Times Higher Education 1 PhD survival guide 3 Times Higher Education Don’t pani

Times Higher Education 1 PhD survival guide 3 Times Higher Education Don’t panic Contents Our PhD survival guide brings together words of wisdom from our experts A PhD is a major undertaking. So let the experts at Times Higher Education help you navigate your way to your viva – and through the other side. This guide collects the essential insights, advice and guidance that you will need not just to survive but to flourish as a doctoral student. Understanding how your work will be assessed is vital. Within these pages, PhD supervisors reveal how they approach their work and offer advice on how to find the right adviser to oversee your doctoral thesis. There are tips on how to avoid common mistakes, from 10 pitfalls that are likely to result in PhD failure to how not to write your thesis. Prime your work for assessment with our guidance on writing clear, jargon-free prose. Your well-being while you study is also important. Our experts counsel you on how to overcome feelings of failure, balance your academic commitments with other work and the career options that lie beyond your doctorate. There are also recommendations on how to hone the skills that every PhD student needs. These include making informed decisions about where and what to study, meeting deadlines and how to overcome nerves about public speaking. If you master these skills you can follow your passion and “set the pattern for the rest of your career”, as one of our experts puts it. 04  Major revisions to your thesis and a career outside academia post-PhD are not failures, writes Fiona Whelan 05  How to choose the right PhD topic: our experts offer their advice 06 No one forgets a good (or bad) PhD supervisor: five academics talk about their formative experiences 14  Be selective when choosing your PhD supervisor, says Tara Brabazon 20  How to avoid the common pit- falls of a poorly written doc- toral thesis: Tara Brabazon offers some guidance ALAMY 24  PhD style tips: how to make sure your writing is clear and jargon-free 25  Practical pointers for making sure you turn in your thesis on time 26 Inger Mewburn imparts some words of wisdom about speaking in public 27  Try hard: former Scotland sevens captain Colin Gregor talks about how he balanced his job with his PhD studies 28 Kevin Haggerty and Aaron Doyle list their 10 steps to PhD failure. Picking a “cool” supervisor is among them 06 25 14 27 28 05 INSTITUTIONAL SUBSCRIPTIONS Access for staff and students to THE’s daily insights, intelligence and data As the voice of global higher education, THE is an invaluable daily resource for all your staff and students. OPINION NEWSLETTER DATA REVIEWS DIGITAL EDITIONS & ARCHIVE FEATURES NEWS An institutional subscription provides access to: Join us and our rapidly growing network of institutions www.timeshighereducation.com/subscriptions 4 Times Higher Education Here’s what you need to know about ‘failure’ before you start your PhD I am sure that there are many lists out there along the lines of “10 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a PhD”. But what I really wish someone had told me about before I embarked on my DPhil (PhD) in history was the concept of failure. I started a blog on the back of receiving major corrections after my viva, and the sense of failure that overwhelmed me. Now, each institution is different, but at mine, minor corrections should take one month to complete, while major corrections should take one to six months to complete. There is also the more severe result of “revise and resubmit”. In my case, my result was “pass with major corrections”. It took a long time, and persua- sion from colleagues, for the sense of failure to subside and to realise that a pass is a pass. When I blogged about the taboo of major corrections and failure, more and more people came forward with similar feelings and experi- ences. I wish that all PhD students were given clear guidelines over the meanings of the different viva outcomes, so that a “pass with major corrections” can still be a cause for cele- bration, not disappointment. I wish I knew that a “pass” was not a “fail”. Beyond the viva, a greater sense of failure can loom large over those who do not get an academic job. If you do not get an academic job, you are often made to feel like a failure. In a sense, there are two types of “failures” here: the first is the feeling of failure for those actively trying to get an academic job, but who are having to temporarily work elsewhere to pay the bills; the second is the feeling of failure for those who actively reject the academic career path as they are seen to have failed to follow the conventionally expected route. So, on the one hand, the competitive state of the academic job market, especially in the humanities, and the dispiriting odds of getting an academic position immediately post-PhD is exacerbating the sense of failure for those actively trying to pursue academia; while, on the other hand, we punish those who have valid reasons for following an alternative career path. Undertaking a PhD does not automatically mean that you will be a profes- sor or researcher, nor that you want to be. That traditional train of thought needs to be broken. What nobody tells you towards the end of the PhD is that there are alternative career paths, whether it be a temporary stopgap in your continued academic job search, or a conscious and informed decision to take your career in a different direction. While this is improving, many post-PhD workshops run by departments focus on academic jobs, neglect- ing the opportunity to promote the transfer- able skills of PhD graduates that are highly valued by non-academic employers. I have made the conscious decision that a full-time academic position is not for me. Whether I could get one if I tried is another question, but the key point is that it is not right for me. Not now, at least. People never tell you that your post-PhD expectations and aspirations will fluctuate over the years, and what you wanted at the beginning may not be the same as what you want at the end. I wanted to work in higher education and make a positive impact on teaching and research, but in a high-level stra- tegic and impactful way through university management rather than through pure teach- ing and research. As such, I entered a higher education graduate management scheme, based at the University of Oxford with a secondment to University College London. From that experience, I knew that I wanted to work in student services and am now pursu- ing a career in that area. Taking an unconventional route after studying for a doctorate should not be seen as a problem, says Fiona Whelan Choosing a PhD subject A well-chosen doctoral thesis will have a focus that can be explored and built on, writes Harriet Swain C hoosing a PhD topic is never easy, but that doesn’t mean you should make things more difficult than they need to be. “Choose something man- ageable,” advises Philip Cun- liffe, a senior lecturer at the University of Kent. Gina Wisker, head of the Centre for Learning and Teach- ing at the University of Brighton, says you need to define a gap in knowledge – and one that can be questioned, explored, researched and written about in the time available to you. “Set some boundaries,” she advises. “Don’t try to ask every- thing related to your topic in every way.” Instead, you need to focus on your area of work, know how to defend your choice of a par- ticular subject and explain why you are using the methodology you have selected. She says you need to be aware of current and established theories related to the topic so that you can situate your own work and ensure that it makes a contribution. Cunliffe observes that doing a PhD is one of the few times in your life when you have unin- terrupted time for study. “At an early stage in your career it is very unlikely that you will write a theoretical mas- terpiece, ” he warns. “It is better to stamp your name on a body of empirical research that peo- ple haven’t done before.” But you have to be inter- ested in the topic. “You are going to do this for three or four years and it can get terribly bor- ing if you aren’t interested in it,” warns James Hartley, research professor in psychology at Keele University. You then have to find some- one else who is interested in it. For science graduates, this will probably be a case of joining a team of people working in a similar area. For those in the arts and social sciences it will be a matter of uploads/Litterature/ the-phd-guide.pdf

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