Five tips to survive your PhD

(klik di sini untuk versi Indonesia)

I found a very funny comic from my favourite site the PhDcomics.com just now. It’s about the ‘final’ document of a manuscript (the PhD thesis in this case, but it could be any ‘final’ document too). The comic is so true to the real world of a PhD student, so I thought I should post it here. 

This PhDcomic is so true to the real world, you know?

Also, the comic reminds me of a post I’ve been meaning to write about, concerning PhD life. I’ve made a post on tips on studying abroad here, and apparently, it is the second most popular (comparatively speaking) post in this blog. Hence, I think it’s also important (at least interesting for me) to write a post about how to survive (and hopefully thrive on) our PhD and thesis. 

So, on the previous post, I’ve shared my thoughts on how to schedule your seminars (at least the confirmation and exit seminars, and the mid-tenure seminar in between). I also suggested that you write your PhD in paper format, instead of book format, should your supervisor and/or university approve. Most importantly, submit the thesis before returning to your home country. I didn’t submit my PhD thesis before returning  to Indonesia; I still had some minor layout works and final (I mean final) English editing to do. I managed to submit it three weeks after I returned home to Bali. But the thesis still haunted my life for three weeks, so if I could, I still prefer to have submitted it before returning home.

For this post, I will go backward and give five tips on how to choose a research topic and surviving your PhD life, at least the thesis-writing part. Do keep in mind that I am by no means the best student in my cohort. However, I do have some experience to share with you, fellow PhD candidates. These tips are also applicable to students conducting Masters by Research program. 

1.       Choose a topic you love

2.       Choose a topic that will have a significant contribution to your devoted body of knowledge

3.       Tell a story with your thesis

4.       Be sensible about your targets

5.       Manage your supervisors

1.       Choose a topic you love

This is the most important tip I have. I understand the temptation to just do an already funded PhD project, instead of starting anew from scratch with something you love. If there is an opportunity to do a PhD project with committed funding, and you like or are interested in that project, by all means do so. But if you just do that because: 1) it seems cool to have a PhD next to your name, and 2) it’s already funded anyway, so you don’t have to do the fundraising... please stop and reconsider it. Is it really worth your 4+ years of life? Most Australian PhD projects take more than four years from the initiation (i.e., the day you commence your PhD) to submitting... and another semester to wait for the examiners’ results and revising the thesis. Are you willing to spend your four-five years doing something that you don’t really love? Or at least interested in? Just because the project is already fully-funded?

I have a friend who is currently doing a fully funded project, but his heart isn’t really in it. However, since his project is part of another big picture with many political agendas, he has to race against the clock and feeling generally unhappy because of it. Do you want to spend 4-5 years feeling unhappy?

Also, if possible, choose a topic that you love, instead of a topic that is popular at the moment. For instance, everyone seems to talk about global climate change now. Since it's so popular now, you think that it would be cool to have a PhD topic related to climate change. If you really mean it, go ahead. But don't pick that topic 'just' because everyone is talking about global climate change now. You might lose interest in it in a few years, and if there is not enough love, it will be difficult to summon that power to move on and finish the PhD.

I always compare a PhD life with a long-term relationship. You have to mean it for it to work. You have to love it with all your heart, with all the cells in your body. Okay, perhaps not 'have to'. Perhaps it's 'would be better if'. But you get what I mean. Choose with your heart first. Thus, whenever troubles come (and trust me, they will come), you have enough energy to stay with your relationship, I mean, your PhD.

Marriage vs Phd. Honestly...

A good suggestion from Dr Rie Hagihara:

I've read your posting and I liked it! Especially number 2 and 5 are really the centre of my challenge in my PhD. There are couple of things you could add.
For number 1 (choose a topic you love), there are times when you cannot do what you want to do. You mentioned about it in the number 2 (choose a topic that will have a significant contribution to your field), but I think in number 1, you could add "choose analytical tools you are interested in". Things you will do after phD is not necessarily what you are doing on PhD. So, if you cannot work on a subject you love (e.g., corals, koalas), then choose tools that you are intersted in and want to learn and make you an expert of (e.g., GIS analyst, executing interviews, DNA analyst, statistician).

2.       Choose a topic that will have a significant contribution to your devoted body of knowledge

After you choose with your heart (or the right-side of the brain), now it’s time to use the left-side of the brain, the analytical part of us. So you love one research topic so much, it’s so cool and makes you excited. But is it going to contribute significantly to your cause? It doesn’t have to change the world. But is your research likely to reveal important information people need to move forward in your field of work? 

Let me dig an example from my own research in Lovina.  I am actually in love with the bioacoustics aspect of the cetaceans. To me, it’s cool-bordering-scifi to put dip the hydrophone into the water and listen to the dolphins chippering. It reminds me of Jodie Foster trying to find patterns among irregularities in the radio signals she received from the New Mexican Very Large Array Radiotelescope in Carl Sagan’s Contact. 

However, would information on spinner dolphin acoustic pattern in Lovina help the apparent problem there, i.e., the unsustainable practice of dolphin watching? Wouldn’t it be better for me to collect information that supports conservation and management works towards sustainable dolphin tourism in Lovina? It was actually the same reason why I eventually agreed to examine the social, economics and governance aspects of the Lovina dolphin watching industry. It would be nice to do pretty stuff like bioacoustics, but it is not what is required at the moment. One day perhaps I can do a bioacoustics analysis for the Lovina dolphins. But at the moment, I know where my priorities are. 

3.       Tell a story with your thesis

In the last three years or so, an exciting trend emerged in Australia (and USA at least). PhD students are encouraged to attend a three-minutes presentation competition titled ‘My Research in Three Minutes’. The aim is to tell your research topic to general audience in three minutes with a single slide (and no complicated animation). I never won the contest the two times I entered (very difficult to do that when you’re not a native speaker). However, each time I joined the competition, I gained clearer and clearer understanding of what my research is really about.  And each time, I got more excited with my research!

Put it this way: if you are not excited with your research, who will? If you can’t summarise your research in three minutes and capturing your audience such that they beg for more, how will you convince people that your research is important?  

4.       Be sensible about your targets

Choose a topic you can finish in 4 years, not 10 years (let alone a lifetime). PhD is part of your life. Your life does not consist solely of your PhD (although trust me, there are years where they do feel like that). Paraphrasing a postgraduate education expert from Canberra I met years ago (whose name I unfortunately forgot), this is a PhD, not a Noble Prize project! 

I knew many students who couldn’t finish on time because their PhD projects became mammoths as time went by.  Sometimes, the source of this unrealistic development is the student her/himself who wants to do as much as possible. This is where supervisors must do their job; saying that the scope is too big for a PhD project, and hence we must stop the data collection etc now instead of doing another thing for a few extra months. 

However, if the source of the project expansion is your supervisor(s), here’s where you, PhD candidates, must develop a bargaining power with them. See the next tip below.

5.       Manage your supervisors

I got this tip from Prof Helene Marsh, my principal supervisor at the James Cook University. Nowadays a PhD supervisory committee will usually consist of at least two supervisors (JCU encourages multi-school or multi-disciplinary team). These two supervisors will likely have different ideas of how the PhD thesis should be and where it should go.  I think you do have to heed to your supervisors’ suggestions on your thesis; they are supposed to be experts in their field anyway. However, by the end of the day, this is your thesis, this is your life. You decide what to do in the end, you decide how to tell the story in the end. 

Schedule regular meetings with your supervisors. I find fortnight meetings very helpful to keep me on track, although nearer to my submission, I met my supervisors every week. Helene usually suggested her students to manage their supervisors, e.g., when to deliver the reviews of the manuscript, when is the deadline on deciding the difficult choices, etc. Of course you don’t send your manuscript today when you are going to meet your supervisors tomorrow. When are they going to have time to read it? I know supervisors who want students to send the materials at least a week before the next meeting is scheduled. Work with your supervisor on the sensible time to submit a draft to be reviewed before the next meeting.

At the same time, if your supervisor isn’t returning your draft although you have sent it 10 days or a fortnight ago, it’s time IMO to summon the courage and email them about the manuscript. Be nice and polite about it, avoid demanding phrases. Your supervisors have personal life too, so you all must balance your personal life and PhD life smartly. Not easy, but it’s a must. 

When writing an email asking about the manuscript you sent before, write it nicely...

Another good suggestion from Dr Hagihara: 

For number 5 in para 3, your supervisors have their personal lives. That's true. They also have other works they have to do. We tend to forget that they also have other students or other commitments. Also in our case, our supervisors are excellent supervisors as they meet us every week. Other students are not that lucky. If they meet their supervisors once a month, that is considered as a good month. So, in some cases, you might have to press on the need to discuss or of your drafts to be read. That also should be asked in a polite and considerate manner as you mentioned already.

Now, in relation to the previous tip, it is very likely that at least one of your supervisors will suggest a project expansion. As in, instead of sticking to the agreed proposal, he/she suggests extra components to be added into the project. Although it sounds simple and, perhaps, interesting, extra components mean extra work. Even one extra data analysis with a different statistical method might take at least two more weeks to do. Imagine if you have to add another component to your work; how many more months must you spend in completing it? Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Your student visa is not easy to extend, particularly for AID-related visas (e.g., AusAID). 

How long it takes to do another work?

In the likely case that your supervisor wants project expansion, sit down and talk nicely with him/her. Remind her/him of your student visa dateline and the extra months required to work on the suggestion. However, it is also possible that their suggestions make sense. Prepare to listen and make room for sensible suggestions. Yet, if your sense and sensibility suggest that the expansion is not worth your precious time, kindly suggest that to your supervisor. It takes a lot of courage at times to talk to them, I know. But do it anyway.

In the end, it is your PhD. It is part of your life. Take charge.