A PhD is a beginners qualification

so when we think of a PhD as the entrance qualification to the world of a professional academia then it means that it's basically the bottom level of this new system so it's not the pinnacle of the education system it's not simply a continuation of school and university and then this the PhD is kind of the ultimate thing now it's a beginners qualification for those entering professional academia and this is an important distinction because most people who come into a PhD have done very well at all the previous levels of the education system so you've got good grades all the way through from elementary school all the way through to university and then you know the people who do that the people who get those good grades some of them go on to do a PhD but the skills that got you there and not the same skills that you need in order to do well in professional academia so it's not about being able to study for an exam it's about being able to conduct your own research which is a very very very different thing so there are a number of key differences between being a student and being an academic if you're a student generally speaking like an undergraduate student you have a set syllabus to follow and you also have a timetable to follow so you have certain lectures at certain times the exam is on a certain date and as long as you show up and you do the work that you're told to do you remember the things that you're taught then you do okay when you look at a PhD you have no syllabus and you don't have a timetable you might have some deadlines for a first year report or an upgrade report or whatever but you don't have that syllabus in that time table to follow it's on you to structure the work you also as an undergraduate students you have a standardized exam so everybody in your class does the same thing whereas at PhD level you have to determine what you're going to be examined by choosing your project and choosing what to do so the examiner doesn't have this predetermined list of expectations they judge your work based on what you say you're going to do in the introduction to your thesis and it's a very very very different thing also if you want to do well as an undergraduate student you just have to beat your classmates you have local competition so you have a bunch of people going to the same classes they do the same exam and you can go you can rank according to you know where you are among your Beaumont your classmates at PhD level your competition is no longer local what you're trying to do if you're trying to make a contribution to the field is to do something that can compete on a global level so your work is then judged against what already exists in the field so you have to do something that hasn't been done before you have to do something that is comparable on a sort of professional academic level with other work which is being done in the field so what has already been done often helps to determine the standard that you have to reach so if you're you know very well developed field where you know there's a lot of standardized techniques and some things are very easy you know or considered easy within the field you have to be good at that right whereas if you're doing something which nobody's really done before you know any contribution that you make it's going to be a value because you're the first one to really to really look at it so you've got this kind of global competition situation which you have to which you have to consider so a lot of students get very stressed because they've done so well throughout the education system and then they get to PhD level and get stuck because of these fundamental differences in the way the system works and one of the most important things you can do is develop that understanding as early as possible of what habits you can keep from your student days and what habits you need to change in order to make that transition from being a student being an academic and you know until you get past that it's very very hard to get past any of the stress or sort out any of the problems that arise in a ph.d

Channel: James Hayton PhD

Views: 2,430

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: PhD

Id: oJRHmnu6opw

Length: 4min 39sec (279 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 24 2018