How to survive your PhD

Tips and triks

Midnight sun
marathon

Record:
Male: 2:20:56 (1996)
Female: 2:38:22 (2001)

Our marathon
Start

1980-1981: 42 %
2002-2003: 76 %
Average race time: 5.5 years
Lately possibly less: 5.1 years (class of 2011)

Defence

What is a PhD? / Who are you?

Research?

You are a scientist

Original, extensive, autonomous/limited assistance?
Creative

Training, school?

You are a student

Original, but not necessarily groundbreaking
Organized, not creative?
Skill development for future career
Learning within a research community

Your tasks along the way

Tasks: Reading - Doing - Writing
Keep the passion
Read and learn
Network
Write
Have pitstops to rehydrate

You - Key academic skills

Review and discover your
research field
Write, write, write and publish
Practice presenting your work
Complete courses

Help yourself by loving statistics

Good tools:
Make a system with litterature:
Endnote with PDFs
New litterature:
Google Alerts
Use time to illustrate your
work: Figures and power point
..

You - Key personal skills

Perseverance
Self motivation
Stay sane!

Supervision and help

Supervision is a maze of responsibility, freedom, comitments,
demands, roles, agreements, conflicts etc.
Stay active towards your supervision/supervisor

Who/what is your supervisor?

Administrator
Academic advisor
Personal relation
What does s/he want? Motivation of the supervisor.
Importance of the research group

Boss
Leader
Master
Guru
Teacher
Expert
Guide
Project manager
Colleague
Friend

Subject
Led
Apprentice
Diciple
Pupil
Novice
Explorer
Team worker
Colleague
Friend

Skill level

Student
Supervisor

Time

The supervisors duties

Within 240 hours supervision, in total
Scientific responsibility
Keep track of progression relative to the deadline
Be in touch regularly
Discuss: what is the supervisors duties in
1. Formulating and delimiting hypothesis/research questions?
2. Producing, interpreting and presenting results?
3. Finding literature?

From the phd regulation:

(10) The supervisors are to
-provide advice on the formulation and delimitation of topics and
problems,
-discuss and assess hypotheses and methods, results and their
interpretation, conception and implementation of presentation,
including organization, language, documentation, and so on,
-and assist in finding relevant literature and data such as available
through libraries and archives, etc.
(...)

What do studens say about their

supervision and their supervisors?
50% enough
80% happy
An expert in the field
Encouraging,
supprotive, positive
Maintain focus

40% too little

20% unhappy
Not an expert in the
exact field
Not dedicated to the
project
Too little time

Plans
Concretely:

Contracts
Courses
Papers
Stays abroad?
Conferences?

Avoid unrealistic
expectations
From either part

So talk about it early

The writing
The editing
Litterature
Statistics

Start

Progression plan
Midway-evaluations and standardized agreements (EPINOR
supervisor forum)
Break it down to smaller goals
Count backwards from finish
Take the victories along the way

Defence

Time
Time management
Other things and projects
Dialog versus alone time
Product versus process
Dealing with stress

Ups and downs

Diverse group of runners. Some of us have better luck during the
race
Keep the passion
You are not alone!

Do little things like litterature

on the slow days
Write something

Safety nets
Research group
Department
Other phds
Other colleagues

Multi-diciplinarity
Use them actively
Dare to expose your ignorance

Remember: research = collaboration

=networking!

Conflicts
1. Research group leader
2. Head of department
3. Advisory board of conflicts at Helsefak. (Konfliktrd)
In case of a conflict, both student and supervisor can independently present
their case to the advisory board of conflict at Helsefak

Section 11 and 12 in the PhD regulation

Ethical guidelines
You are responsible for asking for help before its too late!

The thesis
Start early thinking of the disposition of the thesis and collect
background material
Tip: Left over documents
Keep thinking of the finishing line
Ref: Bent-Martin

Some advice
Use a progression report actively You are your own project
manager
Expose your ignorance (quote:
Eiliv Lund), ask for help=
networking

Think constructively and selfmotivate

Involve others early in problems You are privileged to have time

to focus
Act proffesionally and do not
lash out in e-mails

If it was easy, anyone could do it

KEEP PUSHING