7 ms·

The biggest thing I noticed when starting my PhD was all the first and second years derping around not doing much, all the third years panicking and "just getti

The biggest thing I noticed when starting my PhD was all the first and second years derping around not doing much, all the third years panicking and "just getting going" and all the 4th and 5th years really grinding. So, I inverted that and worked my ass off like I was still an undergrad in the first 18 months, toned it down for the next year and submitted my thesis at 2 years 10 months (the earliest my university would allow a submission) and was viva'd and passed 2 months later with minor corrections. PhDs taking forever is generally a lack of initial work by the student rather than any external factors. Too many students let their supervisors fob them off rather than getting in their office when needed and forcing their projects forward. Also, selecting a sensible area with a high likelihood of novelty helps, I worked on energy harvesting for hostile environments (high temp photovoltaics, piezo etc at 300degC) which was a new area for the group and my supervisor, and published 6 papers as basically nobody else was working in the field. Doing a PhD in the UK helps, in and out before the funding dries up in 3-4 years is expected along with no class requirements and no masters needed (can go in straight from Bachelors).

chrisseaton 9y ago
I definitely think the UK system for PhDs is more focused and therefore more productive. On day one of my PhD my advisor showed me to my desk and told me to start researching what I wanted to research. I think in the US you do courses for years before you start actually researching, which is what you're there to do in the first place. And many US students seem to spend hours teaching.
- tnecniv 9y ago
  > I think in the US you do courses for years before you start actually researching, which is what you're there to do in the first place. This varies a lot by program in the US. Some schools want you to take 10 classes in the first two years. You can, of course, do research but your mind will be elsewhere. Others don't care as long as you pass your quals and take the required number of courses by the end of your PhD.
closed 9y ago
It seems like early PhD work often involves working at a critical piece that's often overlooked: learning the social landscape of academics (and maybe figuring out what kind of academic they want to be).
throwawayaway12 9y ago
>Doing a PhD in the UK helps, in and out before the funding dries up in 3-4 years is expected along with no class requirements and no masters needed (can go in straight from Bachelors) I think this is the key sentence for a US perspective. 2 years of course work + 3 years of research for 5 years total is common in STEM fields.
- eanzenberg 9y ago
  Yeah, unless you are at Cambridge or Oxford, getting a PhD in Europe about equates to a masters in the US.
  - joncrocks 9y ago
    Could you explain what you mean? In terms of time spent? Level of knowledge in the subject area?
    - kchoudhu 9y ago
      Americans tend to look down on anyone who has a doctorate from anywhere in Europe that isn't Oxford or Cambridge. I'm not sure it's justified, but there you go.
      - chrisseaton 9y ago
        If you spent seven years doing something someone else did in three you're be bitter about it as well :) I think the European approach is proved sound, since people do managed to produce top-tier publications in that time.
        ylem 9y ago
        I think the question is rather they are equivalent. For example, let's suppose someone does a quick PhD in 3 years, no masters, then all things being equal, they are likely to have less breadth than someone who took say 6 years (including masters). Exceptions abound. A rather difficult study might be to see how many postdocs a person with a 3 year PhD does compared to one with a longer PhD, or survivorship, but teasing out other factors would be a nightmare.
_raoulcousins 9y ago
I don't want to generalize to others, because a PhD can be a really painful experience, but you got me spot on. I wasn't willing to iterate and try enough paths forward until one stuck. I'm still not sure why that was, because it seems obvious now and I saw others doing it right, but there was a lot of wasted time.
kchoudhu 9y ago
This is generally why I think it's a good idea for undergraduates to get a couple of years of work experience in before returning for their PhDs: the experience of grinding out work that you really don't want to be doing is salutary and acts as motivation to get on with things once in the program.
xaa 9y ago
Wow. I just defended a few weeks ago, at 7 years. And honestly, until about year 5, I felt no rush whatsoever to get out. Not that I was derping around -- I finished with 20+ papers -- but I was enjoying it, and I realized that once I was out, two undesirable things would happen: - I would have to start running the grant treadmill (and indeed, I'm just in the middle of finalizing a training grant that has as one of its requirements...that I must write another grant) - In the US NIH, there is a 10 year "New Investigator" status that lasts 10 years from the PhD, where you are preferred for certain types of grant awards. So I reasoned it is much better to graduate late and start this clock from a strong position than to rush up the hierarchy and find yourself victim of the Peter Principle. So for me, delay was a conscious strategy. Only downside was I had to live on a modest stipend. It was worth it for me, though. Another point that I'm making is that "productivity" is not equivalent to "graduating/getting promoted as fast as possible". As for TFA, I would say that amazing quantities of work can get done by pushing yourself, deadlines, etc, but the creative work that lays groundwork for future growth only occurs during low-stress periods. I try, therefore, to set up alternating periods of both types.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Did you have trouble extending to 7 years ?
  - xaa 9y ago
    Not really. My salary was funded by my PI and he was happy to keep someone at my skill level as long as I wanted (and at a bargain salary to boot). From my department and committee, I started to feel rumblings around mid-year-6 of the "you should get on with it" lines. But they weren't trying to force me out or anything, it was more like concern. I was spending (and still do) a much bigger percentage of my time on collaborative work than my peers, and they were concerned I wasn't adequately focused on my own career. But that wasn't the case at all -- I was doing what I thought was in my best interests, especially considering my field (bioinformatics) is inherently highly collaborative compared to the wet-lab stuff going on around me. However, there were some institution-level reasons I cut it off at 7. After that, the institution's policy is that you have to start re-taking some classes you already took (and passed). It was irritating to always have to go to an irrelevant journal club every week (I was in a department that really had nothing to do with my research). Also, I had some appealing opportunities available if I finished when I did. But in no way was I "forced out".
kcorbitt 9y ago
> Doing a PhD in the UK helps, in and out before the funding dries up in 3-4 years is expected along with no class requirements and no masters needed (can go in straight from Bachelors). This is a key point. My wife's university in the UK actively tried to get its PhD candidates in and out in 3 years (with an optional 4th year for writing, typically part-time), and more than half of her cohort achieved that. While it's possible to get through a US PhD that fast, the norm is much longer. My wife's PhD is in biomedical materials.
ylem 9y ago
I want to second Xaa's point. When I was a PhD student, my advisor told me to enjoy the time because I was free from concerns like funding. We were poorly paid, but it was a good time to just be able to concentrate on research. It was common for people in my physics program to take 6 years to finish. But I wouldn't say that most of us "derped" around. During my PhD, I had a portfolio of projects--some that I thought had a high likelihood of success and others that could (and sometimes did) fail miserably. As Xaa mentioned for NIH, there are clocks that start ticking after your PhD. This is true for other funding agencies as well. Also, when it's time to start hiring faculty, the fact that someone took 3 years vs 7 years for their PhD is not as important as their publication record and their plans for future research. We recently brought on a guy with 80+ publications (with a large number of those high impact) during his PhD and one postdoc. I think "rushing" to finish isn't a worthwhile goal (even though I will admit that when I was a student, the stipend was horribly low, so there was a huge opportunity cost for those who decided to do something else later). Being productive during your time is worthwhile. Asking yourself if you are still being productive or if it's time to move on is productive. Not being a technician during your PhD is worthwhile. In that sense, the article has some good advice about taking time out to think. But, in some fields you sometimes just have to grind it out. Say for example, someone is doing an x-ray experiment at a synchotron, or doing MBE synthesis, there are times you just have to put in the hours to get results.
beambot 9y ago
> PhDs taking forever is generally a lack of initial work by the student rather than any external factors. Not in my experience, especially for pre-tenured professors who are in an existential "publish or perish" scenario that defines their careers. It may sound harsh... but they invest a lot in their early students & lab setup, so their goal is to keep students around, publish as many papers as possible, and win enough grants as possible off their work before letting them graduate. I know plenty of folks who did thesis-level work in their first 2-3 years... but then their advisor made them keep grinding for another 2-3 years before "letting" them submit to committee.

chrisseaton 9y ago

I definitely think the UK system for PhDs is more focused and therefore more productive. On day one of my PhD my advisor showed me to my desk and told me to start researching what I wanted to research. I think in the US you do courses for years before you start actually researching, which is what you're there to do in the first place. And many US students seem to spend hours teaching.

tnecniv 9y ago
> I think in the US you do courses for years before you start actually researching, which is what you're there to do in the first place. This varies a lot by program in the US. Some schools want you to take 10 classes in the first two years. You can, of course, do research but your mind will be elsewhere. Others don't care as long as you pass your quals and take the required number of courses by the end of your PhD.

closed 9y ago

It seems like early PhD work often involves working at a critical piece that's often overlooked: learning the social landscape of academics (and maybe figuring out what kind of academic they want to be).

throwawayaway12 9y ago

eanzenberg 9y ago
Yeah, unless you are at Cambridge or Oxford, getting a PhD in Europe about equates to a masters in the US.
- joncrocks 9y ago
  Could you explain what you mean? In terms of time spent? Level of knowledge in the subject area?
  - kchoudhu 9y ago
    Americans tend to look down on anyone who has a doctorate from anywhere in Europe that isn't Oxford or Cambridge. I'm not sure it's justified, but there you go.
    - chrisseaton 9y ago
      If you spent seven years doing something someone else did in three you're be bitter about it as well :) I think the European approach is proved sound, since people do managed to produce top-tier publications in that time.
      - ylem 9y ago
        I think the question is rather they are equivalent. For example, let's suppose someone does a quick PhD in 3 years, no masters, then all things being equal, they are likely to have less breadth than someone who took say 6 years (including masters). Exceptions abound. A rather difficult study might be to see how many postdocs a person with a 3 year PhD does compared to one with a longer PhD, or survivorship, but teasing out other factors would be a nightmare.

_raoulcousins 9y ago

I don't want to generalize to others, because a PhD can be a really painful experience, but you got me spot on. I wasn't willing to iterate and try enough paths forward until one stuck. I'm still not sure why that was, because it seems obvious now and I saw others doing it right, but there was a lot of wasted time.

kchoudhu 9y ago

This is generally why I think it's a good idea for undergraduates to get a couple of years of work experience in before returning for their PhDs: the experience of grinding out work that you really don't want to be doing is salutary and acts as motivation to get on with things once in the program.

xaa 9y ago

Wow. I just defended a few weeks ago, at 7 years. And honestly, until about year 5, I felt no rush whatsoever to get out. Not that I was derping around -- I finished with 20+ papers -- but I was enjoying it, and I realized that once I was out, two undesirable things would happen: - I would have to start running the grant treadmill (and indeed, I'm just in the middle of finalizing a training grant that has as one of its requirements...that I must write another grant) - In the US NIH, there is a 10 year "New Investigator" status that lasts 10 years from the PhD, where you are preferred for certain types of grant awards. So I reasoned it is much better to graduate late and start this clock from a strong position than to rush up the hierarchy and find yourself victim of the Peter Principle. So for me, delay was a conscious strategy. Only downside was I had to live on a modest stipend. It was worth it for me, though. Another point that I'm making is that "productivity" is not equivalent to "graduating/getting promoted as fast as possible". As for TFA, I would say that amazing quantities of work can get done by pushing yourself, deadlines, etc, but the creative work that lays groundwork for future growth only occurs during low-stress periods. I try, therefore, to set up alternating periods of both types.

agumonkey 9y ago
Did you have trouble extending to 7 years ?
- xaa 9y ago
  Not really. My salary was funded by my PI and he was happy to keep someone at my skill level as long as I wanted (and at a bargain salary to boot). From my department and committee, I started to feel rumblings around mid-year-6 of the "you should get on with it" lines. But they weren't trying to force me out or anything, it was more like concern. I was spending (and still do) a much bigger percentage of my time on collaborative work than my peers, and they were concerned I wasn't adequately focused on my own career. But that wasn't the case at all -- I was doing what I thought was in my best interests, especially considering my field (bioinformatics) is inherently highly collaborative compared to the wet-lab stuff going on around me. However, there were some institution-level reasons I cut it off at 7. After that, the institution's policy is that you have to start re-taking some classes you already took (and passed). It was irritating to always have to go to an irrelevant journal club every week (I was in a department that really had nothing to do with my research). Also, I had some appealing opportunities available if I finished when I did. But in no way was I "forced out".

kcorbitt 9y ago

> Doing a PhD in the UK helps, in and out before the funding dries up in 3-4 years is expected along with no class requirements and no masters needed (can go in straight from Bachelors). This is a key point. My wife's university in the UK actively tried to get its PhD candidates in and out in 3 years (with an optional 4th year for writing, typically part-time), and more than half of her cohort achieved that. While it's possible to get through a US PhD that fast, the norm is much longer. My wife's PhD is in biomedical materials.

ylem 9y ago

I want to second Xaa's point. When I was a PhD student, my advisor told me to enjoy the time because I was free from concerns like funding. We were poorly paid, but it was a good time to just be able to concentrate on research. It was common for people in my physics program to take 6 years to finish. But I wouldn't say that most of us "derped" around. During my PhD, I had a portfolio of projects--some that I thought had a high likelihood of success and others that could (and sometimes did) fail miserably. As Xaa mentioned for NIH, there are clocks that start ticking after your PhD. This is true for other funding agencies as well. Also, when it's time to start hiring faculty, the fact that someone took 3 years vs 7 years for their PhD is not as important as their publication record and their plans for future research. We recently brought on a guy with 80+ publications (with a large number of those high impact) during his PhD and one postdoc. I think "rushing" to finish isn't a worthwhile goal (even though I will admit that when I was a student, the stipend was horribly low, so there was a huge opportunity cost for those who decided to do something else later). Being productive during your time is worthwhile. Asking yourself if you are still being productive or if it's time to move on is productive. Not being a technician during your PhD is worthwhile. In that sense, the article has some good advice about taking time out to think. But, in some fields you sometimes just have to grind it out. Say for example, someone is doing an x-ray experiment at a synchotron, or doing MBE synthesis, there are times you just have to put in the hours to get results.

beambot 9y ago

> PhDs taking forever is generally a lack of initial work by the student rather than any external factors. Not in my experience, especially for pre-tenured professors who are in an existential "publish or perish" scenario that defines their careers. It may sound harsh... but they invest a lot in their early students & lab setup, so their goal is to keep students around, publish as many papers as possible, and win enough grants as possible off their work before letting them graduate. I know plenty of folks who did thesis-level work in their first 2-3 years... but then their advisor made them keep grinding for another 2-3 years before "letting" them submit to committee.