Earning a Ph.D.!
-Key pieces of advice to incoming research scholars.
This time of the year marks the new academic session and naïve budding researchers makes a choice of pursuing Ph.D. I am often asked “Do I always wanted to pursue a Ph.D. degree?” Maybe I was not certain earlier but it gradually built up after doing my Master’s and clearing the UGC-NET examination that provided me research fellowship. Initially I started it with a thought in mind of getting a degree and staying in academia. But as I continued, I found it more interesting to discover new things and contribute a little bit to existing knowledge in that field. And these things keeps up my energy to pursue my interest in research, even post Ph.D!
A Ph.D. is not just an academic degree but it also enhances personal growth and discovery. A typical day for a Ph.D. student or research scholar usually never starts at 9AM and continues till 6PM, but timings vary depending upon experiments and other work. Some days a scholar is all the time occupied in doing experiments while other days might be hooked up in doing other work like preparing presentations, writing grant proposals or manuscript. At times you are required to manage time and do multitasking. So, it is the path wherein you test your own limits and by yourself navigates through all the challenges and hurdles that come across this journey. To begin this journey, here are some key advices that might help young researchers to make doing Ph.D.-a positive choice!
Know your supervisor and lab
The first and foremost critical decision is choosing the Ph.D. supervisor and lab wherein you want to work, learn and grow. Explore the profile of potential supervisors working in the field of your interest but most importantly look for their style of mentoring, attitude and interests. Apart from the formal interview, try to interact with them to know about their research group, research work being carried out in the lab, work environment, as well as discuss your research interests and understandings. Also, talk to the existing lab members or recent graduates from that lab which will give you a closer picture of work environment and student- supervisor relationship in that particular lab. Remember, a well supervised Ph.D. leads to its successful completion and builds up your research profile which provides better career opportunities.
Build your knowledge to become an independent thinker
Once you are into the lab, the other most important thing is doing extensive review of literature to update your knowledge about concepts and work that has already been done in that field. Read as many as research/ review article as you can and discuss with your colleagues, senior or supervisor. This will help you in developing critical thinking skills needed to analyze the reported studies and to design your experimental protocol. Further, this will help you in contributing as a team, for writing research proposals which gets the grants for carrying out research work in your lab.
Naïve researcher: Learn from your own failures
After doing literature studies, next task for a research scholar is starting with the benchwork and designing research hypothesis. Mind it! Ph.D. is not about getting a streamlined protocol with a defined problem on day 1 and working on it. It’s all about learning new things, exploring different aspects, doing extensive literature survey, performing several hit and trials, so many failed experiments/tasks and gaining maximum experience out of it. I would advise here, better to be self-reliant as no one is going to tell you directly what to do! You should be able to decide what’s best for you and where you need to put efforts. On the contrary don’t be scared by this, you will learn and you will be able to figure out this by yourself after a few failures. So, don’t get disheartened but learn from your own failures and mistakes and keep working hard towards your goal! It might happen that you start working in one direction but that will not give you any positive results. It is of utmost importance for a research scholar to learn and navigate through these challenges. So, gear up and start working again. The main purpose is to add something new to the existing information in that field, for which it is desired to approach the field from different perspectives. It becomes your prime responsibility as a researcher to pay back to the society at least a part of what you would be receiving in the form of fellowship and/or research grants from public money. Adding even a single block of knowledge harbors a positive impact and also keeps you working hard on the track. So, set targets for publishing your findings as well to potentially contribute to the existing scientific knowledge.
Scientific interactions and building professional relationships
Presenting your work and interactions within the scientific community is as important as doing research. It is a way of getting feedback on your work that keeps you motivated; getting new ideas and sometimes a different perspective from fellow researchers and building network for future collaborations that helps in speeding up the work as well as contributing efficiently to the scientific knowledge. So “Build network, Stay connected”. Whom you know and who knows you matters more than what you know!
The major milestone: Writing doctoral thesis
Writing a doctoral thesis and compiling all your work can be altogether a daunting task. But learning from your peers who have already done can help in pacing it up. A thesis is all about presenting your work, putting it up in a best possible way that reflects all your hard work. So, don’t linger it on to the last minute, the writing process itself is a major task that takes a lot of time. And you have to be very much composed at this time, managing all your stress and work life balance so as to focus properly on writing. You cannot afford to divert your brain on any other thing at this time but just writing your thesis. I would advise, as soon as your thesis work is decided, start writing review of literature that will complete one major writing portion and also will help in performing experiments. Also compile your results time-to-time and don’t wait for the submission deadline.
A look at my roller coaster ride
This takes me back into the memory lane, to the day when I joined lab as a naïve researcher in May 2015. The journey indeed was a great learning experience and nonetheless earned the award of Ph.D. degree. We had a well-planned orientation program which helped us to know everything about lab and lab members at a very ease. Then after orientation and literature studies, I proceeded with benchwork. And as I mentioned earlier, as a part of learning process, I worked on several aspects before getting defined objectives for my thesis. Again, it was very difficult to work on this new aspect and getting preliminary results. Eventually, with persistent efforts, Sir’s support, motivation and guidance and help of my senior, I could get some conclusive results, submit my thesis in August 2018 as well as published the findings.
The journey was a completely transition phase for me, transitioning from a naïve researcher to the one with good experience of research, teaching, event organization, time management and efficient team worker. This path has pushed me out of my comfort zone, broadened my thinking and encouraged growth in all directions.
How did I finish on time?
· I loved what I was doing. I was spending my days on working something that I chose to do.
· The field that I was working on was interesting to me.
· I learnt time management and breaking larger tasks into small achievable goals with pre-set deadlines.
· I learnt to make a daily to-do task list keeping in mind the time and energy for that particular day.
· I took planned short breaks in between the day to keep me refreshed.
· I learnt to put extra time and efforts, without taking much leaves, to finish it up on time.
· Initially, weekly work update presentations were more like a burden but later on I learnt to use them as a tool to speed up my work, to compile all my work in small steps ultimately leading to the bigger one.
· And definitely, the support and guidance of my supervisor and senior fueled up the process.
All the best to incoming research scholars! Don’t wait, just grab the opportunity, come out of your comfort zone, work smartly and don’t look for perfection but aim for progress!
