PhD Coaching Blog — Doctorate

It's great to start off a new year with a message notifying me that one of the graduate students in my "flock" has completed his PhD thesis and passed his oral Viva in the UK.  Congratulations, Matt!! Very few people how much effort is involved in earning a doctoral degree. It goes on for years, and of course it doesn't just take effort. It takes intelligence, commitment, understanding of the research process, skills in academic writing, and above all a love of the subject that you're studying. Most students don't start a graduate program knowing that they will need all...

I noticed a significant drop-off in enquiries about coaching in 2024.  And I attributed that directly to the increasingly aggressive efforts by promoters of AI to have it take over every corner of our lives. It's not that I'm against AI in principle.  I can see that there are many ways in which it would save time, and help people with routine writing tasks. If it helps people who struggle with English to communicate more clearly, then I know that will benefit them and others.  However, call me old-fashioned, but one of the hallmarks of doctoral research and the accompanying...

This is the time to wish all graduate and doctoral students a very happy and successful time in 2025! Most of you have been working away at your dissertations for many years, and so if you're near the end, I hope this is the year you will finish your program and graduate.  However, if you're not at the end of the journey yet, I hope that 2025 is a year of great progress and positive results.    I haven't posted for a while because, frankly, the last six months of 2024 has been very stressful for me  personally, with a...

   That's what a Master's student said to me a couple of days ago.  He said that, as he was working on his thesis, he was thinking about what might come next. But when he talked to the PhD students who were ahead of him on the academic ladder, he realized what horrendous experiences they were having. Noxious is a good word to describe the experiences of many doctoral candidates. I hear about them daily. The environment in some graduate schools is truly poisonous. And it's not necessarily the fault of the professors, but rather of the system that...

In honour of International Women's Day, I'm posting this tribute to the women who are working on a doctoral thesis whilst juggling dozens of other responsibilities and demands.  If you're one of those, I salute you. Often the thesis writing for these candidates is done in stolen precious moments at the end of the day, or waiting for a bus, or in stolen breaks in the the office.  Even women who are full-time students still have to find time for research and personal writing in the midst of lab work, writing journal articles, or attending meetings with advisors. And then...