to get your point across, try and write this kind of two or three sentence summary. You’ll be surprised by the effect it has.

26. Learn whether or not you’re a perfectionist

Most of the PhD students I talk to are perfectionists. Are you?

With perfectionism comes a desire to have control over day-to-day life, knowledge of what’s going to happen in the short term, and the certainty that the PhD thesis will be, well, perfect.

But your day to day life can easily become disrupted, as happened with coronavirus. Suddenly, you’ve got no way of knowing what will happen in the short or long term, and you may worry that your thesis will be sub-optimal as you step away from fieldwork, labs and supervisors.

The perfectionist in you is panicking, right?

Perfectionism is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can fill you with drive, passion, dedication and motivation. It can inspire you to try your hardest and do your best. It’s likely what got you on to your PhD programme in the first place.

But at the same time, it has a dark side. For as much as it can inspire, it can lead to panic. Anxiety, worry and dread often follow in the footsteps of perfectionism, such that when you lose control over your reality, or when you get things wrong, make mistakes or produce something sub-optimal, you panic. What starts off as a simple mistake can quickly become the end of the world.

Part of the challenge of doing a PhD is learning to embrace imperfection and recognising that sub-optimal does not necessarily mean failure. Managing perfectionism involves reminding yourself that you’re only human and that humans face stresses, make mistakes and sometimes struggle to produce their best work. Even the brightest and most competent of people have off days.

The more you can remind yourself of that, the better equipped you’ll be to deal with what life throws at you and your thesis.

27. Remember that PhDs are meant to be hard

Less than 2% of the population has a PhD. That’s because they’re hard.

But pause to reflect on why they’re hard.

You’re adding to a field. You’re creating new knowledge and pushing the boundaries of what we know. That’s never easy.

Anyone can learn what other people have already discovered. Anyone can regurgitate information. That’s easy.

What isn’t easy is bringing new knowledge into the world.

What’s even harder is doing it in this current time of crisis, facing considerable adversity.

You’re smarter, more capable and more gifted than you may give yourself credit for. Keep showing up, cut yourself some slack and remind yourself how capable you really are.

28. See worrying for what it is: pointless

Our brains have a negativity bias built into them that’s hard to control at the best of times.

Sometimes, it seems that the only thing we can do is worry.

But worrying can be like sitting in a rocking chair; it can give you something to do, but it doesn’t really get you anywhere.

29. Appreciate that there are no stupid questions

I get a lot of emails every day from people looking for advice on structuring or writing their PhD.

And often they’re accompanied by the same statement: ‘I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but…’

But there is no such thing as a stupid question.

If you don’t know the answer to something and you ask someone that does, that makes it a valid question. If someone tells you you’ve asked a stupid question that’s their problem, not yours.

So next time you’re scratching your head wondering what goes where in your PhD, don’t be afraid to ask people more knowledgable than you. That might be your supervisor, a colleague or me.

30. Show yourself some compassion

One of the best skills you can learn during your PhD is how to be more loving to yourself.

Self-love is the art of showing yourself the same kind of love and support you show to friends, partners and families. It means being a friend to yourself and doing things that nurture and strengthen you.

This might be something as simple as treating yourself to a slice of cake to celebrate a good day, or developing a workout routine to improve your physical and mental health.

Whatever it looks like, over time you’ll build up greater resilience to handle what the PhD has to throw at you.

But another useful – and related – skill is to develop self-compassion. Self-compassion is the art of going easy on yourself and not giving yourself such a hard time when things don’t go to plan. It involves you being kinder to yourself when you get things wrong, reminding yourself that you’re trying your hardest and that you’re only human.

If you can nail these two skills, you’ll be much better prepared not just to navigate your PhD, but to handle the stresses and strains of life more generally.

31. Be a friend

We all feel lonely from time to time, but you may find that as you get further into your PhD your feelings of loneliness increase.

Whilst difficult, it’s normal. It’s you that has to carry around the weight and anxiety that accompany your PhD, and it’s you who has to constantly find a way over what seem like insurmountable hurdles, problems and sticking points. Coupled with that, you often have to spend long hours working alone.

As loneliness starts to creep in, we can instinctively expect other people to reach out to us, message us, invite us to things and be there for us. When they don’t, we feel even more lonely.

But instead of waiting, be proactive. Be a friend to others. Initiate the messages, send the invites and organise the events. Be there for those around you who may be dealing with struggles of their own.

Not only will you feel more connected, but you’ll be a good friend to others.

if you want more advice on PhD loneliness, you can read a new guide I’ve written by clicking here .

32. The iceberg illusion

It’s easy to compare yourself to others. It’s easy to look at your PhD colleagues and wonder why you aren’t as competent, far advanced or as confident as they are.

I’ve talked before about the dangers of comparing your insides to other people’s outside, but I want to expand on that.

The reason it’s so fruitless if because of the iceberg illusion. With an iceberg, what you see above the surface of the water is only a fraction of the total mass. Beneath the surface is a far greater volume, but it’s hidden from view.

And in life, people’s successes and achievements are only the things people see above the surface. What other people don’t see is what lies beneath the surface. You don’t see their persistence, failures, disappointments, hard work, good habits and dedication.

In other words, people might look great on the outside, but you don’t see all the effort, hard work and failings that go on behind the scenes.

Bear that in mind next time you find yourself comparing yourself to others.

33. Prioritise your workflow

We often spend too much time worrying about and focusing on the trivial things and not enough time on focusing on the important things.

When you approach your PhD in day-to-day life, it helps to spend a few minutes at the beginning of the day looking at your to-do list (or making one, if you haven’t already) and asking yourself what things on it are important and urgent, not important and not urgent, or just plain trivial.

In other words, work out the things on your list that you absolutely have to focus on and the things on there that can either be forgotten about entirely (because they’re trivial) or can wait for another day (because they’re not urgent or important).

Working in this way gives you some wiggle room if you don’t manage to get things done because it shows you what you can quickly cull from today’s list. Importantly though, you make sure that the most important and urgent things get done first.

34. Focus on the bigger picture

You wake up, you’re late, you miss your bus and before you know it you’ve got to your desk and it’s nearly lunchtime. You think to yourself ‘today’s such a bad day’. You then start to stress about the amount of work you’ve missed, how behind you’re going to be, and how late you will have to stay to catch up.

You feel bad about the impact this will have on your performance and progress.

But it’s just one day.

In your life and your PhD, you may tend to judge your performance on a micro level and be constantly gauging whether you’re doing well or badly, or doing the right or wrong thing.

But it often helps to take a look at the bigger picture and to reflect on your performance over a longer time frame. Perhaps you could do this by tracking your weekly progress or even setting monthly targets and goals.

Assessing yourself daily is a false economy because part of being human and part of being a PhD student is having up and down days. Our circumstances, mood, health, energy, motivation and drive all fluctuate day by day. If we track our mood on this micro level, we can be overly critical of ourselves when we aren’t so productive.

By focusing on the macro perspective, you can accommodate the bad days and accept them as part of the natural progress of a PhD.

35. Remember that there is always a silver lining

You’re going to have dark days. You’re probably going to have a few dark weeks. And you may even have the odd dark month.

Whichever state you find yourself in, there will always be a positive or two upon which to focus. There’s always something that is going right or making you feel good, no matter how bleak the outlook is otherwise.

The trick – and this is one that gets easier as you progress through your PhD – is to be mindful enough that you can spot those few glimmers of positivity and focus on them more than you focus on the negative.

The more you can hone that skill, the easier it will be to deal with the dark times.

36. You’re probably to blame

When things go wrong with our PhDs, we can often try to look outside of ourselves to find someone to blame.

If we get negative feedback during a supervision, we can blame the supervisor for not reading our work properly or failing to understand what we are saying.

Or, if we miss a deadline or feel overwhelmed, we can blame outsiders for excessive workloads.

While other people may have played a role in whatever misfortune you find yourself experiencing, often we also forget to look at the role we have played. We spend so long looking for fault in others we forget to ask ourselves what we could have done differently.

Doing so not only allows you to more realistically work out what went wrong, but it also allows you to see what you can learn and how you can behave differently in the future.

37. When you write, ask yourself ‘so what?’

I read a lot of PhDs and I coach a lot of PhD students.

When I do, I find myself asking one question over and over again: ‘so what?’

When you are writing about, say, particular design decisions, or a specific theoretical concept, ask yourself ‘so what?’

That way, you go beyond merely discussing a particular phenomenon, method, or whatever, and instead tell the reader why such a discussion is important and why it is relevant in the context of your thesis.

That’s because, in your thesis, everything should be rooted in your research questions, research aims and research objectives. By asking ‘so what’ you are showing what those roots look like and, in doing so, being explicit about why a particular discussion is worth having and telling the reader why they should care you are having it.

For example, if you are talking about a particular method, by asking ‘so what’ you tell the reader why that method is appropriate given your questions/aims/objectives, what benefits or drawbacks it will bring, and how it will bolster your study.

If you fail to ask ‘so what’, you’re just describing a method and the reader is left wondering – you guessed it – ‘so what’?

38. Build self-care into your PhD journey

Self-care can be transformative.

It’s the product of an inwardness, a self-aware attitude to your day to day life, in which you recognise what’s not good for you and introduce things that are.

It may be as simple as starting a gratitude journal, taking ten minutes each day to meditate, allocating time away from screens, or connecting with a loved one.

Or, it may be more drastic. It may involve distancing yourself from toxic people in your life, avoiding food or drink binges, or perhaps – most drastically – changing PhD supervisors.

Whatever it is, self-care becomes self-reinforcing. The more you take time out to care for your well-being, the better able you are to handle what your PhD throws at you. Then, the better able you are to navigate the PhD, the better able you are to exercise self-care.

I’m talking from experience (albeit bad experience). I exercised very little self-care during my PhD. I drank too much, I had poor routines, I didn’t look inwards and ask myself what is and isn’t making me feel good, and I generally took poor care of myself. The result was an incredible amount of stress, self-loathing and difficulty.

It is only in my post-PhD life that I have discovered the transformative power of self-care. To find out more about self-care in particular and mental good health in general, I can highly recommend the Tiny Buddha blog. It’s completely free and is an incredible resource for those looking at taking better care of their mental wellbeing.

39. Learn the power of saying no

When I was doing my PhD, there was one word I didn’t know the meaning of: ‘no’.

Can you do more teaching this semester Max? Yes, sure. Can you mark this extra pile of papers over the weekend? Of course. Can you work for free, it’ll be good for your CV? Sure! Where do I sign up?

Three things motivated me, a fear of not getting a job at the end of my PhD, satisfying the perfectionist in me by being the best version of a PhD student I could, and fear of getting a reputation as lazy.

But what was driving it all was trying to please everyone, at the expense of my wellbeing.

Are you the same? Do you find it hard to say no?

Ask yourself why. Is it because you’re also a people pleaser?

Whatever motivates it, you need to watch out. Saying yes to everyone and everything ends badly. You burn out, give up too much of your free time, overwhelm yourself and, ultimately, end up getting a reputation for being always available. That’s not a great position to be in.

Saying no won’t be the end of the world, and it won’t tarnish your reputation. It’s an act of kindness to yourself and a way of respecting your own boundaries.

So next time someone asks you to do something and, deep down, you don’t really want to, don’t be afraid to say no.

40. Imagine you are holding a stack of pillows

I want you to imagine you’re holding a small red pillow. If I were to ask you to pick a pen up off the floor without dropping the pillow, you’d be able to do it. Sure, it’d be a bit cumbersome, but you’d manage.

Now imagine that I added one blue pillow on top of your red pillow. Picking that pen up is getting a bit more difficult now, isn’t it? Gradually, I add one blue pillow after another. As I do, you start to disappear behind a tower of pillows.

Picking that pen up without dropping the pillows is now impossible.

Now imagine that the red pillow represents a problem you’re having with your PhD. Perhaps it’s a problem with an experiment, or an issue you’re having planning a chapter. Whatever it is, it’s an objective issue you’re currently having.

And much like the pen and the red pillow, even though you’ve got that problem on your mind, you can still go about your day to day life largely unencumbered.

But the blue pillows represent our brain’s capacity to worry, stress, ruminate, catastrophise and do all the other things it does to turn a small problem into a nightmare.

Over time you start to add blue pillows. You start to worry about whether you’re an imposter, or the perfectionist in you starts to convince you you’re a failure. You start to worry about whether you’re going to complete or even why you bothered to start in the first place.

Much like with the blue pillows, as you add these problems one by one, you start to feel their weight and you can’t perform basic functions. You notice you’re crippled with stress, anxiety or worry.

But you have a choice. Sure, the problem – the red pillow – is real so you can’t really change that. But you can change how you respond and you can choose not to add the blue pillows. Catch yourself when you’re adding those pillows and stop yourself doing it.

That’s the art of mindfulness. It’s the art of choosing how you respond to the world around you and it’s a great way to manage common PhD stresses and anxieties.

Practising mindfulness in this way sounds straightforward, but it’s an art and it takes practice. A good place to start is a guide I’ve recently published that talks about the science of mindfulness for PhD students.

41. Learn to deal with criticism

If there’s one thing that perfectionists can’t handle it is criticism.

Ring a bell?

It does for me.

Let me give you an example. I like to think that I’m a pretty great proofreader and PhD-coach . My feedback and reviews are, on the whole, glowing.

But sometimes I get a bad one when someone isn’t happy.

Now, the rational part of my brain tells me that I tried my hardest and that one negative review out of hundreds isn’t the end of the world, however disappointing.

But the perfectionist side tells me that my business is doomed. The imposter syndrome kicks in; ‘they’ve found me out!’ it screams. I panic, think about that one review all day and give it far more space and energy that it deserves.

And you may be the same when it comes to your PhD. Most of the PhD students I interact with tend to have perfectionist tendencies — some more than others.

When you get feedback on your work, or when you are at conferences or other public speaking events, you sometimes have the same response to negativity. It can feel like the end of the world, and it can feel like your entire PhD-journey is in vain.

Sometimes this can be a good thing. Your worry and attention to detail can mean that you fix problems faster than most and that you’re more careful to avoid them in the first place.

But it can also be detrimental. Much like me giving too must space and energy to that one review, you may find that negative feedback and critique can become more significant than it actually is.

Step one in overcoming this is recognising if and when it’s happening. Ask yourself if you’re putting too much focus on critique. Once you’ve begun to foster greater awareness, you can start to shift your perspective from one of ‘I’m doomed’ to one of ‘okay, what can I learn from this?’

Above all though, recognise your humanity and give yourself a break. We all make mistakes.

42. Your thesis is a cruel mistress

As a PhD-student, you may find your partner (or friends, if you’re single) are coming second to your thesis.

That’s because you may feel that what it takes to be successful is to marry your thesis.

You then feel like you have to devote your entire life to it, pushing away other things that are important for a balanced life (like, say, friends, partners or hobbies).

But instead of marrying your thesis, treat it like a cruel mistress. See it as this part of your life that is doing its best to ruin you and to make your life as difficult as possible but that, because it’s just a mistress, you can keep it on the periphery as an addendum to an otherwise balanced, fulfilled life.

What does that mean in practice? It means showing up when you have to and letting it do its best to ruin you. But – and this is the crucial bit – it also means stepping away from it regularly, having clear PhD/life boundaries, not taking things too personally, and realising that your PhD is just one part of your life, not all of it.

43. Remember it’s lonely at the top

Completing a PhD is no small feat. It requires brains, guts and cunning. But it can be lonely at the top.

Large numbers of students struggle with anxiety, depression and stress. Above all, many feel lonely. I was incredibly lonely during my PhD. I felt as though my problems and stresses were unique and that I was the only student in my cohort to be feeling them. That meant I put on a mask of competence.

So much so that my peers couldn’t tell that, underneath that mask, I was crumbling.

And the longer I wore that mask, the less connected I felt from my peers and the more I felt as though I was living a lie.

Are you the same? Do you have a mask? Are you suffering in silence?

What I found most liberating – and what cured my loneliness – was making myself vulnerable and sharing my challenges, frustrations and pain points with my PhD-peers. I opened up, talked about things we’d never really talked about and shared my inner thoughts, doubts and worries.

And the response amazed me.

Almost every one of my PhD colleagues shared similar stories of self-doubt and anxiety. They shared stories that sounded remarkably similar to mine. This led to strong bonds among us. We started to sympathise with one another more and look out for one another. In short, it fostered a shared identity and a stronger sense of community.

So, if you’re suffering behind your mask, speak out and share your struggles. The response may surprise you.

44. Take time off

We can kid ourselves and pretend every day is going to be a good one, or that we’re going to wake up with a spring in our step.

But life doesn’t work like that, and your PhD definitely doesn’t work like that.

Seemingly at random and without any apparent cause, you’re going to have days where you feel rubbish, or you don’t want to get out of bed. You’ll wake up with no confidence, or crippled with self-doubt, left wondering what the point of it all is, or why you even started a PhD in the first place.

It’s at times like this that you need to embrace the power of taking a day off.

You’re a human being as well as a PhD student, and you too deserve sick days. Use them.

If you teach, find cover. If you work in a lab, let your supervisor know you’re sick. If you have a chapter to finish, it’ll still be there when you come back.

Remember, just because you haven’t got physical symptoms doesn’t mean you don’t need some you-time, or to curl up on the sofa in front of the TV.

The benefits will be great. By recognising your low mood, recharging your batteries and taking time out to care for your own wellbeing you can avoid bigger problems in the long run and come back to your PhD the next day in a more positive frame of mind.

The alternative is that you fight through, fail to recognise that part of being human is having off-days, and then create bigger problems as you find your performance lacking and your stress levels rising.

Remember: Be a friend to yourself, particularly when the outlook is cloudy.

45. Recognise the power of incubation

There’s a special kind of fear that comes from starting the writing process and staring at a blank screen. The start of every chapter, proposal, abstract or paper can be filled with dread.

Do you find yourself lost for words when you first set out writing something? Or perhaps you know what you want to say, but aren’t sure how you’re going to arrive at that destination

With everything you write, you will have an objective or series of objectives in mind. In a chapter, for example, it’s the main argument you want to get across and the various sub-sections you use to build and validate that argument.

But getting your ideas and sub-sections in order (or even working out what they are in the first place) is tough.

So I use this one tip. When you’ve got that blank screen in front of you, your first job should be to sketch down your rough ideas. Create the skeleton plan for the chapter, proposal, or whatever else you’re writing. It’ll be rough around the edges; that’s fine.

Then the next step is to put the text to one side and do something else. Something completely different, ideally. Let me explain.

During my PhD, there were several moments when I was sitting in front of my computer writing that I found myself stuck. I couldn’t wrestle the ideas and concepts into the right order. Defeated, I’d turn off my computer and got on with my life. It was often during those non-writing moments that things would make sense. Something would ‘click’. When I wasn’t even thinking about it.

And that’s the point. It may not feel like it, but all the while you’re doing things other than writing, you’re incubating those early ideas you jotted down on paper. You’re processing them, relating them to what you already know and drawing on your experience, to the extent that the next time you sit down to write you’ll find the words flow much more easily.

Try it today. If you’re lost for words, sketch some rough ideas down on paper and then step away. Incubate those ideas and see if your writing doesn’t flow more easily next time you’re in the mood to write.

46. Realise that life is unfair

‘Life’s so unfair.’

If you ever find yourself saying that to yourself, ask yourself whether you are doing so because you assume that life should be fair, or because you think it will be fair if only x, y or z changed.

The truth is that life is unfair. The same is true of your PhD.

Things won’t go to plan, good work will get overlooked, more competent people will get promoted, and you will be treated unfairly.

It’s not right, nor is it rational, but it’s reality.

It’s plain unfair.

If you go through your PhD program assuming that life is fair, you will be disappointed as you confront the environment around you.

I don’t intend to be defeatist. Instead, by shifting your assumption about the world and your program – and thus assuming that it is, in fact, unfair – you better prepare yourself for those instances in which things don’t go to plan, or you do get treated badly.

The alternative is kidding yourself that things should go right and then getting thrown off balance when they inevitably don’t.

Building up this resilience is key to deflecting a lot of the irrational, nonsensical behaviours and outcomes you encounter on your PhD-journey. Without it, you’ll be disheartened.

47. Try a done list

When you look at your to-do list, how do you feel?

Anxious? Overwhelmed? Exhausted?

That’s because to-do lists are just a long list of things you haven’t yet done.

No doubt yours contains things that you don’t particularly want to do, or that you’re going to put off until you eventually admit defeat and get rid of them altogether.

But have you ever heard of a done list?

A done list is a way of tracking what you’ve already achieved rather than things you’ve yet to do.

Whilst a to-do list can be helpful in structuring your workflow, a done list is more rewarding. To-do lists can overwhelm, whereas done lists inspire.

That’s because the only things that matter are the things you actually do.

So if your to-do list is scaring you, also keep track of all your accomplished tasks on a done list.

You may find that it inspires you and offers a sense of reward for a hard day’s work.

48. Stop trying to improve things

We tend to think, ‘If only I solve this problem’, everything will be okay, or that things are bad because of x, y and z, and that all that’s needed in the pursuit of happiness is to solve specific, objective problems.

But life doesn’t work like that, and nor does your PhD.

Sure, solving those problems is important, but just as quickly as you solve them, new problems will rear their heads. Then, new ones. And new ones.

But all the while, you’ll be thinking, ‘I just need to solve this problem and I’ll be happy/less-stressed/in control/whatever’, whereas all you are doing is treading water. You’re failing to see that your PhD is an exercise in dealing with problems. They never stop, and their form and frequency is uncertain. You won’t ever overcome them all.

Instead, embrace them. Embrace the fact that things will never be complete, and that happiness isn’t as easy as solving problem X, Y and Z.

Happiness and contentment with your PhD are lived, not planned. You find it in the every day, in the coping strategies you have to confront the problems, and in the small joys you may be overlooking.

Focus on these, and your problems may start to look less problematic.

49. Embrace your flaws and imperfections

What is it you are hoping to achieve by letting that inner-critic run free and focus on all the things you’ve done wrong?

It’s as if, by viewing the imperfections in our persona and our work so negatively, we’re striving towards some ideal-type in which we never make mistakes and always produce work of the highest quality.

Part of that comes from the environment we’re in: our days can often be surrounded by excellence, by highly polished journal articles and well-honed lectures, and by accomplished professors drawing on all their skills and experience.

We’re left somewhere in the wake wondering where we went wrong.

But the academic world, given the value it places on excellence and expertise, often tends to overlook a simple human trait: we’re fallible and imperfect, and part of the joy of being human – or at least being a content human – is to embrace our imperfections rather than constantly try and fix them.

Now, this doesn’t mean you should stop seeking to improve, or that you should fail to address shortcomings in your own work. But it does mean that you should take other people off of their pedestals. You should recognise that humans fail, and they often do so spectacularly. It also means that just because someone on the outside looks fantastic, infallible, and seemingly untouchable, doesn’t mean that they aren’t hiding their own humanity.

Celebrate yours. Celebrate all the times you messed up, the times that taught you what you know and bought you where you are today. Embrace the things you don’t yet know and the things you wished you knew. Grab them, and hold on to them, for perfection, even if it were to exist, is a boring utopia.

Your PhD thesis. All on one page.

Use our free PhD structure template to quickly visualise every element of your thesis.

50. You can’t assess the quality of your own work

Have you ever looked at something you’ve written and thought to yourself, ‘How am I ever going to graduate? What I’ve written is awful’?

We all have.

It’s human nature (at least amongst PhD students, it seems) to be critical of our own work. The perfectionist in you is never quite satisfied, no matter how much improvement you make.

But next time you find your inner critic telling you that what you’re doing isn’t up to standard, remember this: you’re the worst person to critique your work.

You’re too invested in it, to the extent that it clouds your ability to see all the positives. Plus, you know the writing and argumentation better than anyone. You know exactly what it is you are trying to say, and if the text on the page doesn’t match up you’re going to be critical of it, even though – chances are – what you’ve written is already solid.

Read through your work and be critical of it, sure, but recognise that you’re not an objective judge.

51. You’re the only one who has heard it all

When you’re writing your thesis, you have to remember that you know more about your research and your study than your reader does. You know all the detail, all the quirks and you know how the thesis ends.

When the reader opens your thesis, they don’t know any of this.

Yet sometimes when we write we forget that. We write as if the reader is as knowledgeable as we are, and in the process, we confuse them.

So whenever you’re writing, remember that disconnect between what you already know and what the ready is yet to know. Write clearly, signpost and guide the reader on the journey you want to take them.

52. Remember what you’re a part of

When you started your PhD, you did so with a sense of wonder. But somehow the wonder of it wasn’t enough, and you stopped wondering and started to wonder about yourself.

We start our PhDs with such noble intentions, driven by an urge to explore and uncover.

Yet as we progress, we start to make everything so messy; we don’t keep it simple. We get so bogged down in the minor details, worrying unnecessarily about our own competence or what we’re doing with our lives, or overthinking the mechanics of our PhDs, that life as a PhD student becomes so in-ordinarily complicated.

You’ll only be a PhD student once. Your moment to be a part of this community happens only briefly. The challenge is not to show how inventive you are, or how colourful your PhD can be, but rather to see how much you can enjoy it, how much you can notice and relish what you are part of.

That way, you’ll get to the end of it having had a great time.

53. Focus on what you do have, not on what you don’t

I want you to stop and ask yourself whether you spend more time focusing on what you haven’t done and not enough time focusing on what you have.

When we’re feeling frustrated at our progress, or when we’re convinced that we’re not up to the job, it’s easy to look at others and see the apparent ease with which they navigate the literature or the speed with which they produce chapters or the number of publications they already have.

We do so and instinctively look at our own work, telling ourselves, ‘If only I do these things, or have these things, or complete these things, I will finally be happy with my PhD and won’t be so stressed’.

But this is a form of torture. Not only is it a needless form of suffering, but it is built on a fundamental misunderstanding about what actually makes us happy and what makes us content with the progress we are making in our PhDs.

Contentment in your PhD comes not from what you haven’t done, or what you haven’t produced, but instead from what you have.

It’s the small things that matter: the hurdles you overcame to get here; the brilliant feedback on that chapter; the chance to work with that brilliant professor; getting 100 words down on paper when all you wanted to do was sleep; heck, even just turning up is an achievement sometimes.

So our problem when we are feeling stressed, unfulfilled or lacking in sufficient progress is not one of means or outcomes, but of perspective. We spend so long looking at what we lack, and not enough time at the achievements and pleasures that are already under our belt.

Give yourself time to appreciate these things and you may find that some of your PhD-stress lifts off your shoulders.

54. Your PhD is unique. Just like everyone else’s

We’re social creatures, which means we take comfort in situating ourselves in relation to others.

Most of the time, this isn’t a problem, and can actually give us a good indication of what to do, when to do it and how to do it.

But when it comes to your PhD, comparing yourself to others can be misleading.

There are two traps students often fall into:

1. They may compare their progress to that of their peers. 2. They may look to the papers, research and studies of others and think to themselves ‘why doesn’t my research look/sound/work like theirs’?

If you’re guilty of any of these, you’re overlooking the fact that PhDs are all unique.

Students progress at different rates because of the nature of their study and the nature of their skillset.

And your research may not read or be structured like that of someone you look up to, largely because your research is different and you write and structure your work in your own way.

Learn and draw inspiration from others, sure, but recognise that every PhD and every PhD student is unique. You all work and progress in different ways, and although you’ll go about it differently, you’ll all eventually end up at the same destination.

55. Don’t be so hard on yourself

PhDs never, ever, ever go to plan.

You’ll make mistakes all the time. You’ll realise six months down the road that you messed something up, or went down the wrong path.

56. Make sure your goals are small and manageable

It is important to plan for the future and have goals in your PhD.

But there is an important thing to point out:

They need to be realistic and manageable.

If you’re anything like I was when I was sitting in your position, I would set lofty, ambitious goals that would, in effect, require me to work at 100% for 100% of the time.

I quickly failed.

Over the years, both during the PhD and in my career afterwards, I have learnt the importance of setting more realistic, manageable goals. Doing so is an act of kindness because the only person you’re kidding (and letting down) by setting lofty goals is yourself. By making them more realistic, not only do you avoid piling on unnecessary stress, but you increase your chances of actually meeting them.

There’s no shame in it either. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your next chapter won’t be either. It will take as long as it takes. Understand your limits, be kind on yourself, accept your fallibility and have faith that small steps in the right direction will get you where you need to go.

57. Notice when you’re worrying unnecessarily

When I was doing my PhD it seemed as though most of my time was taken up with constantly over-thinking things.

So much so, that I used to spend hours trying to solve unsolvable problems, plan and predict the future of my PhD, or try and make sense of every minute detail of my PhD research and thesis.

It’s likely that you do the same.

That’s because we often assume that, so long as we think hard enough, we will crack what it is we are worrying about.

But that isn’t true. Sure, there is a space for creative problem solving, but ruminating – going over and over the same things in your head – is unproductive and, to be frank, a waste of time. It can distract you from the present, can raise your anxiety levels and can foster an unhealthy relationship with your thesis.

Try and catch yourself when you find yourself ruminating and ask yourself whether you’ve strayed across the boundary from healthy problem solving to unhealthy rumination. If you have, consciously divert your attention and step away from the thought process.

58. Your PhD will always be there

Your PhD, at least until you graduate, is a never-ended pit of tasks, worry and things to do.

No matter how much you work, no matter how much you think or write, or how much you worry, the PhD will always be there. It’ll always be there to occupy more of your time or mental and emotional capacity, and no matter how much you invest in it, it’ll demand more. It’s as though it is never satisfied.

This may sound apocalyptic, but instead, I want to use this observation to make an important point, one that’s relevant throughout your PhD journey: you need to delineate PhD time and your time. You need to be clear when the times are that you think, work and worry on or about your thesis, and when the times are that you focus on hobbies, self-care or other non-PhD things.

If you don’t, you run the risk of being consumed by your thesis as it seeks to take more and more from you.

59. One day you’ll overtake your supervisor

All throughout your undergraduate and master’s programmes, you were very much the student and your professors and lecturers were there as the experts, teaching you what they know.

And when you start your PhD, your supervisor is more of an expert in your field than you are. It’s their job to help you navigate along the PhD journey and get to grips with the literature and state of the art.

In other words, they’re there to teach you because they know more about the field than you do.

But there comes a time in every PhD where you become an expert, where you become so plugged into the literature and the data that you know more about your topic and area of study than your supervisor. Sure, it may only be within the niche of your PhD topic, but it’s important to recognise when this switchover takes place.

That’s because it has important implications for the supervisor-student relationship. Before this point, their opinion and input have more power and you would be wise to listen to their advice. But as you reach and go beyond this point, you can begin to exert your own academic muscles and start to recognise where their advice may be inappropriate or misplaced, given what you know and they don’t.

Inevitably, you become the expert and it becomes your job to act and talk like one.

That’s the point of a PhD, right?

60. Having crap writing is better than no writing

In my free time, I like to go running.

I remember when I first started, I used to be harsh on myself because I was slow and was being overtaken by people much fitter than me.

But my perception changed when I got one piece of advice:

“You might not be the fastest, but you’re overtaking everyone sitting on the couch”.

And it’s the same when it comes to writing your PhD.

You may not have a finished draft yet, and you may not be happy with what you’ve written. Heck, you may only have ten words on the page.

But having some words on the page is better than having no words on the page.

Don’t be too harsh on yourself if you haven’t made the progress you aimed for, or you still have a lot of writing to do.

Instead, congratulate yourself on the writing you have done, not the writing you haven’t.

61. Nothing you read is irrelevant

I remember from my own PhD that I would often ask myself what the relevance was of a particular article or book chapter, particularly in the early years. I would read and wonder where it fitted into the grander PhD-picture.

One day a professor gave me a great piece of advice:

“Nothing you read is irrelevant. One day, maybe years down the line, you’ll remember that article or book and it’ll play an important role in ways you can’t yet imagine”.

And they were right.

In the later stages of my PhD, I found myself remembering back to articles and chapters that I had previously written off as irrelevant and realising that they could be useful.

So keep reading, make detailed notes when you do so, and don’t worry too much if you can’t work out how everything fits. That’ll all come later.

62. Sometimes you’ve just got to suck it up

Being irritated about progress in your PhD is a choice.

Your PhD won’t always go to plan, you will get things wrong and you will have sleepless nights about whether you’re on the right track.

That’s just how PhDs work.

Now, you can either let that eat you up and irritate you, or you can choose to recognise it as part of the PhD-journey and try not to take it to personally.

In other words, you can choose to not let your PhD irritate you.

63. You need to learn from your mistakes

We won’t get things right all of the time. The world just doesn’t work like that.

We’re going to mess up. A lot.

That’s just part of being human and part of being a PhD student.

Sometimes those mistakes are innocent and have little effect on our lives or our PhDs, but sometimes they are more serious and can have a lasting impact and can take a long time to rectify.

But in either case, you can use the mistake as an opportunity to ask yourself a really powerful, effective question, one that can allow you to harness a negative experience and try – as much as possible – to turn it into a positive one.

The question is: what can I learn from this mistake?

64. There’s no right answer

The hardest thing I found when I was doing my PhD was that there’s no right or wrong way of doing one.

Sure, there are guides, templates and books you can read, but ultimately each PhD is different and each PhD students works in different ways.

So instead of a right or a wrong way, there’s just your way.

Now that’s all well and good, but the really terrifying part of it is that we often we don’t know whether our way of doing things is effective until years down the line when we face our examiners at the viva.

This requires incredible trust in your own abilities and faith that the decisions you make today – and the decisions you made yesterday – are made in good faith and reflect the fact that you are trying the best you can.

Believe in yourselves, form design, writing and research decisions on the basis of logical thought processes, keep putting in the effort and you’ll get there in the end.

65. The PhD journey isn’t linear

When you speak to your supervisor or read books or guides on conducting PhD research, you are often made to think that the research process is linear.

This makes people panic because if your research doesn’t fit into neat little linear boxes there is a tendency to think that you’re doing something wrong.

Which is nonsense, because the research process is never linear.

Instead, it’s a mess. Sure, there are various stages involved in a PhD (e.g. planning, writing, researching, and so on), but you’ll find yourself moving back and forward between different stages – even stages that are seemingly far apart – all the time.

In my PhD, for example, I redefined my research objective and problem slightly after I had collected data. I even made small changes to my research question as I was writing up.

My point is this: research is messy and it doesn’t progress in a linear fashion. You’ll go round and round in circles and you’ll make mistakes. You’ll have to go back, start over and cover old ground.

And you know what? That’s fine; that’s just the way research works.

66. It’s okay to take a break

During my PhD, I totally burnt out.

I had too much going on for me professionally and emotionally. I crumbled and found I could barely function day to day.

Riddled with anxiety and crushed by the weight of the world, I spoke to my supervisor. To my surprise, they were completely understanding and supported my decision to take a short break from my PhD to give myself time to recharge.

When I came back, I was more energised than ever and made up for the lost time. If I had stayed without a break, my productivity would have reached zero. By taking a break, I mitigated that and got back up to 100%. It was in my interests to drop everything and step away from the PhD.

The people who are overseeing your PhD are human; they’ve been where you are and know the stress you’re under. By honest with them if you’re struggling and know that it’s okay – and often preferable – to take a break if you’re struggling to stay afloat.

67. Your PhD doesn’t define you

The PhD journey can take over your life. The deadlines, supervision meetings, fieldwork, writing up and the extra-curricular anxiety and worry can, if you’re not careful, start to define and encompass your entire life.

Sure, your PhD is important, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t fully define your life. You are more than your thesis and you have more to offer the world and yourself right now.

Tap into the things you do (or did) outside of your thesis that you enjoy (you may need to learn time management skills in order to carve out the time to do this), start to see yourself as a human first and PhD student second and start learning that there is more to life than your PhD thesis.

Why? Because it means that when your PhD gets tough and starts to put pressure on you (which it will, for sure), it won’t make your entire life stressful and difficult, just one part of a holistic, more balanced existence.

68. Your PhD needs to tell a story

Your PhD thesis is a story and as a thesis writer, you’re a storyteller.

This has two implications.

First, your thesis will have a distinct beginning, middle and end. Your beginning is the introduction, lit review, theory framework and the methods chapter. It’s where you set the scene, introduce the characters and signpost the plot. The middle is your empirical work. This is where you get down to business and flesh out that plot. The end is your discussion chapter and conclusion. It’s where you tie everything together, complete the story (by answering the research questions) and set up the sequel (with questions for further research).

Second, you have to think like a storyteller. Guide the reader through your story. You may know how it ends, but the reader won’t so don’t assume they do. Make everything really clear, don’t confuse them by failing to properly introduce plotlines (concepts, ideas, theories, and so on) and guide them gently. Hold their hand almost Importantly, write with confidence! You’re the expert; don’t be afraid to speak like one.

69. Savour the joy of simply being

There’s always something to complain about or something not quite going to plan. There’s always room for improvement or things we’d do differently next time around. Always. That will never change.

But there’s also so much joy to be had from simply being and from recognising – and being fully aware of the fact – that you’re sat where you are, that you’re a PhD scholar and that you’re part of something far, far bigger than yourself. There’s always joy to be found, no matter how bleak the outlook.

You’ll always, once you dig deep enough, find that the very fact that you’re alive, reading this and doing something as wonderful, challenging and (ultimately) rewarding as a PhD is something worth celebrating. Whilst at the surface there may be pain, if you scratch deep you’ll find joy.

70. Let a stranger read your work

Yesterday I held a coaching session with someone who had been stuck on a particular problem for a long while. It was causing them stress and anxiety, but over the course of an hour, they could see a light at the end of the tunnel and a way to solve their problems.

Don’t worry, this isn’t an advert. Instead, I want to share with you the insight I had during and after the call. I realised that what helped in this situation was that they had someone independent of the research take a look through their work and offer their thoughts.

There’s so much value in having a stranger offer their input.

That’s because we’re too invested in our own work to be able to think clearly. We fixate on the wrong things, we create problems where none exist and, because our vision is blurred, we can’t see solutions even when they’re staring us right in the face.

But when you hand over your problem to a stranger, they don’t have the same investment. They are looking at things from an impartial perspective and don’t have the same prejudices and pre-convictions. That means they can see much more clearly what’s broken and, importantly, how to fix it.

So my advice to you today is this: if you’re stuck on something and you can find a solution, talk to someone independent of your research. Ideally, that would be a fellow academic or anyone else who understands the research process. The point is, you should ask for support from someone who has no investment in your project but has the skills necessary to offer solutions. Even just talking through your issue for a few minutes could help.

You will likely find that even a quick chat about your problem with this person can save you days or even weeks of headache and unnecessary worry.

71. Savour the good days and be kind to yourself on the bad ones

Not every day is going to be a good day. Sure, some will be brilliant. You’ll get everything done, you’ll find your flow, things will just ‘happen’.

But others will suck. You’ll be in a down mood, or your experiments fail. Whatever it is, you’ll have days you just want to forget.

Before I’ve talked about the danger of expecting every day to be a good one and the power in embracing the imperfection of life.

Today the advice is this: because life is imperfect, really savour the good days. See them as a treat, something that doesn’t happen often and something that should be truly appreciated. Remind yourself how lucky you are, savour the moment and be grateful for the experience.

But, on the flip side, be kind on yourself when you have a bad day. Remind yourself that not every day can be good and that what won’t help things is letting your internal critic get the better of you.

Savour the good days, be kind to yourself on the bad ones.

72. Realise that routines are safe

Routines feel safe. They’re predictable, we can plan around them, we can plan for them and we know that, so long as we keep doing our thing, we’ll get everything done that we need to.

But sometimes you’ll be away from your routine. You might be at a conference or home for the holidays. You may be out of the country or forced away from the familiarity of day to day, for whatever reason.

It is at these times that we realise just how comforting routine can be. We notice the lack of structure, the lack of familiarity or the difficulty with which we accomplish tasks that we previously found easy as we struggle to get in the zone. We might struggle to concentrate, or to focus, or to even find a place appropriate for work.

But you must power on through. You must prioritise what’s important and, however hard, get on with it. Carve out time, however unfamiliar. Routines are safe, sure, but that doesn’t mean that a lack of routine is dangerous for your workflow; you just need to be more creative and lower your expectations for how productive you can be.

Find the time, prioritise the important stuff and go easy on yourself. That way, you’ll get the stuff done that matters, even when you’re feeling unstable and insecure.

73. Some days you’ll want to do nothing

A byproduct of our modern-day obsession with efficiency, maximisation and optimisation is an underlying guilt if we ourselves fail to operate according to such principles.

For many of us – myself included – there is a tendency to feel as though down-time, or time spent doing something that isn’t work- or PhD-related, is in some way a ‘waste’ of time.

But to think like this is to assume that efficiency and productivity are what we should be achieving all of the time when in fact we’re only human and we will always have our off-days.

If we walk around thinking it’s possible to always be on the ball, we’re going to be disappointed and feel like we’re failing when the inevitable happens and we do have off days, aren’t on our A-game, or we spend the afternoon napping when we should be working (any guesses how I spent yesterday afternoon?).

Instead, shift your mindset to begin to embrace the moments when you’re not at your peak. Start to see them as a natural part of being a fallible human. Look at the longer-term picture, and track your productivity and efficiency, say, on a weekly basis, rather than hour by hour or day by day. Start to recognise when you’re exhausted or when your heart’s not in it and embrace it; use it as a chance to leave your desk and step away from the thesis.

To do so will start to liberate you from the internal critic within you who may be trying to attack you for having personal time and who may be creating unrealistic expectations that you’ll never be able to achieve.

74. Take the first step

Elsewhere in this post, I talked about the importance of having a plan in place for the top-level, structural detail before you start getting bogged down with tasks. Without knowing the structure of, say, a chapter, it is hard to assign and then execute tasks in a way that is efficient and productive.

But that doesn’t mean that you need to know all the detail. It doesn’t mean you need to know, say, exactly how the entire chapter is structured before you can start writing.

Instead, you need to know enough detail to be able to take the first step. Enough to get the first word on paper, or conduct the first experiment. Plans are fluid and they’re necessarily incomplete.

So if you’re struggling to see the end-point, just do all you can to be able to take that first step.

75. You won’t keep up with everyone else

There’s a tendency amongst all of us – PhD students or not – to compare ourselves with those around us.

This is particularly true when we’re working on our theses. We can look to those around us and feel like we’re alarmingly behind, or worryingly ahead of where everyone else is.

Some of those you look at and compare yourself too may have done their fieldwork, or may have even written draft chapters in their first year. Or it may be you who is ahead, now worrying that you’ve been working too quickly.

The truth is, everyone works at different speeds, either because of their own skills and preferences or because of the type of project or methodology they are engaging with.

Those using grounded theory, for example, may get their fieldwork finished surprisingly early. What’s more, just because someone has written a draft chapter in their first year, that doesn’t mean that it’s any good and won’t need substantial revisions later on.

So my advice to you is to focus on your thesis and try to avoid measuring your progress relative to others. Work with your supervisory team and listen to their advice.

Plus, reflect on whether you’re working slowly or quickly not in terms of other people, but in terms of your own skills or aptitudes. Are you getting bored and struggling to fill the days? Probably time to work a bit harder. Do you feel exhausted and stressed? It’s best to slow down, in that case.

76. Understand the difference between tasks and projects

Your PhD is one big project and each of the chapters is one smaller project.

All involve countless smaller tasks.

But trying to work on tasks when you haven’t clearly defined and outlined the nature of the higher-order project can mean that you waste time, wander aimlessly and have to perform u-turns.

Work out the top-level detail – the chapter plans, the aims and objectives, the research questions, and the epistemology or ontology, for example – before you start to work on the lower-level tasks. That way, you’ll save time, work more efficiently, and have a better sense of direction.

77. Set intentions

You may find yourself struggling for motivation, or wondering where the time goes as you bounce from one week to the next.

Sitting down at the beginning of each week and even at the beginning of each day and setting your intentions can make a huge difference.

Five minutes is all it takes; you may choose to set yourself a few tasks (e.g. write section 1, read that article, and so on), or you may be more emotion-oriented (e.g. be kinder to myself, stop procrastinating, or connect with others).

Whatever it is, the simple act of setting intentions can subtly shift your mindset and outlook over the course of a day or a week.

So next time you’re struggling to get up speed, try it and see what effect it has.

78. Remember that, if a PhD was easy, everyone would have one

If a PhD was easy, more people would have one.

The truth is that they’re hard. They always have been and they always will be. And yours will get no easier.

First, you need to accept that the only route to a successful thesis is putting the hours in, knuckling down and getting on with the job.

Two, you also need to accept that, although things don’t get any easier, you do get better at managing that difficulty. You build up new skillsets and develop intellectual and emotional resilience that means that the days do start to get easier, even if the workload doesn’t.

79. Being shot out of a cannon doesn’t work

In the course of your PhD, you’re going to have moments where you swing wildly and hit the target right on point. The home runs, if you will.

You’ll see them in others, and you’ll see how we all celebrate them: the blockbuster papers, the dream job offers, the passes with no corrections.

They’re appealing, but they’re not worth chasing. You can’t plan for them, and you certainly can’t build a strategy out of them.

However, you can build a strategy out of slow, steady perseverance, out of showing up each day and putting in the hours. Taking one step at a time will get you where you need to go more predictably and precisely than being shot out of a cannon.

Don’t plan for the home runs, but embrace them when they come.

80. Your finished thesis won’t look like the one you first designed

Your research will take you in directions that are hard to predict. New questions emerge, new insights lead to hunches, and pre-conceived ideas turn out to be false.

That’s just how research work.

The thing is, we go into our PhDs with research proposals that map out the entire project in one elegant plan.

If you’re anything like I was when I was doing my PhD, I got anxious about the fact that my research was deviating from this original research proposal, especially as I had funding awarded for it.

I was worried that the thesis I submitted would look very little like the research I had proposed.

I had no need to be. That’s how research works, and it’s entirely natural for the finished text to be different.

We can’t predict the future, so a proposal is somewhat of a hunch or a guess about what you think may happen over the next three, four, five years or longer. Then, when we start the research proper and enter the field, we face reality and see how things really are.

What’s more, when we plan our research, we often have lofty ambitions about revolutionising our field. Then, as time goes on, we develop a sense of pragmatism and realism such that our project becomes much more specialised.

Seen in that light, it’s entirely understandable that the project evolves over time.

So if you’re one of those worrying about deviating from your proposal, try not to. That’s because, providing it’s based on a sound reading of the data and literature, such deviation is an entirely normal part of the research process.

Wrapping up: You can forge your own path

Every PhD is different and, more importantly, every PhD student has their own way of doing things.

So, if some of the tips and techniques I suggest don’t resonate, or you can’t see how to apply them to your context or your way of thinking, that’s fine. That’s just a reflection of your unique qualities.

There will be some things you read that make complete sense, but others that you find harder to wrap your head around. Again, that’s fine.

But what that implies is a need for ongoing critical reflection of how you do things and how you can best manage your PhD. It means taking advice and tips you read – whether from this post, The PhD Knowledge Base or elsewhere – and asking whether and how they fit into your PhD-life.

It also means you need to gain a thorough understanding of how you work (and how you don’t) so you know how you can best manage your PhD and what resources are the most useful in helping you do so. However you do it, have faith in your ability and keep turning up. Over time, you’ll end up exactly where you need to be.

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How to get a PhD?

Interested in obtaining a phd learn more about the steps to earn a phd, careers with phd, list of colleges offering programs and more..

Updated by TCM Staff on 15th April 2021

How to get a PhD: Steps and Requirements Explained

15th April 2021

College Monk — How to Get a PhD

A PhD is a postgraduate doctoral degree awarded to those students who produce an original thesis and make a significant research contribution to their respective field.

PhDs are available for those in a variety of different fields, and it’s often considered the highest and most well-respected degree available. Earning a PhD truly establishes someone as an expert in their field and indicates the deepest level of knowledge on a particular subject.

What is a PhD?

PhD — technically short for Doctor of Philosophy — is a type of doctoral degree, often considered the highest-level degree one can earn.

A PhD is a type of research degree that requires students to do an extensive amount of research and produce an original work, known as a dissertation.

People often use their PhD as a launchpad to pursue a career in academia. But, it’s also a popular option for those pursuing a career in STEM.

Those with PhDs make up a fairly exclusive club. Data from the US Census Bureau shows that fewer than 5% of the population holds a doctorate. And it’s not surprising, considering it often takes up to eight years to achieve this coveted title and requires writing an original dissertation the length of a book.

A PhD is actually just one type of doctoral degree. PhDs are research-focused. The other type of doctorate is application-focused (also known as an applied doctorate).

Source: https://strathsltresearchers.wordpress.com

PhD admission requirements

Not just anyone can earn a PhD. Given how well-respected the title is, it takes a lot of work and very specific criteria to enter a doctoral program.

The most basic requirement that all PhD candidates must have is a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution. You won’t be accepted without this. You also usually need a high GPA.

Another requirement is a statement of purpose. In this statement, doctoral candidates will describe why they’re seeking a PhD, what they’ve done so far to prepare themselves, and what goals they plan to accomplish later.

Finally, PhD applicants will need several letters of recommendation.

If you’re considering pursuing a PhD, it’s critical that you work to build relationships with professors and mentors who might recommend you. There’s a lot of competition, especially for the top PhD programs, and excellent recommendations will help you to stand out.

Keep in mind that the requirements might vary somewhat from one school to the next, so it’s important to do your research and decide ahead of time where you’ll apply.

Steps to obtain a PhD

Earning a PhD is no easy feat. It takes most students years to do so. Let’s look into the steps someone must take to get a PhD.

Step 1: Complete an undergraduate degree

Before you can take the next step toward your PhD, you’ll first have to receive a bachelor’s degree through an undergraduate program at a reputable university.

This education will provide the foundation for your more advanced coursework later. It’s important that you maintain a high GPA throughout your undergraduate years.

Step 2: Complete a master's program

Once you complete your bachelor’s degree, the next natural step is to pursue a master’s degree.

Graduate school requires that a student take the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) or the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT). A master’s degree typically takes about two years to achieve, and will be in a particular field of study.

While not technically required for a PhD, most people earn a master’s degree before earning their PhD.

Step 3: Apply for a PhD program

Once you complete your graduate program, it’s time to apply for your PhD program.

There are many doctoral programs to choose from, so it’s important that you research and find the best fit for your field of study.

During the application process, you’ll have to submit the following:

A completed application
Undergraduate and graduate transcripts
Your GMAT or GRE scores
Letters of recommendation
A statement of purpose

Step 4: Complete your coursework

When you begin your PhD program, you’ll start by taking your coursework.

As is usually the case with undergraduate and graduate programs, you’ll likely have some required courses and some electives. Usually, students will prepare their own plan of study for the courses they’ll take over the next couple of years.

Step 5: Prepare a research proposal

A research proposal is a document that outlines what, exactly, a PhD student will focus on during their research.

A research proposal should include the major question or questions someone plans to answer with their dissertation, and how exactly they plan to arrive at that answer.

Even though the proposal won’t be a part of your final thesis, it plays a vital role in shaping your PhD.

Step 6: Complete a literature review

The literature review is the first thing you’ll do before starting your project report.

In this review, you’ll conduct an in-depth study of all the research in your field. During this phase, a doctoral student should critically assess the existing literature on their topic and find gaps they may be able to fill with their research.

Step 7: Research and collect results

Once a student has completed their literature review, they’ll do more first-hand research and perform experiments to help answer the questions they’re exploring for their dissertation.

Step 8: Produce a thesis and write a dissertation

Source: https://www.wikihow.com

Once you’ve completed your research and gathered sufficient results, it’s time to write your final thesis and dissertation.

Though the two terms are often used interchangeably, your thesis is the argument or conclusion you’ve arrived at, while your dissertation is where you demonstrate your thesis.

Your dissertation is the culmination of all the research you’ve done. Dissertations are original work and often focus on a newly developed theory. A dissertation is roughly the length of a book, and can often take years to produce.

Step 9: Viva Voce

Viva voce is a Latin phrase that means “with living voice” or “by word of mouth.” It’s also the final — and one of the most important — steps in the process of earning a PhD.

Unlike other degrees, where you take a final exam, a PhD candidate must defend their thesis before a panel of appointment examiners. It’s common for the examiners to ask many questions, and this process can often take several hours.

Once you successfully complete your viva voce, you’ll be awarded your doctorate and can add that coveted “Dr.” to your title.

Online colleges offering PhD programs

Many students choose to pursue a PhD through an online doctoral program for the flexibility and convenience it brings.

Here are a few popular online PhD programs:

What can you do with a PhD?

A PhD is the highest-degree that someone can earn. But after all those years of work, what exactly can you do with your degree?

One of the most common career paths for someone with a PhD is academia. Those with a doctorate degree often go on to teach at universities or spend their careers performing research, not all that different from what they did to earn the degree in the first place.

But academia isn’t the only option for PhD recipients, nor is it the most lucrative.

PhD students often study STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, and math. Those industries are thriving today more than ever, making it a great field for those holding a doctorate.

Source: https://www.jax.org

Some of the highest-paying PhD fields include:

Information assurance
Computer science
Biochemistry and molecular biology
Organic chemistry

Though academia and STEM may be the most common paths for PhD participants, they’re hardly the only ones. There are many options available to someone with a PhD. Other non-STEM fields include clinical psychology, market research, business development, linguistics, and intelligence.

A doctorate is the highest level of degree someone can achieve. There’s no doubt that it takes a considerable amount of work, and it takes most people years to achieve this recognition.

It’s important to understand these trade-offs before you get started. But once you earn your PhD, you will hold one of the most highly-respected titles in the academic field and have a lot of doors open to you.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. 1) How long does a PhD take?

A. According to CBS news on an average, an American Student takes 8.2 years to complete their Ph.D. This can change according to various courses and in various countries.

2. 2) What qualifications do I need?

A. In US Bachelors degree holders can also apply for Ph.D. For applying in a PhD program one should have completed 16 years of formal education. Qualification in the entrance test is also necessary.

3. 3) Can I take PhD as a part-time?

A. Yes, part-time PhD is possible, and it has a more flexible schedule with classes and degree completion. In some programs, a minimum one-year residency is required. But, part-time PhD will take more time, and managing a part-time PhD will be more challenging.

4. 4) What is M.Phil?

A. A M.Phil qualification is less advanced than that of a PhD. In this, the students are expected to master a content area and it can be mastered in two years. Moreover, the PhD dissertation takes more time than an M.Phil dissertation.

5. 5) What are Financial Aid options available for me?

A. For Ph.D. there are a lot of financial aid opportunities available in the form of Scholarship and loans. Eg: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

Prepare Your Application for CS PhD.

Before you read, introduction, what do i mean by managing research, why do you need papers, reference letter, research experience, publications, choosing programs and professors, meeting slides, personal history statement, paragraph 1, paragraph 2-4, last two paragraphs, research internship, connecting professors via email, after application.

This will be a long article which will take you approximately about 15 minutes to read. If you think it is too long to read. Please directly go to the end .

Let’s Start

During my preparation for PhD applications, the most response I got are rejection. However, I also received several offers including MASc/PhD in ECE from University of Toronto, PhD in CS from McGill University, PhD in CS from UMASS, PhD in CS from UTexus Austin, EDIC from EPFL, and PhD in CS from NUS. I would like to summarize the application for three stages, which are before application, during application and after application. In different stages, you need to put different things in priority. The key to getting your ideal offer would be mainly composed of your research background and your connections. The other things would be minors and I would like to share more of my experience about that.

Before we get started, I would like to introduce an open-source project: opencsapp , which is managed by my friends. It includes tons of past experience applying to graduate programs in CS. In this post, I would like to lay more emphasis on research.

Before Application

I would like to use the timeline of an undergraduate student who wants to apply for a direct PhD. as an example. For the preparation, it means the period before the last summer before your final year of study. The last summer is also included. As you can see from the colors in this graph, it will be relatively chill in the first two years and stressed in your third year. However, to make the application easier and smoother, I would like to provide my point of view: prepare early and distribute your workload evenly.

The most critical factor in deciding your application will be your reference letters and connections . However, to acquire them, you need a strong research background. Rather than saying have research experiences, I would like to say manage your research experiences. Some people may argue that published papers are important to application and some undergraduate students even have certain papers published in top conferences such as AAAI, CVPR or even SIGMOD, NSDI, SOSP. However, I would say it is only partially correct. I also have a few first-authored papers published in Ubicomp, ICDCS before applying for programs.

In fact, compared to having the name on author lists, what you really need is the experience of leading a project and doing research independently. Some students just help complete a partial of the source code or just run a couple of experiments. After that, they are granted as a third or fourth author, or even the first author in some particular cases. I would say such a kind of experience is useless and even if you have your name on published papers, it will not really help too much on your application.

Well, on the other hand, even if your paper is under review, the whole project is led by you. You participate and push the whole project forward from having the idea, writing to finishing all the evaluations. This is valuable and can grant you proper reference letters and connections. In this experience, you learn what research is and know how you can carry out research individually. This is also the reason why most experience of course projects is completely useless and professors do not care about them too much. Course projects are usually done in a group and it is very hard to show that you lead the project unless it is an individual project. In that case, you should emphasize that in your CV.

In summary, before starting research, you need to keep it in mind that your ultimate goal is having individual research experience before application .

Even the god needs seven days to create the world, it is impossible for you to start individual research once you touch it. For the first and second year, you should put your emphasis on your GPA . It may sound like a utilitarian but the truth is the reason for taking a course is you want a good GPA . Honestly speaking, with the fierce competition nowadays, the objective of going to universities has deviated from our original goals of acquiring knowledge. We just want to get good jobs, good lives, to get a green card in the US or a PR in Canada. But anyway, putting your emphasis on your studies is what I want to say. While in the meantime, get yourself involved in the labs and begin doing research with professors and PhDs.

At the very beginning of the first and the second year. The first thing you need to figure out is whether you really want to do the research in the future. The earlier you figure it out, the more benefits you will get. The next thing is to think about what you want to do in the future. You do not need to narrow down the scope on to a thesis level or a specific topic. This is what you need to think about right after you have just begun the PhD. Just think about a rough direction like machine learning, operating system, database, etc. If you are sure you want to do research and you know what you want to do, the third thing is to think about whether you are really good at it. You need to make sure you really have contributions during your research internship.

After thinking about all these, the next thing is to evaluate your opportunities. If you find that after spending two or three months working for a graduate student, you have nearly zero or very few chances to communicate and talk with the professor, you should quit that lab immediately without a second thought. You need to evaluate how much you have learned during your research assistant experience and whether you can learn to become an individual researcher. And you get a chance to collaborate with the professors! Not just the PhD. Students or master students. This is important. They have not got their degrees. I’m currently still a PhD student and I’m still learning how to do research. PhD students, candidates or even Postdocs are not necessarily clear on doing research and probably not. Otherwise, they should have got their faculty positions. So if you really make contributions and you are really good at what you are doing but you are always collaborating with graduate students or postdocs, it will be a waste of your talent. You should learn from the real professionals, the professors. They are the ones who really understand research. So the most critical thing is you need to make sure you are studying from professors during your research internship!!!

The publication and acceptance is highly random nowadays. Accepted papers are not necessarily good papers and good papers will not necessarily be accepted. Moreover, the difficulty to publish a paper varies from conference to conference, from journal to journal and from research scope to research scope. If you have publications when you are applying for the PhD, it will for sure make your application better as long as they are written by yourself. But it is completely fine that you don’t have.

The main reason is that you should have the process of managing your mind. You should understand how you build everything up and organize them to make your work well sounded and motivated. In other words, it is the process and what you learned from this process that matters, not the papers. If you don’t understand how you should write a good paper, it won’t help much for your application even if you have a lot of papers. Nowadays, it is easy to write a paper and submit it to a random conference. Some students may have a very long list of papers and many of them are arxiv preprints. I think this is useless and may even have some counter effects. What you need to do is show your understanding of research and understanding of how you can communicate with others in the form of static texts such as papers.

So, if you have a third or fourth authored paper, it does not help too much. If you have a first authored paper, it is a good thing but you need to know how you demonstrate your understanding of the research.

The Application

Connection : First year to 12/15.
Reference Letters : Sept. to Dec.
Research Experience : Second year to writing your applications.
Publications : Second Summer to 12/15.
Choosing programs and professors : Sept. to Nov.
CV/Resume : Sept. to Dec.
Meeting and meeting slides : After 12/15.
Personal History Statement *: Sept. to Dec.
SOP/PS/Research Proposal : Sept. to Dec.
GPA : First year to third year
Research internship : First/Second/Third summer.
Standard Tests : TOFEL: Third summer/GRE: Third year.
Connecting professors via email (they don’t know you before)*: Sept. to Dec.

Now, I would like to give a guide for each component in this checklist.

Connection can usually be viewed as the fastest track for your getting the offers. However, by saying the fastest , it is the slowest as you need to always manage it from the start to the end. You also need to prepare for it as early as possible. A strong connection can help you directly get the offer. There are usually two types of connection. First, you know the professor well and the professor also knows you well. Second, you have a good connection to a professor and the professor can introduce you to the professor you want to apply to. They have a strong connection.

Reference Letters are also quite important. They are not so determined as the connection. But strong reference letters can also help you get admitted by your dream school in some cases if you can do the all other things pretty well too. However, it is an important thing to establish a good connection with your referees. Not only do they need to know very well, you also need to know them much better. Don’t expect a professor who does not know your name until you come to ask for a reference letter to write a good reference letter. In most cases, a mediocre reference letter equals a bad reference letter.

When you are preparing for your application, you need to have it in mind the overall flow of idea of your research. It is like writing a thesis, but not so techniqual and also like writing a paper. You know the reason why you need to do these research and how they are connected to each other. Each experience should contribute to your current research question(s). If your research experiences are like several random pieces of topics in several unrelevant directions, it will be a big problem. You need to find a way to connect them together and generate a flow of ideas.

Always wish for the best and prepare for the worst. In today’s random review mechanism, especially in some communities, there is no guarantee that a good paper will be accepted and an accepted paper must be a good paper. So just try to write a perfect paper and submit it to the venues. That’s it.

Though this is not the most important factor for getting you admitted, this is one of the most important things you really need to think about. Especially today the competition for computer science applications is becoming more and more fierce. To the best of my acknowledgement, over 80 percent of my friends how used to not work in IT, all change their focus on coding. Hence, sometimes, you may want to give some sights on topics which are not so hot. Always choose the one that fits you most, not the one which is the most popular.

I have a list of questions you need to think when you choose programs and professors

What is the rank of the program and university? Will the rank make the program harder to apply then it should be?
How do the programs and professors match my career goals and research?
What are my dream schools/professors, list three? What schools/professors match my standard, list five? What are schools I will definitely get admission to, list three?
What is the program name? What is the admission link? What is the deadline?
Do I meet the minimum admission requirements for GPA/TOFEL/GRE?
Who will write reference letters for me?

CV is usually one of the material you can put your efforts on in the final stage of application. The CV should present your factual achievement. Hence, it should include basic information about you such as name, degress, education experience. It is always a good habit to include your email and phone number. You also need to present your research experience, publications and other experience.

I think putting the skills in the CV is a strange thing but a lot of people do it. It is useless and it is not supposed to be here. Because listing your skills is a subjective action. For example, you can write I have a second prize in an NOI competition where we programmed in C++. But it is not a proper thing to say I am mastered at C++. Also, you can list you have a bronze medal in a kaggle competition. But, it is not a proper thing to say you know deep learning or data mining pretty well.

Always remember to include facts in your CVs. When people are reading your CV, they will filter those statements not presented in the form of saying facts. This is not a good thing because they may accidentally omit some merits you want to express.

Here is a template for CV in the form of LaTex. If you want to share it on social media, please remember to leave a notice about where you got it.

It is always good to have a slide introducing yourself and your research. Remember to send it to the professors before the meeting. It does not need to be very long, you may only need five minutes to introduce one of your best projects.

The value of such a statement is case by case. If you believe you can contribute to the diversity of the school, you need to put much emphasis on this statement. If you are from a minority group, I suggest you write this as this is a good opportunity to fight for your own interests and rights. You should always do this. With all our efforts, we can bring a better word.

Writing in fluent English and good articles may no longer be a difficult thing with the present of large language models. However, the most critical thing in writing these materials is that you should have a flow of ideas. You need to write a story and a story should have its basic components. You need a start, a body, and an ending. You need to tell others why you did such research, what you did and how well you did it.

Writing a PS

Usually a personal statement is about 1000 words. Don’t make it too long.

Paragraph 1: Please do not use very long stories. Go directly to the point. Explain how you got interested in the field related to this program. For example, the simplest reason is that you major in this field and you’re interested. Or you can say that though your major is not, let’s say computer science. You feel interested in it and want to have a deeper professional study after taking several online courses such as xxx. Give a brief self introduction such as your name, major, or when you will get the diploma. Your GPA, best honors, ranking if there are attractive enough. The third sentence should be kept simple. Clearly illustrate the program you are applying for.

Paragraph 2-4, we usually write 2 paragraphs for the main body. Each paragraph should take about your best past projects, research or professional experiences. First, give the motivation of beginning the project. This is a different CV. You should take about for what reason, you get started this experience. Not the reason why the topic of this project is interesting. For example, the motivation in CV can be that previous transformer based method needs long training time. The motivation in PS is that I want to touch on some research related to machine learning, particularly language models and transformers. The second sentence should be a summary of the project. Starting from the third sentences to about the six one. You should place your own insights about this project, from a subjective point of view, not the objective point of view in a CV. You should also demonstrate your potentials and abilities in these sentences. For example, you can say that in this project, we implemented our ideas from algorithms to real applications, and we evaluated them in industrial cases. I think such an industry level evaluation is very important for the development of a project. I have always insisted that we will move our products into real-world case testing before it are put forward to the market. The last sentence is similar to a CV. Talk about your results. For example, how your product is implemented in the real world.

Last two paragraph: First tell the readers how your previous study related to this project with some course examples. Briefly speaking, how do you get yourself prepared for the project? You should sufficiently show why the program should enroll you. You should then explain why you need this project. Usually, we give three sentences (three reasons). First, the program scheduling including the modules, projects, professors. You should give detailed names of the professors you want to work with. The courses you want to take. If you are applying for a thesis based program. You must and only talk about 1-3 professors you want to work with. Remember, you should give a solid reason. For example, you research interest matches a lot. If you are applying for the thesis based program, these three sentences are simple. Just three sentences about professor and the reasons. If you are applying for a course based program, the other two sentences are different. The second sentence should discuss the program’s advantages. For example, it has group working and self project. It has cooperation with business and so on. The same thing, be detailed and have reasons. The third sentence should talk about the school’s advantage. For example, it is in California, with lots of opportunities to have internships in top companies. The last sentence is simple, try your best to praise the school and thanks for reading.

In fact, most people may think GPA is what it should be. But, in fact, there can be some little tricks in presenting GPA. You may choose to draw the committee’s attention to some courses you have better scores for, which you can call them the courses related to your major or the program you are applying for. However, it should have a rationale. For example, if you are applying for a research related to multimodal. You can’t say that computer vision is related and natural language processing is not related. While you can say deep learning is related but operating systems are not related or Physics is not related. Treat your GPAs wisely.

If you have decided to apply for a PhD, it is usually of benefit if you participate in research internships. Research internships can be in a research group or in a company such as MSRA, Apple, Amazon, etc. The most critical thing to applying for a successful research internship is treating it as if you are applying for a PhD or a job. You will gain you more chances to simulating applying for a PhD and collect precious experience.

I usually tell others that these two things will not affect your application. I changed my mind until I met a customer. The reason why these two are important is that if you have very low scores (TOFEL<90), you basically cannot apply to any school. But if you have very high scores (TOFEL>110), they won’t help anything regarding the application, regarding CS application.

Before you prepare for them, you can read the requirements list by each school on whether the GRE is required and what is the minimum score of TOFEL. This is also the reason why I recommend you to take the test in the third year. The policy usually won’t change too much.

For the TOFEL tests, I strongly recommend TSTPrep . It is really helpful. For teachers of TOFEL and GRE, you can contact me personally. I know several pretty good teachers and they are very professional.

You may get good luck to be in touch with professors. There are no particular standards for how we should write emails. Some professors like you to cut to the point directly. Some prefer you give more details. However, from my understanding, all professors have tons of things to handle everyday. So, you should organize a very clear subject and keep your words concise.

To choose from your offers, you should also do the same thing of evaluating your opportunities. If you find that after you enter the research group, you will work closely with senior PhD students, candidates and Postdocs rather than your professor, you should reject the offer. In my current and past research, I always have the chance to discuss ideas, progress, results, and writings with my advisors. Basically speaking, your advisor should be the one you collaborate with the most closely. This is a critical factor when you consider your offers.

I would also suggest you communicate with the current PhD students in the research group to understand all the necessary things you think you should acknowledge. In summary, the decision should not be based on what you have and what the prospective supervisor has. It should be based on what you are going to have and what you are going to bring to your prospective supervisor. I strongly recommend you go over these two checklists before you make the final decision.

Checklist for students .
Checklist for supervisors

I also provide advising service for CS/EE PhD application. Feel free to contact me via email or social media such as Zhihu .

How to tackle the PhD dissertation

Finding time to write can be a challenge for graduate students who often juggle multiple roles and responsibilities. Mabel Ho provides some tips to make the process less daunting

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Writing helps you share your work with the wider community. Your scholarship is important and you are making a valuable contribution to the field. While it might be intimidating to face a blank screen, remember, your first draft is not your final draft! The difficult part is getting something on the page to begin with.

As the adage goes, a good dissertation is a done dissertation, and the goal is for you to find balance in your writing and establish the steps you can take to make the process smoother. Here are some practical strategies for tackling the PhD dissertation.

Write daily

This is a time to have honest conversations with yourself about your writing and work habits. Do you tackle the most challenging work in the morning? Or do you usually start with emails? Knowing your work routine will help you set parameters for the writing process, which includes various elements, from brainstorming ideas to setting outlines and editing. Once you are aware of your energy and focus levels, you’ll be ready to dedicate those times to writing.

While it might be tempting to block a substantial chunk of time to write and assume anything shorter is not useful, that is not the case. Writing daily, whether it’s a paragraph or several pages, keeps you in conversation with your writing practice. If you schedule two hours to write, remember to take a break during that time and reset. You can try:

The Pomodoro Technique: a time management technique that breaks down your work into intervals
Taking breaks: go outside for a walk or have a snack so you can come back to your writing rejuvenated
Focus apps: it is easy to get distracted by devices and lose direction. Here are some app suggestions: Focus Bear (no free version); Forest (free version available); Cold Turkey website blocker (free version available) and Serene (no free version).

This is a valuable opportunity to hone your time management and task prioritisation skills. Find out what works for you and put systems in place to support your practice.

Resources on academic writing for higher education professionals
Stretch your work further by ‘triple writing’
What is your academic writing temperament?

Create a community

While writing can be an isolating endeavour, there are ways to start forming a community (in-person or virtual) to help you set goals and stay accountable. There might be someone in your cohort who is also at the writing stage with whom you can set up a weekly check-in. Alternatively, explore your university’s resources and centres because there may be units and departments on campus that offer helpful opportunities, such as a writing week or retreat. Taking advantage of these opportunities helps combat isolation, foster accountability and grow networks. They can even lead to collaborations further down the line.

Check in with your advisers and mentors. Reach out to your networks to find out about other people’s writing processes and additional resources.
Don’t be afraid to share your work. Writing requires constant revisions and edits and finding people who you trust with feedback will help you grow as a writer. Plus, you can also read their work and help them with their editing process.
Your community does not have to be just about writing! If you enjoy going on hikes or trying new coffee shops, make that part of your weekly habit. Sharing your work in different environments will help clarify your thoughts and ideas.

Address the why

The PhD dissertation writing process is often lengthy and it is sometimes easy to forget why you started. In these moments, it can be helpful to think back to what got you excited about your research and scholarship in the first place. Remember it is not just the work but also the people who propelled you forward. One idea is to start writing your “acknowledgements” section. Here are questions to get you started:

Do you want to dedicate your work to someone?
What ideas sparked your interest in this journey?
Who cheered you on?

This practice can help build momentum, as well as serve as a good reminder to carve out time to spend with your community.

You got this!

Writing is a process. Give yourself grace, as you might not feel motivated all the time. Be consistent in your approach and reward yourself along the way. There is no single strategy when it comes to writing or maintaining motivation, so experiment and find out what works for you.

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Student voices

Get the student perspective on life at York

Starting a PhD after a break from studying

13 May 2024 by Charlie

PhD student Charlie answers some questions about studying a PhD at York.

Hi, I’m Charlie and I’m a second year PhD student on the Adapting to the Challenges of a Changing Environment (ACCE) which is a Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) between York, Liverpool, Sheffield, UKCEH and the Natural History Museum. My project is looking at the impact woodlands have on nest predation of wader birds in the UK uplands. I’m based in the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity.

Why did you decide to do a PhD?

I was the first person in my family to go to university. There are no universities in Guernsey (where I’m from) so before my undergraduate I didn’t know much about how a university worked at all. Let alone about PhDs! It was something I developed an understanding of as I went.

I first started to think I’d want to do a PhD during my undergraduate third year research project. I thought of and developed the project from scratch looking at the distribution of hedgehogs in Guernsey. I just loved the process of learning about my subject, thinking of questions and ways to test it. Hedgehogs are very under-recorded in Guernsey despite being a common sight so I felt like I was making a genuine contribution. I spent hours working on it because I became a bit obsessed!

What did you do for your undergraduate degree?

I did a BSc in Zoology at Swansea University. Then an MRes in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation at Imperial College London, on their Silwood Park campus in Berkshire.

Did you go straight through your degrees or did you take any gaps?

I think it’s really important to give yourself time to explore your options and interests. I had a gap between my A levels and starting my undergraduate degree. Mainly because over my time at Sixth Form I’d started to realise that my goal of being a vet, which I’d been fixed on all my life, wasn’t actually what I wanted to do. I wanted to take the time to really research what other course options were available.

Then I took another gap between my Masters and starting my PhD. I did an MRes because I knew that would develop the skills I would need to do a PhD. However before diving into another four years of student life, I wanted to take a break to try out a couple of other possibilities that were also in my head. And to earn some money for a bit!

I spent almost a year working as a news reporter which gave me a lot of experience of science communication. I also worked as data and information officer at the Mammal Society for three years. This was more of a research role, and was also a really interesting experience of working for a small NGO.

Did you always want to do a PhD?

I think if I’d known that a PhD was a thing for more of my life (first gen + growing up on a small island with no higher education means my knowledge was limited!) I would have aspired to do one for longer! Even in the jobs I tried out between Masters and PhD, I knew I wouldn’t be happy until I was doing a PhD. I just love learning new things, thinking of questions and how I can answer them.

What do you enjoy most about the University?

It’s a beautiful campus! As an ecology student I love that I can just take a work break to walk round the lake, listen to the ducks, go to Nisa, buy some bird feed and watch the chaos ensue! The University is also really active. There’s always so many different events going on or things to join in with or try out. I’ve been trying to make the most of the opportunities available.

What do you enjoy most about York?

I’d never been to York before I moved here to start but I wasn’t too worried. Whenever a friend visited York, they’d always tell me I’d love it and I trusted their judgement! I like that it’s a small city, walkable but with lots of interesting history. I’m enjoying exploring and getting to know the place. I’ve been ticking off all the cat statues and I finally feel like I know where I’m going in town now!

What is LCAB?

LCAB stands for the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity . It’s based on the top floor of the Berrick-Saul Building on Campus West and is host to a mix of disciplines including Biology, Environment and Geography, Archeology, English and History. Every Monday at 1pm we hold “Anthropocene Biodiversity Conversations” open to all and a chance for members of the centre, or guest visitors, to talk about their work and receive feedback – and a chance for attendees to eat cake! We also have research forums, a coding club and monthly breakfast pastries among other things. It’s a great working atmosphere and there’s almost as many plants up here as researchers!

What do you do in your free time?

This year I decided to take up a couple of extra hobbies. Through the College Music Scheme and the Music Society I’ve borrowed a violin and been receiving weekly lessons with a university music student. The scheme has so many different instruments to borrow and the Music Society has a list of student teachers if you want lessons. I think this is such a cool thing to have available to students. I was amazed by how many instruments are available to borrow!

Through the University’s Languages for All programme (which has student rates) I’m taking beginner Japanese this year which has been great fun! They hold classes for lots of different languages. I picked Japanese as I wanted to try a language I’d never had any experience of at all. In recent years I’ve read quite a lot of books translated from Japanese, and have been working my way through Studio Ghibli’s films!

I’ve also joined the Inklings Society which meets every Thursday evening during semesters. There’s talks on different literary genre/techniques with writing challenges weaved in and a chance to read your creation back to the group if you want to. It usually finishes with a drink at the Courtyard in Derwent so that’s been really fun too!

What events take place for PhD students?

In Biology, there’s monthly coffee and cake which is a nice chance to say hello to other students, especially as I’m based in another building. I’m a rep for the ACCE DTP. We’ve just restarted our monthly lunch meetup where ACCE students from across departments can catch up together. They worked really well last year so it’ll be nice to start them up again!

Wentworth College, assigned to most postgraduate students, also put on several events each week and send a weekly bulletin round so you can see what you fancy doing each week. The Biology reps are also great at thinking up fun activities throughout the year.

Anything you wish you’d known before starting a PhD?

Everything doesn’t always go as planned and that’s fine! I spent the first six months of my PhD preparing for a field season, but the design didn’t work out quite as planned. I also discovered I have a knee problem so my fieldwork got cut short and I’m working on something a bit different and more desk based. However, you find from talking to others, that not everything you try will just work, and that’s okay. Your project will adapt.

What was it like starting a PhD after a gap from undergraduate and Masters?

Even though I knew I wanted to do a PhD, it was a bit scary looking to apply later! Thanks to my September birthday always making me a year older before I’ve even started, I was 28 when I began my PhD. I will have just turned 32 at my final hand in date. It felt weird thinking I’d be 32 by the time I finish. Everyone I knew who was doing a PhD had already started so they’d finish and still be in their twenties. It feels like a big number to still be a student!

However, on starting, I’ve seen that there’s quite a mix of ages. A lot of people have taken a gap between their degrees and starting a PhD. I’m realising that it’s not a big deal if it’s what I want to do. And having spent a few years working it means I’ve got extra experience and I’m already in a routine of work which is really helpful for managing yourself. So anyone in the same situation I’d say it’s more common than you think to have taken some time away. You’ll be fine!

Read more blogs about postgraduate research at York

About Charlie

Hi, I’m Charlie and I’m a second year PhD student on the Adapting to the Challenges of a Changing Environment which is a Doctoral Training Partnership between York, Liverpool, Sheffield, UKCEH and the Natural History Museum. Outside of my PhD, I’m a massive bookworm. I also enjoy playing the ukulele and have just taken up learning the violin and Japanese. I’ll be in the sea whenever I’m anywhere near the coast!

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Starting a Garden This Summer? Here's What to Do Before Planting

Here's how you can keep your garden thriving all summer long.

Getting started with your own garden is easier than you might think.

Growing up, my family members kept gardens that looked like they belonged in a fairy tale. Thanks to my grandmothers, great aunt and parents, I've always known how a beautiful, thriving garden should look. That also means I know just how much hard work and planning goes into cultivating great lawns and gardens.

For beginner gardeners, the sheer amount of effort it takes to begin growing your own flower or vegetable garden -- or even just cultivating a great-looking lawn -- can be overwhelming. There's plenty of contradictory information about the right way to do things, and it's easy to get bogged down in trying to be a perfect gardener. Beyond that, you have to do the physical labor involved in planting your first garden.

From my perspective, the best way to really get started with gardening is to arm yourself with the necessary tools and information, and then let all the complicated watering patterns, lawn designs and composting strategies come later. Read on for some essential tips and tricks for getting your garden started this spring.

For more, here are the 10 best places to buy plants online and five questions to ask before buying outdoor furniture .

Read (and keep) your plant labels and seed packets

One of the best things you can do to set yourself up for gardening success is to read the seed packets and plant labels before planting or even buying your plants. The information on your seed packets will tell you everything you need to know about what your plants will require and what environment they'll thrive best in.

On a plant label or seed packet, you can find information on how much light your plant will need, how much space your plant requires, and your plant's hardiness. Hardiness refers to the lowest winter temperature a plant can withstand. For instance, citrus trees won't be able to survive very low winter temperatures the same way other plants can. You can also see your region's hardiness zone using this map from the US Department of Agriculture .

By arming yourself with all the information you can get about what you're planning to plant, you'll be setting your plants up for a long and healthy life.

Watch your yard

Just like you need to gather all the information about what you're going to plant, you'll need to get all the info about where you'll plant it. By watching your yard, you can observe what areas get the best morning or afternoon sun, and which areas get good shade.

You don't want to place light-sensitive plants in an area of your yard where they'll get hours of hot, afternoon sun. Getting to know your yard better will help you avoid any planting mistakes right out of the gate.

Get to know your soil

It's quite possible that the dirt in your yard won't be very conducive to growing plants, and it's pretty easy to test your soil. All you have to do is dig up a small patch in the area where you want to plant your garden.

You'll want to see if your soil is sandy, mostly made of clay or if it's rich and dark. Don't worry if you're not a soil expert, you just need to be prepared to make observations about how your soil looks and feels (this guide from the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources is helpful). You can even buy a soil testing kit , to take out some of the guesswork.

If your soil isn't quite right for planting, never fear. You can buy topsoil or potting soil from your local nursery or lawn and garden store. These soils will be able to provide your plants with all the nutrients they might need. It'll just take a bit of extra investment on your part.

Equip yourself with the right tools

Investing in simple but high-quality gardening tools when you get started gardening can make your life much easier down the road. All you need to get started is a small spade and a digging fork , a decent pair of gloves and a foam knee pad .

Getting started with planting

Once you've picked the right spot, purchased your seeds, and acquired all your tools, it'll finally be time to start planting. I'd recommend fencing off, or at the very least marking, where you intend to place your first plants.

Depending on whether you're working with pregrown flowers, or if you're starting from seeds, you'll want to prep your garden in different ways. For instance, if you're planting pregrown flowers, you can simply dig a small hole, place the root ball inside and then cover it with topsoil. If you're working with seed packets, the packet will tell you exactly how you should be planting your seeds.

Additionally, you can turn to the seed packet or plant label when it comes to deciding how regularly to water your plants, and any other special needs your plants might have as they grow. When in doubt, turn to your plant labels and seed packets.

For more, here are the best garden subscriptions and here's how to make your grill shine before firing it up for the first time this season .

Starting a Garden This Summer? Here's What to Do Before Planting

G rowing up, my family members kept gardens that looked like they belonged in a fairy tale. Thanks to my grandmothers, great aunt and parents, I've always known how a beautiful, thriving garden should look. That also means I know just how much hard work and planning goes into cultivating great lawns and gardens.

For more, here are the 10 best places to buy plants online and five questions to ask before buying outdoor furniture .

Read (and keep) your plant labels and seed packets

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10 things you need to know before starting a PhD degree
5. Embrace change - don't get bogged down in the details. Felix Shaw - one of our bioinformatics researchers at EI - put it best when he said, " it felt like I was running into brick walls all the way through [my PhD]… you'd run into a brick wall, surmount it, only to run straight into another. It's true.
Twenty things I wish I'd known when I started my PhD
Lucy Taylor received her PhD from the University of Oxford, UK, in 2018. Credit: Susanne Vogel. Starting a PhD can be tough. Looking back, there are many things I wish I'd known at the beginning.
9 things you should consider before embarking on a PhD
9. There are no real breaks. In a stereotypical "9-to-5" job, when the workday is over or the weekend arrives, you can generally forget about your work. And a vacation provides an even longer respite. But in a PhD program, your schedule becomes "whenever you find time to get your work done."
How to Prepare for and Start a PhD
It is valuable to become more knowledgeable about the research field, even before you start the PhD research. Because a PhD is an independent research project, you will be responsible for the planning and management throughout. This planning includes setting SMART (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, time-bound) aims and objectives.
What to know before starting your Ph.D. program
Have a good cheerleader—such as your partner, a friend, or a family member—to remind you that you're smart, motivated, and hard-working. Accept the compliment because it is true. And remind yourself that everyone is "faking it until they make it."
PhD Student Advice
All the many things I've learnt as a PhD Student and wish I had known earlier in the PhD process0:00 - intro1:12 - 1. How a PhD is assessed 5:20 - 2. A PhD i...
PhD FAQs
17. In summary, PhD stipends are really not that different to grad starting salaries. Please don't be put off from a PhD simply because for a few years you might be earning a bit less than if you were working in another job. Depending on what you want to do with your career, having a CV may lead to higher salaries.
Applying for a Ph.D.? These 10 tips can help you succeed
The key is knowing what to do to prepare and how to compile and submit a strong application. We hope these 10 tips will help you get started. 1. Be true to yourself: First and foremost, consider your goals. Many students are initially interested in pursuing a Ph.D. because they want to become a professor.
A Guide to PhD Success: How to Thrive During Doctoral Studies
Answering this question is the first thing to do before starting any PhD program; remember, getting a doctorate will take several years and a lot of hard work. In most cases, a PhD is a highly specialized degree designed to prepare graduates for future careers in research or academia. So, if the idea of teaching college students or conducting ...
Five tips for starting (and continuing) a PhD
As it's the start of the academic year I want to share a few of my own tips along those lines, to help get your PhD off to a good start, and keep it on a trajectory you're happy with: 1. Keep notes on everything you read. My PhD, like many, kicked off with lots of reading of textbooks and academic papers. My reading has ebbed and flowed ...
10 (more) things you should know before starting a PhD
1. Choosing an institute or a university. Many PhD students don't consider the differences between a supervisor who works at a research institute or one who works at a university. There are advantages and disadvantages to both….and it's worth thinking about this, depending on what you want to do with your PhD.
Six Things I wish I knew before starting a PhD
Priya, PhD Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre. 3. Really get to know your supervisor. Try to have a good open relationship with your supervisor, because they are who can really help you when times are tough, and they'll help you make the most of your PhD. "Build a strong relationship with them and tell them who you are.
Should I do a PhD? 4 things I wish I knew before starting my PhD
Before you even start your PhD, you will be required to write plans about what your research will cover. Planning is a crucial component of completing a PhD within the time you are allocated. Without to-do lists, or general ideas about what you will be working, or search for during your doctorate, you will certainly be lost.
What you need to know before starting a PhD: A checklist
How to check this: 1. Speak with them and gauge their demeanour. 2. Speak with previous students that are no longer in the group - check publications for names of people to contact, and do so. Basically, ask for references. 3. Visit with the group (if you can) and observe the group culture.
14 Things you need to know when starting a PhD • The PhD Lab
12. There is mental help if you need it. There will come a time in your PhD when things won't go well. If this affects you psychologically, find support before you are too far down the hole to reach out. Sit down today, as you have a clear head and are optimistic, and make a list of where you can get help if needed.
Nine things to know before doing a PhD
Doing a PhD is the peak of one's formal academic training. However, there are a number of career paths that you can follow before getting a PhD and it is not vital to have one to have a successful career.. Undertaking a PhD is a time-consuming and tiring process, and there are many different opinions on the need for doing a PhD - not all of them positive.
A Guide to Your First Week as A PhD Student
Before starting your PhD and in the early stages, you're likely to receive many pieces of paperwork that need to be processed. These may range from ensuring the university has your correct bank details for making stipend payments, to getting your email address and university logins established. These have to be done so try to prioritise this ...
12 Things You Should Know Before You Start A PhD
12. Try before you buy. If there's a way to work in or near the field you want to do a PhD in (after undergraduate, honours or Masters) then try it. Often it's easy enough to get a job doing ...
What to know before starting your Ph.D. program
An article published back in September, in Science magazine, aims to answer the age-old question, "What do I need to know before starting my Ph.D.?" by asking current Ph.D. students. and postdocs what they wish they had known about graduate school when they started. Starting a Ph.D. program can be a daunting experience, whether one is starting straight out of an undergraduate program ...
First Year PhD Student Advice
PhD student advice for first year. At the beginning of my PhD it was a bit difficult to know what to do and where to get started. Along the way I have figure...
80 things I wish I knew when I was doing my PhD
9. Keep steady on your path. During your PhD, you'll have days where nothing seems to make sense. You may question why you're doing your PhD at all, or you may look towards the future with anxiety and doubt as you wonder whether you'll ever be 'good enough' or whether you'll ever 'make it'.
How to get a PhD: Steps and Requirements Explained
Step 5: Prepare a research proposal. A research proposal is a document that outlines what, exactly, a PhD student will focus on during their research. A research proposal should include the major question or questions someone plans to answer with their dissertation, and how exactly they plan to arrive at that answer.
Dixi Yao
In summary, before starting research, you need to keep it in mind that your ultimate goal is having individual research experience before application. What do I mean by managing research? Even the god needs seven days to create the world, it is impossible for you to start individual research once you touch it.
What did you do the summer before starting your PhD? Looking ...
If I could go back and give myself advice for the summer before my PhD I'd say take you time. You're about to be insanely busy and stressed beyond what you could ever imagine. Take the time to get some sunshine, visit family, decompress and get some perspective while you can. It would obviously help your resume to have a job or volunteer time.
How to tackle the PhD dissertation
How to tackle the PhD dissertation. Finding time to write can be a challenge for graduate students who often juggle multiple roles and responsibilities. Mabel Ho provides some tips to make the process less daunting ... While writing can be an isolating endeavour, there are ways to start forming a community (in-person or virtual) to help you set ...
Starting a PhD after a break from studying
What was it like starting a PhD after a gap from undergraduate and Masters? Even though I knew I wanted to do a PhD, it was a bit scary looking to apply later! Thanks to my September birthday always making me a year older before I've even started, I was 28 when I began my PhD. I will have just turned 32 at my final hand in date.
Starting a Garden This Summer? Here's What to Do Before Planting
Once you've picked the right spot, purchased your seeds, and acquired all your tools, it'll finally be time to start planting. I'd recommend fencing off, or at the very least marking, where you ...
Starting a Garden This Summer? Here's What to Do Before Planting
For more, here are the 10 best places to buy plants online and five questions to ask before buying outdoor furniture.. Read (and keep) your plant labels and seed packets. One of the best things ...
How To Potty Train: Our Best Tips
But Slocombe recommends waiting until your child is between 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 years old before starting to potty train. "That's when most children have enough brain and bladder development to ...
10 Signs of Labor Starting
Your baby's due date is fast approaching. While the early signs of labor can vary from person to person, there are a few symptoms, like cramps and contractions, you can watch for. An Ob/Gyn ...

Twenty things I wish I’d known when I started my PhD

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PhD FAQs – A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Doctoral Study

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Five tips for starting (and continuing) a PhD

1. Keep notes on everything you read

2. Read a couple of theses

3. Start a Word document called “Thesis”

4. Think about how to make the flexibility of your PhD (and your control over it) work best for you

5. Talk to people, lots, in both general and specific ways

…And one bonus tip: read advice from other (ex-) PhD students

Practical tips on how to be an interdisciplinary individual

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10 (more) things you should know before starting a PhD

1. Choosing an institute or a university

PhDs at the Earlham Institute

Related reading.

PhD life at the Earlham Institute: what our students say

A PhD, is it worth it? Just ask our students

10 things you need to know before starting a PhD degree

Six Things I wish I knew before starting a PhD

1. You won’t get these opportunities again… so put yourself out there

2. You will wish you had taken better notes

3. Really get to know your supervisor

4. You don’t need to be working 24/7

5. Sometimes things won’t go to plan… Learn to accept failure

6. You will get there!

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Should I do a PhD? 4 things I wish I knew before starting my PhD

1. A PhD will give you so much more than just a career pathway

How will a PhD help you in your career?

2. There are many different paths into a PhD

3. What you plan to do is not always as great as what you accidentally do

4. Everyone feels like they are inadequate sometimes

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14 Things you need to know when starting a PhD

1. Doing a PhD is tough.