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.
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Care and maintenance of your supervisor.
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Write and show as you go.
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Be realistic.
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Say no to distractions.
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It’s a job.
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Get help.
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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.
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Meet regularly with your supervisor.
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Write up your research ideas as you go.
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Have realistic research goals.
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Beware of distractions and other commitments.
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Set regular hours and take holidays.
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Make full use of the available help.
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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.
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Presenter: Maria Gardiner - iThinkwell
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Date: Friday 16 October, 2009
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Time: 9:30am - 12:30pm
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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.
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