Advice for a PhD student
Okay so I haven't written a blog or anything in a while and I miss it. It turns out that finishing a PhD can take up some of your time. Who would have thought?
After handing in my thesis (YESSSSSSS) last week I was asked by a friend what advice I would give to a fellow PhD-er on approaching the end.
So I thought.
And I wrote...
The first thing that came to my mind was the daunting feeling. Transitioning to the last year of my PhD I had begun to realise that I could no longer say 'oh I will think about how to deal with that issue later'; no, now I had to make decisions, justify previous decisions and.....write it up into a coherent narrative.
There was an apt moment one day in my PhD when I walked out of my lab at 10pm at the end of a back-breaking day and looked down the empty corridor. It felt lonely and never-ending. I chuckled to myself and thought, it has to end at some point. I tried really hard to adopt a positive outlook at that moment and I hope that this will be useful for some:
1) You may lose your mind. But don't forget, your PhD is a qualification- you are being trained. As a result, you should not expect to be perfect. You will disappoint yourself if you do. Failure WILL happen. Be it a failed experiment, an oversight in your theory or a flaw in your argument, the best thing for you to learn is how to deal with failure. This means accepting that failure is something that we all have to deal with and that it is a part of research. It's not personal. As a result, it should be celebrated and used positively. For example, you can either mourn over that contaminated sample that ruined weeks worth of work OR you can pick yourself up, accept that it happened and learn what to do differently to avoid that issue in the future. Then get on and do it.
Which of these strategies would make you happier? Which of these strategies would result in sucessful work first?
The same point of view can be applied to writing up your thesis. No matter how many times you read through it, there will always be something to change, always be errors. So don't be a perfectionist over it. The version you submit for your viva isn't even your final draft anyway!
2) What I found most useful when writing my thesis was thinking about what 'story' I could tell with my data. This will help you convey your findings in a clear way to your examiners and it will also get everything clear in your mind so that you can write it much more efficiently.Not only this, but having a clear story should set your data up for publication. I planned my chapters with my papers in mind, meaning that I had much less work to do converting them at a later date. By the time I submitted my thesis, my introduction was published and my first two chapters were accepted. In fact, I found that publishing whilst writing gave me goals and deadlines ahead of thesis submission and so broke the pressure up into smaller, more manageable chunks. It also came with the added bonus that most of my thesis had already been subject to peer review before my Viva. This has given me a much-needed confidence boost surrounding my work.
3) Look ahead in advance at the guidelines for your thesis. Each university and each department seem to have different regulations on word/page limits and formats. Just so you aren't scrambling at the last minute, make a note of stuff early on.
4) Make sure you don't make your PhD your world. Because if something goes wrong then your world can appear to come crashing down when it really isn't. To avoid this, always make sure you have a hobby or two so that when something inevitably fails you have something left to distract yourself with. I bought a loom and started weaving like the loomatic that I am. Okay, granted the hobby doesn't have to be as wierd as that, but it was sufficiently engaging to distract me from disaster. Hobbies give perspective and escapism. There is more to life than your PhD. Not only this, but they provide moments of rest for your brain, which means decent processing time. Some of my coolest ideas have randomly arrived at my brain whilst Zumba dancing: *shimmy*squat*idea for writing my abstract*squat*.
5) Don't be afraid to 'treat' yourself. The little things got me through. True, I may now be more plump and probably mildly alcoholic, but I am a happy plump alcoholic with a completed thesis. Obviously try not to become unhealthy. Excersice is awesome for stress and eating healthily will give you good energy and a strong immune system etc. What I'm saying is, allowing yourself to wind down with a nice glass of wine and a film with friends in the evening, or having the odd neck massage (by trainee beauticians of course- I'm not made of money), does more good for your PhD than feeling guilty about taking time off and never giving your brain enough breaks. Think work-life balance.
6) Keep your friends close. Very close. They're important and can keep you sane. The worst thing is to isolate yourself.
7) Finally, knuckle down. Drink tea from mugs bigger than your face and get on with it. The more you get done and the earlier you get it done, the more positive and confident you will become. After all, stress is not good for your health and your health is more important than some thesis. I always found that the actual process of writing can trigger cool ideas and develop links- things that you would ideally want earlier in the writing process rather than last minute. These ideas also serve well as motivation and confidence.
Good luck!
