Finito
Last Friday I received my examiner reports and all is fine. Need to respond to comments but no revisions necessary. My tips for fellow PhD students in order of importance:
*Work well with your supervisor(s). Keep them happy and they will help you out. I cannot stress how important this is.
*Present your work at other unis, conferences or PhD seminars. There are many advantages to this but most of all you will have exposed your work to others and networked with fellow academics. Some may even be your potential examiners.
*Troubleshoot your problems with fellow PhDs if you can't work it out. This can be anything from creating a research question to trouble with data. The reason is that this may be faster than learning by yourself or asking your supervisor (who may not know or be too busy).
*Write up a paper as quick as possible. As long as the idea is there and you have done a few tests that's all that matters. Then you can show it to others and refine it as needed. The research question is the most important part after all. It is rather useless to go and perfect a paper to you or your supervisor's liking (which would both eat up a lot of time), as more often than not people who have not seen the work will find glaring errors no matter how careful you are (unless you're a genius). I wouldn't worry about showing your errors as you have no reputation to begin with, and when you fix the paper it can only be stronger.
*Don't waste time. You may think three/four years is a lot of time but it isn't. You have to factor in time to develop a research question and failure time (bad research question, revising papers, etc) You must start thinking of your papers from the get go and start writing/researching.
*Think up your own research questions. All my papers, bar one, have been my ideas. My supervisors give me a broad topic area and/or help refine an idea I have. I would recommend you think of your own research questions as it is a key motivating factor and also trains you to think up more papers. Plus supervisor research questions are too boring/broad/impractical/obscure anyway. That is not their fault. They have not read and thought as thoroughly about the question as you have.
*Work well with your supervisor(s). Keep them happy and they will help you out. I cannot stress how important this is.
*Present your work at other unis, conferences or PhD seminars. There are many advantages to this but most of all you will have exposed your work to others and networked with fellow academics. Some may even be your potential examiners.
*Troubleshoot your problems with fellow PhDs if you can't work it out. This can be anything from creating a research question to trouble with data. The reason is that this may be faster than learning by yourself or asking your supervisor (who may not know or be too busy).
*Write up a paper as quick as possible. As long as the idea is there and you have done a few tests that's all that matters. Then you can show it to others and refine it as needed. The research question is the most important part after all. It is rather useless to go and perfect a paper to you or your supervisor's liking (which would both eat up a lot of time), as more often than not people who have not seen the work will find glaring errors no matter how careful you are (unless you're a genius). I wouldn't worry about showing your errors as you have no reputation to begin with, and when you fix the paper it can only be stronger.
*Don't waste time. You may think three/four years is a lot of time but it isn't. You have to factor in time to develop a research question and failure time (bad research question, revising papers, etc) You must start thinking of your papers from the get go and start writing/researching.
*Think up your own research questions. All my papers, bar one, have been my ideas. My supervisors give me a broad topic area and/or help refine an idea I have. I would recommend you think of your own research questions as it is a key motivating factor and also trains you to think up more papers. Plus supervisor research questions are too boring/broad/impractical/obscure anyway. That is not their fault. They have not read and thought as thoroughly about the question as you have.
posted by Adrian at
1:45 AM
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