Read this blog post to learn the real length of time to get a PhD. Duties And Responsibilities of Research Assistants. University S ervice is often a requirement for professors, but more of an option for PhD students. H owever, many PhD students choose to get involved in the university in some way as the university is their workplace and their community. There are a variety of ways that PhD students can get involved at their university such as becoming a board member of thei r graduate student association or participating in peer help groups on campus.
PhD students often either volunteer or are nominated by their department to represent graduate students and their needs to larger department or university committees. For example, I was briefly the graduate student representative at department meetings.
I was responsible for bringing the concerns or issues of graduate students to the department. University S ervice for PhD students is often geared towards advocating for the needs of graduate students and providing a sense of community for them at the university.
This is again not a mandatory requirement, but if you are interested in a career in academia it is a good idea to become acquainted with the needs of University Service. What is the average PhD Program acceptance rate? It is soo difficult to find out information on this, but check out our results from this poll.
The results are so curious! Many PhDs also attend special events periodically such as on campus speakers series. These types of events are sometimes required by universities or departments. Other special events include conferences and workshops. At this early stage PhD students may have something to present at conferences, but there are also a variety of conferences that PhD attend for networking reasons. Most fields have large yearly international conferences and early stage PhD students will sometimes attend those to get a sense of the field, the quality of research, and to network with others.
There are also many skill building workshops that PhDs can attend both at conferences and independently as their own events. For example, there are several skill building workshops in the field of Digital Humanities every summer that PhDs can often get scholarships to attend and learn new skills such as programming or digital story telling. At some point during the PhD, the balance shifts from learning and synthesis to writing and creating your own research.
You become the captain of your ship. When this happens the typical daily routine of a PhD student also shifts and the priorities and the demands on their time change.
At this point, you will feel like your are floundering, which is why I am trying to build the online writing accountability software. You need to check out this post to learn how you can join!
Writing is probably one of the biggest changes from early to late stage PhD. Now you have read enough and gathered all your data and have started to write your dissertation. Writing is now a much bigger chunk of your day and depending on the nearness of your deadline, it could be your whole day. When writing your dissertation your writing objective s shift.
Y ou are no longer concerned with synthesizing information that has come before you, but rather you are now focused on analysis and articulating the results of your own research with reference to other research still of course.
Much of your time is centered on producing your research to disseminate to your field. This also means that in addition to writing your dissertation, you may also be writing articles and conferences papers to share your brilliant ideas and original research. You might like this blog post about how to prevent depression when writing your dissertation — it provides great details into the writing process. I was not surprised with these results.
The modal time spent writing was hours a day. Despite the shift to much more writing focused than reading focused days, there is still always some reading to do.
New research comes out all the time, and it is best to stay on top of that to keep your own research competitive. Furthermore, your dissertation may take a turn you did not originally expect and so you need to read up on a topic in order to understand your results. For instance, my own research on late medieval Europe took a turn and I had to spend a few days reading up on what constituted treason in late medieval Europe in order to understand the ramifications of a political murder.
So, there is always going to be reading to do, but this will become a much smaller part of your everyday. Want to know the questions you should never ask during your PhD? Check out this pretty helpful blog post. Later in the PhD process, data collection also becomes a much smaller portion of your time. Most of the heavy data collection is done in the early stages and while you will often revisit your data, likely large collections of it are not going to be repeated at this stage.
However, you may have to collect some smaller sets of data, particularly again if your research has taken an unexpected turn.
For instance, I had to revisit the archives to find a separate set of historical documents when my research took an unexpected turn.
Unexpected turns happen in research projects so if you are in the late stages of your PhD and something does come up that you need to gather a little bit of data on that is not unusual. Want to learn how to analyze data from a survey? Check out this comprehensive post. I did a poll on the R3ciprocity YouTube community in August, on how much time researchers spend analyzing data.
Here are the results. Although your lab group should be there to support you, it is healthy to relax, rest and refresh outside of work. Take regular breaks and develop a routine to keep your body accustomed to your work schedule. This might be even harder in China than elsewhere: it is a mandatory requirement for PhD students in my university to have their findings published in reputable journals before a degree can be awarded, and this puts students under enormous pressure, given that there is limited time for scholarship students to complete their studies.
This policy has of course been widely criticized. PhD students in China report misery and hope. I used to skip lunch because I had experiments running into my lunch break, and I used to stay until 11 p. Whenever possible, if you need to do an overnight experiment or simulation, plan it in such a way that you do not have to sleep in the lab or skip meals. For instance, if you have a hour experiment or simulations to monitor, you could start it around 5 a.
Proper planning and efficient time management are essential on a PhD journey. Make judicious use of your time, and manage your health well. You will fail at some point. The trick is not to get stuck in that failure. The nature of research is such that things will not always go according to plan; this does not say anything about you as a student.
Keep calm, take some time off and carry on. It is not easy to give up on an idea that you have worked hard on, but knowing when to change direction is crucial to the success of a PhD. The first two ideas I worked on were unsuccessful, despite almost 24 months of total devotion.
One day, after a talk with my adviser, I moved on to a different project, which brought me great success and eventually led to several interesting discoveries. China is a great destination for tapping into the world of entrepreneurship, where failure is a professional inevitability. Many students come to China with the intention of obtaining a higher degree, but end up leaving with so much more. Apart from learning Mandarin, I have developed a commercial and entrepreneurial awareness, which not only provides financial benefits, but also gives me a sense of discipline and an appreciation for start-ups.
Data is an integral part of the PhD journey, so protecting your data and backing them up for easy recovery is essential. Losing your data can completely ruin your PhD experience and set you back months or even years.
A PhD friend of mine finished his labwork and decided to go off campus and finish his write up at home. He lost his laptop at the airport and, as a result, he lost three chapters of his thesis and updated results of other chapters. He had to rely on older back-up versions and needed a six-month extension to finish writing his dissertation. For the ultimate safety of your data, use two different back-up methods concurrently.
For instance, use an off-site cloud-storage service and a drive in your lab or institution. If either fail, you still have a backup. PhD students face significant mental-health challenges. Approximately one-third of PhD students are at risk of having or developing a psychiatric disorder, a recent study suggested. If you are struggling, seek help.
Problems with work—life balance ranked as a particular concern in Europe. Sometimes it stems from a lack of funding. The mental health of PhD researchers demands urgent attention. Some PhD students also have families to support, a challenge that can seem overwhelming. Sreejith Radhakrishnan thought he was busy when he started his PhD programme in veterinary medicine at Imperial College London, but becoming a father changed his perspective. Radhakrishnan hangs on largely because he feels deeply committed to his project, which involves searching for ways to slow the spread of rabies in his native India.
He frequently visits tiger reserves, looking for feral dogs that can be caught and vaccinated. He says that he spent nearly four years trying to put together the funding to start his PhD, so he began the programme with extra determination and focus. Even so, he says he often faces down impostor syndrome, a state of mind that transcends qualifications or accomplishments. Some aspects of the experience got especially high marks. But even satisfied students have their share of setbacks and complaints.
That finding echoes other research, including a review article 4 by Sverdlik and her colleagues showing that satisfaction with PhD programmes tends to decline over time. Unmet expectations can be a major source of dissatisfaction and disappointment. Like many others, Yang found that the stress of PhD work worsened over time. On top of those pressures, he has to worry about his visa, a concern for many foreign-born students in the United States.
Long work hours are another persistent complaint. Two-thirds thought that their PhD would substantially or dramatically improve their job prospects, a rate essentially unchanged from two years ago. The rest named research positions in government, medicine or non-profit organizations. Institutions also have much to learn. This survey and others like it should point the way for institutions trying to adapt to the needs of their students, Gotian says. Even though a majority of students are satisfied with their programmes, she says, their complaints and frustrations deserve close attention.
We need to constantly evolve. Woolston, C. Nature , — Article Google Scholar. Auerbach, R. PubMed Article Google Scholar. Oswalt, S. Sverdlik, A. Dr Stud.
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