Surviving a PhD – 10 Top Tips…

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The Thesis Whisperer

This post is by Dr Alex Hope, a  Lecturer in Sustainable Development and Project Management at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom and was originally post on his blog. Alex is also on Twitter where he tweets about sustainability, academia, PhD advice and life. I hope you will head on over there and check out what he has to say!

I was awarded my PhD in January this year following a successful viva in November 2011, so thought I would try and summarise my experiences over the last 3-4 years and see if I could come up with some key points of advice from start to finish…

Tip 1 – Academics need you: Most are keen to speak to any potential student who has a good research idea as a good record of successful PhD supervisions is essential to build a successful academic career. Don’t be afraid to approach a…

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On time management

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What's new

Prodded by several comments, I have finally decided to write up some my thoughts on time management here.  I actually have been drafting something about this subject for a while, but I soon realised that my own experience with time management is still very much a work in progress (you should see my backlog of papers that need writing up) and I don’t yet have a coherent or definitive philosophy on this topic (other than my advice on writing papers, for instance my page on rapid prototyping). Also, I can only talk about my own personal experiences, which probably do not generalise to all personality types or work situations, though perhaps readers may wish to contribute their own thoughts, experiences, or suggestions in the comments here. [I should also add that I don’t always follow my own advice on these matters, often to my own regret.]

I can…

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Quals! What are they good for? Absolutely…

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An Ergodic Walk

… nothing? So sayeth some in the business. Bill Gasarch wrote a post up last week about the “point” of the qualifying exam in which he says the two points of the process are to get students out of the program who may not be able to finish, and to make sure students are “well rounded.” While this is nice from an administrative/pedagogical point of view, I think they first question to ask is “what can you measure with a qualifying process?”

At Berkeley we had an exam after your first year — the “prelim” in your subject area. In CS (theory, at least, not sure about other areas) this was a presentation of a paper (or so I recall). You had to know it cold and be able to provide context, answer questions etc. In EE it was a 1 hour oral exam on 3 topics — two undergrad…

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long way to go