Mastering Your PhD | Patricia Gosling & Bart Noordam

P.S. Part name was added by me. Some chapters are reordered.

Part I: Getting Started

Introduction

As a PhD student, it's important to understand the larger scene of the academic system and look from your supervisor's perspective. The author first introduce 3 typical stages of professorship, corresponding to 3 types of research teams:

• The start-up group (Assistant Professor)
  Your supervisor is in his/her junior years, whose career depends on your outcome. You will have frequent & intense interactions will your supervisor.
• The up-and-running group (Associate Professor)
  Your supervisor is in his/her mid-career, who has a lot of responsibilities and less time for you. Your fellow graduate students are your main support.
• The mature group (Full Professor)
  • The small but established group
  • The large and established group (the empire)

Getting Started

At the beginning of your PhD:

• Become familiar with your department/facilities/resources
• Formulate a working plan & schedule
• Maintain a proper lab notebook
• Establish your reference management system

Part II: Time Management

Setting Goals and Objectives

• Setting goals
  SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound
  • Clarify your goals, convert them into actions, and set priorities
  • Organize the actions into a plan
  • Monitor and measure your progress
• Time management

  Often that feeling of a lack of time has more to do with poor time management skills than with an actual lack of time.

  • Don't do multi-tasking
  • The 80/20 Rule
    Only 20% of your efforts produce 80% of the results.
    Bad sign: your always feel urgent and doing things other told you to do, which doesn't aligns with your overall goals.

Charting Your Progress Month by Month

You need some sort of monthly evaluation to bridge the very wide gap between your one-day and one-year plans.

• Monthly progress monitor template
  1. Of the results I obtained last month, which are the most important?
  2. Did I deviate from last month’s planning? If so, why?
  3. What are my most important goals for the upcoming month?
  4. What do I need to do to reach these goals? Which potential hurdles might I face, and how do I overcome them?
• Analyzing your progress
  • Compare this month's Q1 to last month's Q3
    You may be shocked to find that so many thins you've done was irrelevant to your major goals. (Recall the 20/80 rule)
  • Doing such comparison repeatedly then you may observe your work pattern. If it doesn't fit your priority, try to fix it.
  • You will also be more realistic of your pace and the potential hurdles.

    Staying ahead of the problem is a skill that will not only make your PhD a success, but one that will help you in all your future jobs.

Part III: Scientific Research

How to Think Like a Scientist

• Scientific method
  • Observation
  • Constructing a hypothesis
  • Carrying out experiments to test the hypothesis
  • Formulating a theory
• Common errors
  • Not proving the hypothesis by experiment
  • Discounting data that don’t support the hypothesis

Good Experimental Design

• A well-designed experiment should be able to discriminate between two different hypotheses

• Variable control

  It is important to eliminate the possibility that other factors in the overall experimental set up are producing the effect you observe, rather than the factor you are interested in studying.

  It's very important to log every detail in the experiment notes, for both reproducibility and identifying the involved variables.
  - Linked variables
  > If your variables are not independent of one another, and you have failed to notice this relationship, your results may not be valid... if a variable is truly independent, changing it will not influence the effects produced by another variable.

• Results
  To support a hypothesis, the results should be reproducible.

  • Accuracy & Precision
    Accuracy is the ability of a method to give a true measurement on average
    Precision is a measure of the method’s reproducibility
  • Random error & systematic error

    A good way to check for systematic errors is to run experiments that have been designed differently, but are meant to give you the same answers

Dealing with Setbacks

Creative solutions require out-of-the-box thinking. So far, what you’ve been doing has not been working, so it’s time to take another tack.

Part III: Research Papers

Searching the Scientific Literature

You need to be familiar with all the work that has been done on your topic, not just as a tool for learning, but to avoid repeating work that others have done before. Imagine the graduate student who spends six months doing a series of experiments only to discover (belatedly) that someone else has done them ten years ago.

We suggest that you keep a written record for the purpose of building your bibliography... If this sounds daunting and like a massive amount of work, just remember that investing time now in a proper literature search will save you vast amounts of time later on when you start writing up your own research articles (see Chapter 12), not to mention your thesis.

Signs of a completed literature search:

1. Identified the most recent articles (last 10 years, plus seminal articles) on your research topic.
2. Skimmed each article and prepared a brief summary of each one.
3. Assessed each article for the strengths and weaknesses of the experimental setup, methods and procedures used, data collection and analysis.

Your First International Conference

• Why attending conferences?
  • Bring you up to date on the latest research findings in your field.
  • You can start building your network within the academic world.
  • The feedback you receive at the meeting will give your research additional momentum.
  • P.S. Make sure the conference you're attending is relevant. Otherwise it won't be as beneficial.
    It's also recommended to prepare a list of goals before attending to the conference.
• Preparation: work with a checklist
  There is no short of things that require a lead time.
  • Registering for the meeting, sending your abstract to the organizers
  • Applying for visa and finding the best way to travel to the meeting and buying the tickets
  • Preparing your presentation (either oral or a poster)
  • Preparing pre-prints of your work and A4-sized handouts of your poster presentation
  • Packing your stuff
  • ...
• Attending the conference
  • Making sense of the conference program
    Don't try to attend every interesting talks. Leave some time between for relaxing/networking/reflecting on what you've learned.
  • Take notes & preparing for at least one question when listening to talks. Even if you won't raise that question afterwards, it boosts your engagement.
  • Reviewing your notes afterwards, before it becomes a distant memory.

From Data to Manuscript

Before writing a manuscript, think through these questions:

• Which questions did you ask?
• Which experiments did you perform to answer these questions?
• Which kinds of data did you collect and how did you collect them?
• Which conclusions did you draw from your data and what suggestions have you made for further research?

Part of being a good scientist is not just designing good experiments, but being able to present your work and to write it up in clear and simple language. Obscure language will not make you sound more intelligent, it will only confuse others. As a result your work will have much less impact on your intended audience.

Basic structure of a manuscript:

• Title & Abstract
• Introduction

  Write crisp and concise sentences to put your work into the proper context. It’s important to include enough background so that a reader not familiar with the field can understand the relevance of your work and put it into context with other work that has come before.... Explain to the reader why you decided to conduct your research.

• Method

  Provide enough information so that other researchers can understand exactly what you did and will be able to duplicate your work.

  • It is common practice to describe methods using the passive voice
• Result
  Table & figures tips

1. They must be able to stand alone... Do not repeat in the body of the manuscript information that is in the captions of tables or figures as this would be redundant.
2. It is easier to compare numbers by reading down a column rather than across a row. Therefore, list sets of data you want your reader to compare in vertical form.
3. The numbered title is written above the table... The numbered caption is written below the figure.

• Discussion & Conclusion

  In a nutshell, the Discussion section explains the meaning of the results... The Discussion section provides space for you to answer the questions that were posed in the introduction... The Discussion section is also the place for suggesting ideas for future research.

After writing your manuscript, don't skip the proof-reading step:

Print out your article and put it away for a few days so you can get some much needed distance from the process, because in the next stage, you will have to switch hats: from that of writer to editor. When you’re ready to return to it in a few days, read it all the way through with a cold and critical eye (just like a reviewer and eventual reader will do).

Celebrate Your Success

By celebrate your success, e.g. getting your paper accepted, you can:

• Express your gratitude to those who've helped you
• Reflect on the reason for your success, which might help you in the next phase of your research.

Part IV: Communication, Presentation & Administrative Affairs

How to Communicate with Others

We believe that the progress of your PhD research will be even more efficient when you collaborate with people that are different from you, rather than with those you have a natural affinity with and who share similar strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding different personalities can help you cooperate with different people. However, understanding people that think & act in different ways is not easy. MBTI (Mayers-Briggs Type Indicator) is a helpful guide:

• How people recharge themselves: Introvert (I) or Extrovert (E)
  • Extrovert (E) energized at the end of a long day by a social event.
  • Introvert (I) recharge best by having some quiet time to themselves.
• How people think/perceive: Intuition (N) or sensation (S)
  • Sensation (S)-preferring people are fact based. They recall facts from the past, rely on facts in the present and want to know the facts for the future.
  • iNtuition (N, the I-label is already given to introvert) preferring people, on the contrary, recall the past in terms of patterns, and dream of exploring the future with all its possibilities.
• How people make decisions: Thinker (T) or Feeler (F)
  • Thinkers (T’s) are more likely to choose or make decisions based on impersonal information. The logic behind the decision is more important than the impact the decision might have on others; conflicts are natural for thinkers.
  • Feelers (F’s) instinctively take into account the impact a decision may have on others. Factual (and unfeeling) data have little influence on their decision-making process.
• How people plan & take actions: Judge (J) or Perceiver (P)
  • Planner who wants to draw conclusions (Judge)
  • Planner who is more comfortable in a chaotic environment and want to keep things open (Perceiver)

Common communication problems between different types of people:

• I vs E

  The extrovert team members have the feeling that the introvert team members are not involved, since they are not yet participating in the discussion. At the same time the I’s may get irritated by the E’s because they start shouting out all kinds of ideas before they have even thought them through.

• N vs S

  The absence of sensation-type characters on a project can still yield nice results in terms of the big picture, but the project will be desperately lacking the necessary scientific data or facts upon which such a picture should be based. On the other hand a team of only sensation-type people will often fail to discuss issues such as what the data is good for or what they are out to prove in the first place

• T vs F

  In science feeling is more important than thinkers want to believe... A Feeler can play an important role in making sure that the team works in harmony... The impact your conclusions have on the scientific community can very much depend on your presentation.

• J vs P

  Perceivers might get irritated by Judgers jumping in early to force the outcome (by making a rigid plan), while Judgers might feel that Perceivers have accomplished very little halfway, since they have not produced tangible results.

Presentation Skills and Group Meetings

Talking in front of a group doesn’t have to be the scary prospect that many people think it is. The trick is to be prepared, know your stuff, and practice until it feels completely natural to talk about your work in front of an audience.

• Formulate your objectives
  • Identify your audience
    Keep your audiences' knowledge level & interest in mind when sketching the structure and the information you want to convey.
  • Sketch out the basic structure
• Visual aids (slides)

  Slides should contain the minimum amount of information necessary to get your point across: no more than three lines of bullet-pointed text, one graph or one table (with entries large enough to be read from the back of the room).

  • Try to limit the number of words per slide to a maximum of 10-12
  • Use a minimum 20 pt Times Roman or Arial font for easy readability
• Rehearse your presentation out loud

When you are in charge of organizing a group meeting:

• Preparation
  • Try to anticipate what might happen during the meeting and plan for any unanticipated obstacle
  • Allow group members to submit agenda items in advance of the meeting
    And make sure everyone has a copy of the agenda before/at the meeting
• Start on time, stick to the agenda, and end on time
  If some discussion take too much time, it may be a good idea to arrange a separated meeting for it
• Make sure each person has a chance to participate to the discussion

How to Cope with Your Annual Evaluation

Preparation:

• Make a list of everything you have accomplished in the past year
• Make a list of the areas in which you think you could have done better
  • Name a number of hurdles that prevented you from making even more progress
• Make a list of objectives & roadmap next year

Typically the annual evaluation meeting will be a meeting between you and your supervisor:

• Praise your supervisor for the things you appreciated about his or her role in your work

Compliments can work wonders (as long as they are sincerely expressed) and by stressing your supervisor’s pleasant qualities and work habits, you will motivate him or her to keep behaving that way.

• Discuss what have been done, not done well, and issues you are currently struggling

Some of which your supervisor probably hasn’t noticed yet.

• Discuss the objectives & roadmap next year

Focus on a few topics and assure that by the end of the meeting you have decided on actionable conclusions... For practical purposes, three topics or issues is an important upper limit for the things you want to discuss.

P.S. If you're catch off guard without preparation:

• Try to summarize the criticism,
• Agree to disagree
• Ask for a follow-up meeting in a week or so

Part V: Thesis & Career

The Final Year

At the beginning of your final year, review your progress & make a count-down list plan to make sure you can complete your thesis on time.

• Progress review
  • List the finished projects
  • List the unfinished projects
    • Estimate potential hurdles and pitfalls
    • Estimate the time it would need base on your past performance. Don't be too optimistic.
  • Prepare a brief report & discuss with your supervisor

    Establish a common understanding on what you have achieved for your thesis so far, and what still needs to be done.

• Final year planing
  • Compile the table of contents (ToC) of your thesis
  • Transform the ToC to a count-down list
    Each item should be marked with a DDL
    1. Transform the submitted/accepted manuscript into chapters
    2. Write methodology & introduction
    3. Work on the unfinished projects & write those chapters
    4. Write Conclusion chapter, abstract, etc. Proof read & submit
    5. Prepare for thesis defense
  • P.S. Remember to leave room for buffer, job search, etc.
  • P.S. If the unfinished project is quite uncertain, you need to a plan B if it fails.

The first thing you may discover is that time has a way of slipping through your fingers. You may have already made a mental estimate of how long it might take you to finish your thesis, but now that you have made your list explicit by writing it down, you may notice it will probably take longer than you thought.

Writing Your Doctoral Thesis with Style

From table of contents (ToC) to outline:

• Make sure you and your supervisor agree on the ToC of your thesis
• Split the ToC into outline

Chapter headings, sub-headings, figure and table titles and some keywords and essential comments...

An outline is a great tool for preventing writer’s block, as you only need to fill in one section at a time of your outline.

Tips:

Refer to the other chapters of your thesis, where applicable, rather than just referring to your published journal articles

Avoid repeating figures already used in preceding chapters.

In a thesis, it is better to err on the side of being too detailed than risk leaving out crucial information. Be generous to the next generation of researchers.

A good summary is essential, so take the opportunity to write a high quality one, as this is the one section of your thesis that is sure to be widely read...

Defending Your Thesis with Panache

• Familiarize yourself with the procedure
  If possible, it's great to attend some thesis defenses of your peers.
• Read your thesis again and think about what questions could be asked

  Do not, however, underestimate the committee’s knowledge of your subject

• Tips
  • Listen to the question carefully. Sometimes the real question comes at the end of the long question.
  • Begin your answer by rephrasing the question briefly and politely. It could buy you some time for thinking.
  • When being asked something hard for you, you'd better admit that you can't fully addressed it at the moment. Side-walking the question won't work - the examiners are experts after all.

A PhD... so What's Next

During the final year, you will need to consider & job search for your future career. The author compiles an example of the potential career opportunities of a PhD:

• Post-doc
• Corporate sector

  If you think you want to work in industry as opposed to academia, do not wait. Get started on your search right away. Jobs that most PhDs have in the corporate sector can be classified into two types of industries 1) research-related companies that hire skilled experts and 2) service companies that need analytically skilled staff.

  • R&D
  • Service sector
    e.g. financial analysts, risk assessment analysts or management consultants.
• Not-for-profit organizations

  To avoid both the insecure academic track and the acutely business-oriented approach of the corporate world... A not-for-profit organization may offer an appealing career alternative.

  • Government labs
  • Governmental organizations
  • Educational institutions

Tips for job interview:

• First they will ask what you have done in the past, what you expect from your new job, and what your long-term plans are. Prepare for these questions.
• Be an excellent listener and pay attention to the interviewer when he/she tells you about their job.

  Pay attention, try to summarize what he has been saying.

  • Don't pretend to be someone who knows it all.
  • Asking good questions could be a way to impress your interviewer

    Most applicants ask too few questions because they’re afraid to show their ignorance.

Lessons Learned

Perhaps the two most important, and the ones that run through all the chapters like a common thread, are that proper planning and good communication are the keys to your success.

• Proper planning
  • Time management
  • 20/80 rule
    Stick to those that really matter. Be reflective & adaptive
  • Stay one step ahead of your problem
    • Keep potential hurdles in mind
    • Plan some lead time for your cooperators
• Good communication
  • Active listening
  • Plan & prepare for your communication

    A plan not communicated with your team is bound to fail. The converse is also true: communication that is not planned loses much of its value.