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 details are as follows.
- Presenter: Maria Gardiner — iThinkwell
- Date: Friday 16 October, 2009
- Time: 9:30am — 12:30pm
- Venue: Theatre R2, Building 8 (Rotunda), Clayton
Bookings are essential (Monash students only)
The same authors have written several other booklets including “Time for research: time management for PhD students”, “The PhD experience: what they didn’t tell you at induction” and “Defeating self-sabotage: getting your PhD finished”. They are dreadfully over-priced and light-weight, but contain some snippets of useful advice. Students at Monash can borrow the books from me.
