Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Good advice

I found this list of advice amongst a series of unpublished drafts of blog posts.  I'm not sure where I found it, but it's good advice and even though I've now finished my PhD, it's still encouraging, especially points 3 to 5.

  1. Procrastination is part of being a PhD student, and waiting for your thoughts to coalesce which often delivers the inspiration can often feel like procrastination, because it seems like nothing is happening
  2. Your motivation will vary in response to different stages over the course of your PhD
  3. Your best work is probably yet to come (and is not going to be your PhD thesis)
  4. Don't expect your career peak now
  5. No PhD student is ever 100% happy with their thesis submission
  6. You are not alone ... Lots of PhD students feel the same from all around the world

2 comments:

Georgina said...

Hi Lara, Did you go to Jorge Cham's talk on procrastination in 2007? That's pretty much a direct summary.

Lara said...

Hey George, I didn't make it to his talk, but I might have seen a summary or it might have been in a PHD comic.