The nature of research is that other people are probably working on similar ideas to you, and it is possible that someone will beat you to publishing them.
Posts Tagged ‘phd’:
What you wish you knew before you started a PhD
I asked my research group recently what they wished they had learned before they started work on a PhD. Here are some of the responses.
Why God never received tenure
He had only one major publication. It was in Hebrew. It had no references. It wasn’t published in a refereed journal. Some even doubt he wrote it by himself. It may be true that he created the world, but what has he done since then? The scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results. He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human subjects. When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it by drowning his subjects. When subjects didn’t behave as predicted, he deleted them from the sample. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book. Some say he had his son teach the class. He expelled his first two students for learning. Although there were only 10 requirements, most of his students failed his tests. His office hours were infrequent and often held on limited access mountain tops. No record of working well with colleagues. This list must have appeared on thousands of sites and I’ve not been able to track down the source. In fact, a search on the phrase yields over 43,000 results on Google. There are another 3,700 where it is titled “Why God never received a PhD”. If anyone knows the original source, please post
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How to fail a PhD
I read an interesting post today by Matt Might on “10 reasons PhD students fail”, and I thought it might be helpful to reflect on some of the barriers to PhD completion that I’ve seen. Matt’s ideas are not all relevant to Australian PhDs, so I have come up with my own list below. Here are the seven steps to failure. 1. Wait for your supervisor to tell you what to do A good supervisor will not tell you what to do. PhD students are not meant to be research assistants, and a PhD is not an extended undergraduate assignment. So waiting to be told what to do next will usually get you nowhere. By the time you graduate with a PhD, you are supposed to be an independent researcher. That means having your own ideas, setting your own research directions, and choosing what to do yourself. In practice, your supervisor will usually need to tell you what to do for the first year, but eventually you need to set the research agenda yourself. By the third year you should certainly know more about your topic than your supervisor, and so are in a better position to know what to do next. 2. Wait for inspiration Sitting around
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What to do when the PhD is finished?
So you’re wondering what to do once your PhD is finally completed? First, take a holiday. Completing a PhD is an intense and draining exercise, and you should take some time to refresh. Then you need to decide what career path you prefer. In statistics, there are three choices: the academic route, the semi-academic route and the business route. Academic route Most PhD students would like an academic job. In fact, I think all of my PhD students have rather fancied my job! However, it is not an easy path, especially in the first few years. The ideal situation is to get a post-doctoral fellowship, preferably in a different university (and a different country) from where you studied for your doctorate. That gives you some time to concentrate on consolidating your research and to learn from another supervisor. Working in a different country also helps you develop a broader network of research contacts. But there aren’t many post-doc positions around, and so it is hard to get something suitable. I am occasionally asked by other researchers if I have any good students finishing soon as they have a post-doc position available. In this case, I pass the information on to any students likely to finish at about the right time. But these are positions
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The 7 secrets of highly successful PhD students
It seems everyone has 7 secrets to success, and now someone has hopped on the 7-secrets bandwagon with something for PhD students. Thinkwell is an Australian company offering a seminar and associated work book on “The 7 secrets of highly successful PhD students”. I bought the book out of curiosity, but “book” is a gross exaggeration — only eleven pages of fairly simplistic advice. I hope the seminar has more substance. For what it’s worth, here are the so-called seven secrets. Care and maintenance of your supervisor. Write and show as you go. Be realistic. Say no to distractions. It’s a job. Get help. You can do it. If you can work out what is meant from those headings, you’re doing better than me. After reading the “book”, I think a better summary would be as follows. Meet regularly with your supervisor. Write up your research ideas as you go. Have realistic research goals. Beware of distractions and other commitments. Set regular hours and take holidays. Make full use of the available help. Persevere. Nothing too surprising there. Perhaps it should have been called “Seven obvious things PhD students should already know”. If I haven’t put you all off, one of the authors is presenting the seminar at Monash in a couple of weeks. The
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