Starting out as a PhD researcher - Q&A session

okay so welcome back everybody um what we're going to do now is we're going to have a little panel session I've got a panel of Experts of various Shades um students and supervisors who are going to talk um briefly first of all about their tips for success and um so we're going to go along the line they can introduce themselves we're going to start with um Simon at the end they're going to go along and just introduce themselves give you their tips for success and then we're going to open it up for um questions and answers okay so sent okay uh can everyone hear me all right yeah I'm sorry I'm losing my voice a little bit um so if anyone can't hear me there's not much more do um so I'm Simon I'm in the College of medical and dental Sciences um I've nearly finished my PhD I'm actually going to uh submit I'm going to sit my vior uh four weeks today um so maybe I should be somewhere else working but what can you do um so the first tip that I have for any new researchers is uh it's going to sound quite cheesy but honesty is the best policy um so you know you're going to be surrounded by people talking about things you don't understand throwing acronyms at you um and the best thing to do do is just be honest from the start and and you know if you don't get something that your supervisor is talking about just say I don't understand that because like senior academics um and professionals can often just forget I suppose what it's like to be uh a new student and forget that that you don't know as much as they do so basically if you try and play the game and pretend that you know what they're talking about and nod and smile then they'll find you out eventually and that will be really ugly um so it's worth just being honest with them from the start um and a particular particularly important way of applying is to be realistic with deadlines so I used to uh kind of go through this phase of like we'd arranged a deadline and I would just struggle to try and meet the deadline even if I knew that I you know I hadn't done enough work and I would hand something in um just for the sake of it and I realized that that's not a very serious way of of of respecting your supervisor's Time by asking them to uh to read something that that you know is of the a poor standard so it it's you shouldn't be afraid to play the kind of I can't meet this deadline card but obviously you can't play it too many times because then you get in trouble as well well um so there's there's a kind of balance to be struck there um but yeah the overall message I want to get across is to try and be honest with your supervisors and be realistic about what you think you can a achieve and what you know um so the second piece of advice uh is is more fun I think um it's just to be social and go to as many events as you can um so go to the grad school coffee mornings um go to any of the UN I think coffee mornings might have passed already by now but um you know I met most of the friends that I have now either at this coffee morning or through people I met at the coffee coffee morning so just you know you have to be as as Shameless as you can and just go to the coffee morning speak to anyone don't be shy um get phone numbers even if you just met people otherwise you won't ever see them again uh and yeah just you know build your social network because like doing a PhD can be a kind of lonely experience it can be stressful I think everybody will find that at least at some point um so it's it's you know it's really important to have friends with you who you can you know kind of sound off to over coffee or over lunch or someone you can kind of take with a bottle of vodka to the Shure Countryside and just kind of have a good time and just you know uh just to get away from it all kind of thing so it's really worth making sure you have a network of good of good people around you who you can rely on and who can help you out and obviously you can offer that back to them as well um so yeah in summary those are the two things that I think you should do is firstly be honest and secondly uh make some good friends and hold on to them hi I'm I'm Laura I'm about halfway through my PhD at the moment um and I work in the school of biosciences so um I've only got again two main points that I've tried to summarize um I would definitely recommend as soon as you start trying to really understand your subject area start reading papers attending seminars it might be quite uh tough to start off with but the more that you can read in the early days and weeks and months the better a base you'll have for your research the more you understand your field the the more you'll be able to guide your research and make sure that at the end of it you are producing something that's novel and and impacting in your field um and the second one's actually I'm going to agree with Simon is be as social as you can um and try and build up a network of people around you uh there will be Peaks and troughs in during the course of your PhD definitely there'll be great days so you'll need people to and celebrate with and there will be tough days where you need those people around you to carry you through so um be as social as you can get on to committees uh sports teams people in your school or college just try and meet as many people as you can and build up a nice network of people and again trust in your supervisor talk to them be very vocal um yeah that would be my advice hi um my name is Akash and um I'm part of the school of chemical engineering uh and I'm coming to the end of my uh pH well I'm doing an ngd which is a PhD with a talk component as well as industrial sponsorship um and just going to talk through a few points that I think are good and bad of my experiences through a PhD so similar to these guys in that you should read papers when you start and be sociable there are very two very key things to do but with your supervisor make sure you plan what you want to say to them when you meet them their time is quite Val and if you say something silly early on in the meeting you can sometimes see them turn off and they're not really going to listen to the rest of your meeting uh but always if you've got something you want to say to them don't be scared to say it and if it's controversial so if it's in your field and you're going to say something that's you can argue each way go there with evidence cuz at the end of the day they're still in that field because they love it if you can prove to them that you know what you're on about you've got them on your side you can go forward with your research um that's something I've had to do and it's it is quite successful because then you can have more of a discussion and they kind of see you as more of a peer instead of of a student which is quite a nice thing uh one of the bad things to do which I definitely did in my end of my second year was lose focus um it's one of the hardest things to do is stay focused for four years or three years depending on how long your PhD is um and you can get lost quite quickly so one thing I got from realizing that is the best way to get over it is to be as planned as possible give yourself weekly deadlines monthly deadlines and try and stick to them anything try and plan to do in my experience cuz I do a lot of work in the lab it takes twice as long as what you actually think it will take so if you plan two weeks you know it's going to take a month so try and gauge that into your timings because it's not just about yourself if you're in a if you're in a research group then you've got equipment booking times that that are out of your hands and other people's work has to be taken into account there as well um last thing I want to say is same as these guys really be as socialable as you can um because it will help you massively because like you do like they say you have bad days and if you've got your friends there around you you're all going through the same thing you're not working on the same field but you all going through the same ups and downs and you will definitely have ups and downs through a PhD persevere and the final point I wanted to say was with a PhD you get out as much as you put in if you put in the work you'll be able to attend conferences get published meet a lot of new people if you don't you probably might still get through it but you'll probably hate it a little bit whereas you should really enjoy it if you put the time in you'll really enjoy it that's the last thing I want to say uh hello I'm sidarta I'm a faculty in the department of Economics Birmingham business school uh first of all uh welcome again it must be a kind of an exciting time for you as you start your journey to building in New Stock of knowledge but it's also probably a bit wanting because you some of you know but a lot of you might think where do I start how do I speak to my supervisor will I finish so yeah it's it's quite natural to have these kind of anxieties now fortunately the students have given excellent advice to which I you know there's not that much to add and I would think that the first thing I would just really like to add to that is in terms of your subject I know it's a bit cliched but be obsessed you know you you might even become a bit of a bore when you try to uh talk to your housemates about your PhD thesis but it's a good sign that you're excited about what you're doing if you find yourself a little obsessed with what you're doing okay so I think that's a good sign for a PhD student now coming to the PHD supervisor student relationship I think youve heard some excellent things from students be honest that's what I tell all my students it's okay to make a fool of yourself in front of me if you're not honest if you say yeah that's fine I know this I know that I'll expect you to know it and then if I find you don't then that's a bit shocking and that does damage the supervisor student relationship uh in terms of how you actually tackle the supervisor student relationship I think really the best bet is to speak to other students I mean I I make it official I tell my new students speak to students I have supervised in the past find out my de sign classes I know for instance that you know if if my student comes and talks to me in the morning I'm not really there so they usually schedule appointments in the afternoon for other supervisors it'll be just the opposite second find out what your supervisor style of speaking is I mean some people are very reserved when they say you're almost there it means start all over again whereas I'm quite blunt if I say well it's almost there I really mean that you're making good progress so that's important because you want to make sure that you're clued in on what your supervisor is telling you as you progress obviously you'll see your supervisor will be taking important steps to gauge your progress and also pushing you hopefully to build a good network of people in your area so that not only do you learn from each other's uh work in the area but you have a good network of people to tap to where and you want to find out you know what else is going on how do I place myself what you know what journals would be most acceptable for this of course there your supervisor there but given your very specialized field You' probably have a host of people you'd meet who might be be even better and last of all enjoy it you know it's it's a great experience you're doing something which hopefully no one has ever done so even if it's frustrating go for it and enjoy it thank you okay my name's uh Susan hunston and uh I'm a professor in the department of English language and Applied Linguistics in the College of Arts and law um I did my PhD when I was in my mid-30s uh and I did it part-time uh so I was working full-time at the at the same time as I was doing my PhD so my experience was in some ways uh a bit different from the conventional um PhD student um I have a little metaphor that I use with students and this is a wonderful opportunity for me to say it to a slightly bigger audience doing a PhD is like going on a journey and when you start you're standing outside a thick forest and you know that you have to find your way through the thick forest sometimes you think that your supervisor is in a helicopter and can see the end of your journey even though you can't this is not true your supervisor is standing in the same place as you are and like you they don't know what the end of your journey is going to be the only difference is that they have walked alongside other students taking different paths through the forest one thing you might want to do is to read the thesis that other another other thesis by other students in a similar field this is a very good thing to do at the beginning but just remember not to believe them because when somebody writes a thesis they tell the story of their Journey as though it was a straight line they started off with the questions they answered the questions they wrote the results this is not how it happened so remember that this is how you will will tell the story of your journey when you've finished but it's not the way the journey will happen you will go down dead ends you will go around in circles you can get guidance from your supervisor but in the end finding the path is your job and you will absolutely find it um manage your working week make sure your best time is your PhD time manage your health take rest time take exercise time but remember that you will become obsessive and your best ideas may happen when you're walking or when you're in the shower carry a notebook with you at all times except when you're in the shower you'll learn by writing don't put it off don't expect it to be easy getting the best from your supervisor and here I've got a series of make shures make sure you understand what your supervisor is telling you and what your supervisor is asking you if you're unlucky and you have a supervisor like me most of the time they're asking you questions and the questions always mean something uh with your supervisor's permission take a voice recorder into the supervision and record everything it means you don't have to take notes at the same time as you're listening and talking and you can play it back afterwards there's one rule accompanied to this this voice recording remains private to you it doesn't get shared with anybody else and you never make the supervisor listen to it again um make sure you have deadlines when you leave a supervision make sure you know when the next one is and what you need to do before it don't cancel a supervision because you haven't met the deadline the deadline take the supervision record form seriously think carefully about what you want from each supervision session you take charge of the process make sure you understand what your supervisor is recommending and how the supervisor regards your process your progress read what the supervisor's written and be alert for politeness things like this could be better argued May mean you really aren't arguing this well enough and you need to change the way it's being done um often students think they're doing worse than they should be because the supervisor is ticking the satisfactory box and not the very satisfactory box or they think they're doing better than they should be so if in doubt check that um and finally do make sure you know who you need to go to if things go wrong if you come in next week and your supervisor isn't there anymore who do you go to to solve that problem um I was going to finish with getting the best from your fellow students but I think everybody has um said that already join your department or your school postgraduate research group and if there isn't one start one and enjoy yourselves okay okay well that that is difficult to follow because that was really excellent advice from from not just Susan but from all our panelists um well you've already met me or heard me briefly I'm Gavin chaff I'm a professor in history um I have a few little tips for you the first one of which is to not be defensive with your work um as um somebody on the panel has already said all of your PhD are inherently original that's the point of uh a PhD but that doesn't mean that you are working for the Secret Service and you should lock yourself away and not speak to anybody there is no greater fear in Academia than that somebody is going to publish exactly the same thing as you the week before you do and that it's going to be a bit better um well I can put that fear to bed right here by telling you that that will happen people publish lots of things all the time and this kind of obsessive quest to protect your little field is unsustainable all it will mean is that nobody in your field will know who you are nobody in your field will have conversations with you and you weren't learn from them and they won't learn from you from watching my students this is not advice I took but from watching my PhD students the people who do best are the people who go out to conferences and network and share their research with people you don't give people full drafts of your work but kind of Fairly openly share your research with people because then you get to find out what's going on you make friends you make contacts and those networks are the kind of networks that get you post dos and get you jobs and and get you get you published um the next thing I want to say is to make sure that your supervisor knows what your goals are people go into phds for all kinds of different reasons and they have different levels of ambition supervisors are not mind readers you've got to make it very clear what you want and how you think you're going to get it they will tell you maybe if they think that's realistic or unrealistic but at least then you will both know what you want it also protects you from a problem that I had which is that supervisor supervis in a changing world when I did my PhD which wasn't that long ago my supervisor told me and I had a very very wonderful supervisor and he told me do not publish anything doing your PhD the most important thing if you've got a bit of extra time finish the PHD work on the PHD polish the piece of work don't publish anything when I did my PhD that was pretty good advice but now that is not good advice now that would be absolutely well I would say it would be kind of dangerous advice so you need to make sure that your your supervisor is dealing with the world that you are in and not the world that they were in when they did theirs um I think the final things that I want to say I mean it is important to enjoy a PhD we're working in a highly pressurized environment but really the first two years or or or first four four years of your part-time you can't do much about um how successful you're going to be at the end that's the time to enjoy it Academia and all the other careers that spin off a PhD are really stressful if you can't have fun in the first year of your PhD you never will um so do enjoy yourselves and and try and Gorge yourselves on your research um when you are having slumps and you will have slumps days when things are just not going right weeks when things are just not going right my advice and this is just purely personal is to try and make sure you carry on doing a little bit each day even if it's just half an hour or an hour or whatever whatever it is it's much more healthy to keep going through your slump than to build up a big anxiety and then find you haven't done anything for three four weeks and you don't know even where to start to go back to it the final thing I want to say um again is very personal and it is this do not see a PhD as a final goal because it absolutely is not when my PhD got finished it got finished and it and it and it passed but I knew in my head that it wasn't it wasn't the piece of work the piece of research that I'd always dreamed of producing the piece of work that I'd always dreamed of producing took several more years it took change my PhD really then formed the basis of several bits of research that I published in different directions so don't think that that project has to be your final word on that subject it doesn't what it has to be is a quality original piece of research which passes the PHD and if that opens your eyes and inspires you to work in a particular area and you think oh well now I'd like to do a bit more on this and now I'd do a bit more on that that's ideal so so so don't look at it as the end of the road um that's all I have to say to you what we would really like to do now is to take questions from you so um you've got high quality students you've got high quality supervisors and I'm not talking about myself so any questions you have um for the panel yes the young man at the front um is it okay to ask for additional meetings with a supervisor if I feel that they would be helpful who would like to ask that to all the panel can you repeat the question is it okay to ask for additional meetings with your supervisor yeah I mean I would definitely say yes definitely definitely if you feel like you need more time or FaceTime with your supervisor certainly approach them and request for the time they might be really busy they might tell you that they can't uh fit that in immediately but it will flag up to them that you need help you need guidance you need more assistance it's definitely not a bad thing to ask for more time more help if you need it definitely well students bound to say that what do what do the supervisor say um yeah I mean I don't really see uh a set amount of hours that I set aside for students so yes definitely it meetings as long as they for specific questions more than welcome the only thing is students also need to be flexible about when they want to uh see me I mean if I need to see you urgently today it's probably a bad idea I might be booked up today but yes uh I mean I I don't even count them as additional meetings I say see me whenever you need to can I add something course um yeah so I don't I'm sure some people on this panel will disagree with me but so I have three supervisors and for two of them I actually have access to their Outlook calendars and they know about that um so I so I can actually see when they're busy and when they're not but I'm sure some supervisors probably wouldn't like that kind of uh that level of uh I don't know they might consider it intrusive but I find that very helpful so maybe that's something to negotiate with your supervisor or maybe not well I mean I think this is I mean it's something that came up in something that several people said which is that you've got to get to know your supervisors as human beings people work in different ways um I I there is absolutely no way I would ever give anybody my Outlook Calendar if I unless I unless I was forced at gunpoint but what but what I do do is I give all my PhD students my mobile number and there are some supervisors who would never who wouldn't do that um so and the reason I do that is because I hate the idea of a student having like a one of those Mega crisis that we all have from time to time and not being able to give me a call and my my students respond to that with real respect so they don't phone me every day or every week they phone me in the event of an emergency and they know that I don't mind that and I know that they're not going to take advantage of that other supervisors are much more regimented but will be extremely professional will want to see you when they've agreed that that they'll see you so really it is a Meeting of Minds isn't it it's about working out how they like to work and then working out how you like to work and kind of meeting in the middle um any other questions yeah oh that's a really good question do you want to say into the mic friend I should have waited it's my fault um how uh is the uh supervisor's role different if at all for a master of research students who are studying at the University for a year couldn't hear oh um how is the supervisor's role different if you're supervising an mes student from a PhD student I I actually did an emres uh before I did my PhD um and I I found that there was probably more Focus initially with the m cuz I only had a year to get everything done so it was a bit more directed than a PhD was um but I think I was quite fortunate and that my supervisor was very good so we had regular group meetings as well as indiv individual meetings as well but again if you ask I think it's from from a student's point of view it was it was probably more directed uh supervisor more directed with their time but you you you guys will be able to tell how you feel about M students I guess um I I regard I would regard an M student as in in exactly the same position as a PhD student I would expect to see them the same amount of time obviously the thing we're aiming at is a smaller piece of work uh and so there's less time for working out what the exact research question is there's less time for trying things out um but also the piece of work you're aiming at is is very much a training piece of work uh and so um that all fits together the time and the standard of the work and the and the scope of the work all all fit together but essentially for me the the Mr student is is the same they're the same um the same kind of being as a PhD student yeah I I absolutely agree it is the an M student is exactly the same kind of being um I did an mes it was called an Mill at that time but it was essentially an mes that's what it was um and what I remember from that year is it actually took me quite a long time to work out um the different expectations of pgr research so if I had an MRS student especially if they didn't have a previous Master's on top of that I would be maybe slightly more aware that that that they they needed to focus what I needed to spend even more time talking about what they needed to get out and and how they needed to do their work than maybe I would be as a with with a PhD student but I think Susan is right I mean it's inherently just a slightly smaller thing but its Essence is is pretty similar the front again yes I see that go do you think the uh postgraduate researcher supervisor relationship is different at all for part-time or distance learning students um that to the whole panel yeah uh part-time and distance students um I about 2third of the students I supervise are part-time and mostly those are distance and we have supervisions by Skype uh I think their experience is partly the same and partly different um we it took me a long time to learn how to supervise by Skype uh I hated it at first um I'm getting better at it I think the difficulty is that it's more it's more difficult to have silences by Skype if you're in the same room a question can come up and you both sit silent for several minutes while you both work out the answer to the question and then you have a sort of form of interaction with not whole sentences and you you gradually work your way to an answer to the question to me it's much more difficult to do that by Skype um so the student really has to be um I think for me really has to be able to work more independently and Lead need less guidance from the supervisor because that kind of joint idea is more difficult to generate from my point of view by Skype um I was going to say something else and I can't remember what it was that'll have to do for the uh for for the for the student obviously of course also work doing a PhD part-time time management is much more uh challenging and it may be much more a case of doing the paid job for part of the week and doing the PHD for the other part of the week and it's even more important to uh do those things about having rest and having exercise because your time is really very very full to come okay there's we we have a question at the back if you do you want to sorry to interrupt can you just wait for the mic on just interested in the panel's views because you sort of Fairly split those from the students and from staff what support do you provide or is available or guidance for um preparing for your final vior preparing for vior yeah so um the the question is um can we talk about the support we provide for preparing for a vior so maybe we'll start with the the man who's preparing for a I don't want to talk about that right now no um there's there's absolutely loads of support um so the grad school runs a very uh useful um kind of Class Type Workshop thing goes on for about two hours called surviving your vior um which I thought was really helpful so I recommend that everyone uh would get onto that uh in terms of my supervisors they they I've got a mock vior which is going to be happening in a few weeks I don't know if all supervisors would actually offer that I guess that's up to the discretion of the kind of uh the supervisors and the student and what what they want to do but even though that's that stands to be more terrifying than the actual vior because obviously my supervisors know where all the skeletons are buried um I think it'll actually be very useful so there's that um and yeah just I I can only speak from my personal experience my supervisors have been very helpful and I found that the university has offered quite a lot of help with that as well um and and an invaluable thing is to obviously speak to other people who have done their viors as well who who you know uh and get their back about it too it just makes the whole experience a bit less terrifying yeah the I think the careers um advice service on campus also run a preparing for your vior course as well which I've heard is very good I haven't been on it myself yet um and the school that I'm in at the moment so the College of life and environmental Sciences they do a similar thing where they have a a mock FIV a year before your vior and then a few months before again and that include your supervisor which I've heard is scarier than the actual Viber is as well um but yeah there do seem to be lots of resources on campus and within the colleges to help you prepare for your actual vior so are we all going on this do you want to come in yeah um with with the school of chemical engineering they have an end of year at the end of your first year you have to write a report uh and then you get vied on that so that they know where your focus is going but it also gives you an idea of what a vior could be like um again it's similar to these guys you can have mocking mock viers which will be helpful um but I'd say a lot of my friends that have have pass their VI to say the best way they got through it was by talking to their their friends that had done them already um because they knew exactly what kind of questions could possibly arise and it's actually your work so um we've already mentioned here that when you write your PhD is basically telling a story so you one of the big things to do for preparing for your read your PhD again because by the time you sit your vior it'll be quite a a big gap so I know from mine I'd be at least 3 months after I submitted I'd have my vior so I'm bound to have forgotten parts of what I physically wrote so go back and read your your own thesis probably a good bit of advice uh well in economics you have formal workshops so by the time students get to the Via stage they're used to Preparing uh public talks and answering questions questions from a deliberately unfriendly audience um now it it it will vary from supervisor to supervisor I I do give mock fivers to my students but what I do is I bully two of my colleagues and tell them please give a mock FIV to my student and please be really nasty and tough I mean if your supervisor doesn't do it you might suggest that he or she does that to you before your vior yeah I think uh um obviously mock viers are reasonably useful except in my experience the questions that are asked in the mock viers are rarely the questions that come up in the main viver so I always uh a little bit wary the best preparation is uh read make sure you really know your thesis uh read it very carefully beforehand um and uh the other thing I would say is remember that if you're if you're an examiner in a vior with a really really good student you will ask really really difficult questions because you will see how you will want to see how far you can push the student to becoming even better uh and so if you're a student going into the vior and you're being asked really really difficult questions it probably means that your thesis is very good I think um one of the things that you have to come to terms with when you go from being an undergraduate to a postgraduate is that feedback can become not very nice um you only tend to become a post-graduate if you are a good undergraduate right and if you are a good undergraduate what you have genuinely been told throughout your career is how clever you are and then all of a sudden you start doing pgr research or even worse you decide to send an article to a journal um and some somebody in very simple terms will tell you that you're not clever at all that your work is foolish um because Academia although it's becoming this is becoming slightly less the case nowadays Works in a slightly adversarial way we tend to speak very frankly to each other and people sometimes don't pull their punches this does not mean that you are a fool but you do have to get used to it now my academic life has been a slow example of get trying to get less sensitive and trying to accept that because to be honest it isn't very nice when something you've worked quite hard on is criticized but that's what academic life is like and the vior is can be a very good illustration of that um I think if you go to seminar series lectures papers in your department you will get a feel for how academics talk to each other and that will enable you to feel stronger in your vior because you will realize that you are being talked to not as a goody goody undergraduate but as a academic and that is really what you want in terms of how you play that I always say you can go two ways with a vior examination you can either listen to the criticism um that is being offered of your thesis and defend your thesis and say well you know with the greatest respect I don't think you're quite right about that the reason I wrote this is because x y and Zed and I'm going to defend it or you can do what I've seen other people do and say oh thank you so much for that I'll have a think about it you know it's very very nice of you to criticize me in this way um and I think the truth is that good VI defense nowadays is a combination of the two you've got to learn where your thesis needs to be defended and you've got to learn where sometimes as I said before it's not a final piece of work so you've got to learn sometimes when people you say actually yeah you are right about that I I probably did get that wrong and if you get the balance of that right you'll be fine um but when you've done that amount of work nothing except a kind of a a trailer a Fanfare of trumpets telling you how wonderful you are is going to make you feel good so a VI or even a good one is likely to um to feel tough at the time I think quite often with hindsight you think oh actually they did ask tough questions but it was actually quite good but maybe at the end of a PhD when you really just want to be told your work is wonderful um it won't necessarily feel like that okay um yes we have a question at the back if you could just wait for the mic to get to you I'll also stand up thank you um is there um too much uh intervention from your supervisor and in what case does that happen I also I want questions um answers from both sides and I also have in mind um what Dr hunston said about the supervisor working with us in the jungle so is there a possibility of them cutting off our path for some reason and why so sorry um just to be very clear you asked asking is there a risk of there being too much intervention from your that's your question okay um should we start with the students um yeah I I guess there there could be a risk of that um because you know it's meant to be a collaborative effort but so what I kind of got kept being reminded of by my supervisor in my first year was you know it's your project and actually initially I began I found that quite scary so in that way I sort of thought there almost not not that there wasn't enough but I I was kind of surprised a little bit by that this this whole idea of well actually you know I'd asked this question to my supervisor imagining that you know she was you know kind of God of this field and then it' be like well what do you think not not really that used to that um so there is there's again I guess it comes back down to the the sort of personal relationship you have with with your supervisor and and the the level that you want because of course you want their guidance because they are experts and they know what they're talking about but they have to let you learn and make mistakes as well um and I think if if you're going through the experience and you and you think that they're intervening too much or not enough and it's up to both of you to figure that out and I guess you have to be brave as a as a researcher and uh and be happy to to mention that to your supervisor if you think that they're not involved enough or that they're too involved yeah I mean from my personal experience um in the first year I had much uh a greater level of support or intervention as it will be um and that's because I was you know I was learning how to be a PhD student um and gradually the the level of intervention if you want to call it that has reduced as I've progressed so I think there can be there's got to be the balance that you've got to be open and honest with your supervisor and if you feel like there's you want a bit more more room to stretch then I guess build a case for it bring uh ideas to the table be vocal support your own ideas and prove that you're ready to kind of Drive your own project and and move forward with it so yeah I guess just be vocal again it's it's it's about knowing your supervisor so my personal experience with my supervisor I feel I've got quite a good supervisor is that if I if they're telling me no don't go down this this route it's normally because they've either seen it somewhere before and they know why in which case ask them why don't be too scared to say okay they must be right ask them why you're not allowed to you know do this area there must be a reason um but if you think you are correct and and and you know better say then go with evidence um if you turn up to your supervision and they're saying no you can't do this because of X Y and Z and you actually recently these articles show that I can do this now uh you might not have been able to you know research constantly contradicts itself and improvements are made all the time you know the uh my supervisor once said to me your uh once your the is done and you if you pass your vior your research will probably become obsolete in 20 years you know cuz if you if you look at anyone's thesis 20 years ago new things are always found new analytical techniques are available to do better research and they disprove what you found 20 years ago so if you find a way of doing something be confident enough to say it and a lot of the time it's about doing smart research so sometimes they might say to you don't do that because it might not be the best way there might be a better way they might want you to go out there and find a better more a quicker path so to speak from the from the example we had earlier but most of the time they're just trying to help you so they don't want you to fail they don't want you to do bad research so if they're saying it they're saying it for a reason and you just got to find out what that reason is uh well I mean I think it's usually the case that uh you strike the right balance but it could be that there's a little too much intervention from your supervisor because like like you your supervisor is getting obsessed with the topic which is a good sign that you know the topic is really interesting but that can be daunting I mean we did have a colleague where the student would come in every day and work with the supervisor and then the supervisor would complain that the student wasn't independent enough so if you see that happening take a step back think about it and find a polite way to tell your supervisor you do need a bit of space to work the problem at your own pace there's this this isn't really an answer to your question but I'm going to say it anyway um there's there's always a point in the supervision process when the student takes ownership of the thesis and sometimes it happens in week three of starting sometimes it happens 3 weeks before the vior ideally it happens somewhere around 15 months in when the supervisor says to the student you know I think it would be a good idea if you did such and such and the student says no I'm going to do something else and it's a wonderful moment as a supervisor because you know that that now the the training wheels are off and the student is cycling down the tour to France route much faster than you can follow them it's another metaphor by the way follow of them today um yes in the answer to your question yes there is a risk um and all the all the things that you've heard from the rest of our panels are way that you can manage that risk um okay we have I think we've got time for we'll have well we've got two more questions showing have we got time for them we'll have one more so maybe just the gentleman there who hasn't asked a question first of I'd like to thank all of you for I mean sharing your experiential Pearls of Wisdom and uh my question is that uh I'm talking about stress so I feel uh the word stress is I mean connoted with a negative connotation but I feel there is kind of a positive stress also which makes you I mean drives you to do stuff so your thoughts on converting stress into a positive stress okay um the question is about handling stress and whether some stress can be positive and how stressed you should be so how stressed are we all I currently have uh two weeks left of my PhD so I'd say I was stressed a while ago now I'm fairly I'd say I'm fairly comfortable with that um my stress period happened at the start of this year where I real I sat down with my supervisor and went through all my work and he said to me you need to do a whole new chapter at which point I panicked because I didn't I felt I didn't have enough time uh so at that point I'd had probably bad stress because I had no idea what to do and I was just panicking and I wasn't doing any work the way to get over that is by planning there is always enough time I think there's a a saying that goes around PhD students in my building especially is that you could probably do all your lab work for a PhD in six months if you knew what you were doing the first year and a half most of us kind of throw away our results because we don't know what we're doing in that time so as long as you plan you can get the work done um and stress is helpful because it gives you a deadline and it means you don't get lazy and you remain focused which focus is probably one of the hardest things in a PhD because it is all self motivated if you're not in your supervisor isn't going to pick up on it for a bit if you can blag your way through supervisions they might not pick on pick up on it for a while but it's not helpful because you eventually will become even more stressed so it's just about managing your time and being very very selfmotivated and you can deal with stress stress is good sometimes so does help you anyone else like to Lor are going to come uh I would say I mean it's it's down to every individual but I would say there's been a constant level of stress throughout my PhD so far and I expect it to continue I think you it's for me it's because I know I want to do well and I'm constantly questioning if I'm doing enough but everyone will be different I think there are like they say good and bad levels of stress if you feel like it's becoming overwhelming during those bad days bad weeks I again would just suggest be vocal about it I mean don't chew people Z off about it and you know keep going but if you're worried if you're stressed it's normal talk to people if you feel like it's overwhelming definitely get help get advice from people but yeah I think the stress will drive you through your PhD definitely I think one of the most useful lessons a PhD teaches you is how to handle stress it's a thing that will be most useful to you in the rest of your life because it ain't going to get any easier I think the important thing is work out what the cause of the stress is if it's that you have an awful lot to do then planning is certainly the the best way out of it if it's that you feel the mountain is on top of you then work out ways of having a little bit of free time and I say it again exercise and walking if you feel it's because really you cannot cope with this and this is really something you cannot succeed in then talk this over with your supervisor very honestly because you'll either discover that um this is a mistake on your part and you're actually doing fine and you just need to accept that or you may discover that actually it isn't and you may need to look for something else to do I think I mean the first thing that Simon said when he spoke was about honesty and about honesty with yourself um you've got to know how hard you're working and have an awareness of how you're getting on and that's difficult to do um PhD supervisors will try and manage your stress up to a point with my PhD supervisor when I used to go and see him he used to make me feel so good that when I used to go and see him I used to take a day off afterwards um because he quite correctly observed that I was really really stressed and overworked and so he knew what he needed to do was calm me down um and send me out of there in a spirit that I would relax for another student that would have been a disastrous strategy some students obviously need to be told hey you know it's really nice to see you looking so well but you need to you need to do a bit more work here so the supervisor will try and manage how you're doing they may or may not get it right so the most important thing is for you to manage yourself and and although it sounds like a very small piece of advice I would Echo very strongly Susan's comment about exercise because you have got to keep yourself well um it it has so many benefits for you and if you can keep yourself physically well the rest often follows and when your when your career is sitting around reading books all day it isn't always easy so get down the gym that's my advice to you never mind these walks season get down the gym can I add something about yeah very quickly and then we'll so one of my supervisors said to me the other month that I was not to my own horn that I was the most relaxed PhD student he'd ever seen and I was like awesome and it was it was after a while that I realized that was a euphemism um so it's kind of the flip side of of of what Gavin said um just that you know well so my supervisor kind of was he was trying to tell me that I I needed to maybe you know be a little bit less complacent and work a bit harder um so it's worth listening out to what your supervisor says and trying to between the lines a little bit he he might not have been a trying to tell you that he might have just been making a positive comment about your happy disposition maybe yeah um but um on that note I would like to thank all of our panelists for taking the time to come and share their experiences with us today um it's been very nice listening to you all um the next thing we have today is Helen e who's going to talk to us about isas so I think probably the that the panel can maybe leave the stage and Helen can come up and we'll carry on thanks [Applause]

Channel: University of Birmingham Graduate School

Views: 68,515

Keywords: University, Student, PhD, Postgraduate research, postgraduate, researcher, birmingham, University of Birmingham, tips, Q&A, PGR, Help, advice, starting, research

Id: E-1IJJ6qJOg

Length: 53min 52sec (3232 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2013