Hello students and graduates, welcome to PhD Lounge, the podcast where PhD students have a drink and talk about their research topics!
I am your host, Luis, and I hope you have had a wonderful summer, whether you were travelling, visiting your parents, working at your part-time job, attending summer schools to increase your knowledge, or listening to music during summer concerts and festivals in your hometown or overseas. I know I might be very late to tell you since we are now in October, and you have already started the new academic year. Still, I want to congratulate any student who celebrated their BA, MA and PhD graduation ceremonies, as I also had the opportunity to celebrate my MA ceremony on the past 20th of July 2022, which was at a later stage due to the obviously COVID pandemic reasons. At the same time, I welcome all the new students starting university, whatever the course you decide to study, hoping that you are ready to face the reality of studying at a higher institution, where the workload is heavier. Teachers shall be very demanding with you so that any student can reach their potential and become brilliant students with sound research and critical thinking skills. Therefore, I wish all the best to newcomers or freshmen in your academic journey, hoping that this experience will change your lives forever.
I also want to apologize to any listener who is hearing this session, as it has been a while since I did not write and record any episode because I have been swamped in advancing my PhD thesis project forwards during the summer to make it very substantial and informative for my supervisor, while he went on holiday for some time while I was the entire month of June, after finishing the final assessment marking, July, August and September. That is because I will have a sort of viva voce. In other words, a simulation of an oral exam called probation, where a chair member and my supervisors will ask me questions about my research regarding all the drafts I have been writing to see if I am engaging with the project. I should have taken it a long time ago, but since I had requested an extension at the time, April, the exam has been decided that it will be this month. Whilst my supervisor was on annual leave, I went to Oxford University between the 11th and 15th of July to research some documents I needed to consult for my PhD at the Sackler Library. And to go there, I had to apply for a field trip bursary to cover the travel and accommodation expenses. It was a fantastic experience to research there and to know some of the books I need for my project as some are not available to the public and, particularly, in the library of Swansea University where I study. Hopefully, I can research more next year and increase my network. And speaking of network, I only met a few librarians who helped me search for some available sources that were not on the respective shelves. Eventually, I got them on my hands and started researching them. The network with those few library staff members may not be that relevant per se, but it is positive and an excellent small achievement to build relationships. If you are a PhD student, you will likely do some research outside your institution, and it is not only to go to another library. Maybe there is a conference you would like to attend or continue your research for half a year or the whole year at another university with bilateral agreements with yours and where you must network with other postgraduate researchers and lecturers specializing in your field. I think applying for whichever options you have is an excellent decision. The department of Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology at Swansea University, where I am studying for my PhD, encourages their students to apply for bursary schemes to get some networking and collect new information in works not available to the general public.
However, aside from the research, I also wanted to have my holiday time. So between the 31st of August and the 2nd of September, I made a journey to an island in north Wales called Anglesey, where I stayed at a famous Welsh town that, for touristic reasons, has a group of words joined together to attract people whilst travelling through the train. The Welsh name is quite extensive, and I do not dare to say it in Welsh, even though I trained pretty hard for it, but I think it would be embarrassing to tell you here at the PhD Lounge. I can, however, tell each joined word in English just to make it simpler for you. So here it goes: St Mary’s Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the Red Cave. This is the English version of the longest Welsh name and one of the longest words in the world. Fun fact: It entered into the World Guinness Records in 2002. I shall provide a link with some curiosities about this village in the description of this session when you have the opportunity to travel and meet this small village and the excellent inhabitants living there.
I also share with you that I am officially in my second year of the PhD. It may seem confusing to me and you, as I have not passed my probation yet since I had to request an extension to show more material. During a meeting I had with my supervisor, I asked him about if once a PhD student passes the probation, then goes to the second year, and then he said this: It is not much that relevant for a postgraduate researcher whether being in the first, second or third year of the PhD, as these demarcations only matter when you are an undergraduate, as for a PhD, you are just writing the thesis, and you do not have modules to complete. By hearing that, it sounded reasonable from his perspective, and I could say it as such, but in the end, we can count on the fact that I am a first, second, and third year of the PhD, or maybe saying like I am in the early or advanced stage of my research. But anyway, it is a PhD after all.
Now let’s introduce today’s session. This session is the first of a new series I want to introduce into the PhD Lounge Podcast called the PhD Iceberg. You have probably seen the word Iceberg on YouTube videos regarding video games, books or TV series whose titles have the word “iceberg” to describe the history of the first game, book or episode until the final ones. However, what do I mean by PhD iceberg? Essentially, the Iceberg on a PhD is a kind of backstage whereby all stages, from the research proposal until the viva voce of the research, are unseen or ignored by scholarship and your peers in general, except your supervisor, of course. The Iceberg, by the way, was a writing style invented by American journalist and writer Ernest Hemingway. Known also as a theory of omission, the Iceberg Theory suggests that we are unaware of a situation’s data, meaning that any of the data that was researched, read and written is under the final product, which is the tip of the Iceberg. From Hemingway’s writing style, the Iceberg Theory was applied in different areas like marketing, business, education, video games, etc. But what about the Iceberg theory explained for Postgraduate research? It is included within the education sector, but what lies beneath the tip of the Iceberg that it is unseen or probably not spoken of anymore once PhD students become Doctors of Philosophy?
For this first session of the PhD Iceberg series, I will try to speak about PhD from the beginning. That is, our decision to embark on a doctoral degree and what we must consider after our definitive decision. Many points could be discussed during the session, but I want to compress them into a few, precisely six main points around this issue for time length reasons. Some of those six main points I am about to mention are probably known among you, so my aim for this session is to share what other thoughts could be regarded after deciding to pursue the Doctor of Philosophy Degree.
So, therefore, grab a coffee, have a seat and let’s introduce the very first PhD Iceberg Session: Decision to pursue a PhD, What to Ponder?
The first point I think any student who graduates after their MAs or related and has decided to pursue a PhD is asking himself or herself this general question: Should I go for it or not go for it? This question brings your initial thoughts of having decided to apply for a PhD, but building your mindset of not obtaining the degree only for knowledge, but instead to project your Doctor of Philosophy into the future, whether you undertake the academia or industry road. Many students, including PhD ones, genuinely say that postgraduate research is a hard degree to achieve. Moreover, your primary concern should be contributing your research to current knowledge and using it in whatever profession you choose. Obviously, knowledge is significant, and the more knowledge you obtain while studying for a degree, the better. However, getting a PhD just for the sake of erudition and not to exercise it when you graduate and seek a job is, on the other hand, a waste of time and money. Honestly, one thing to be mindful of is that a PhD is a professional degree with no modules. The only tasks are writing the thesis with your main argument and defending it at the viva voce.
Most importantly, it is the pillar for success to get a PhD graduate job, whether working in industry or academia. Decisions are personal and respected regardless of others judging your thoughts. So if you have decided to go for a PhD after you asked that question yourself, then I think you are starting on the right foot in preparing your mindset throughout your research. On the other hand, if you have not decided to take a PhD yet, it is not the end of the world, as there are plenty of opportunities for MAs to seek employment within the field you studied so hard and smartly for it.
The next point I want to bring up is that there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of PhD topics that have been researched, are currently on research and have not yet been investigated. Therefore, upon your decision, ask yourself if you could use your MA thesis and try to expand into the PhD. Or, in case of doubt, if you want to take a different approach around your research interests, each department of each university in the world has a variety of PhD programs which you could choose from. What I mean by this is to consider seeking your department, either at your university or another one and ask for information regarding what PhD programs could fit within your preferred topics over the topic you wrote during your MA thesis, wishing to expand it. Furthermore, each university website contains detailed information about their PhDs and for any questions you may have about PhD projects, consider sending emails to the professors responsible for the PhD syllabus or asking the academic services or the senior head lecturer of the PhD program about your concerns and doubts. Besides them, there are also postgraduate research open days where you can meet them in person, and the people, mostly PGR students, will happily answer all of your questions about pursuing a PhD.
An aspect I emphasize is that when researching various PhD programs, I think we ought to select those that really interest you and then narrow them down until you find a PhD course that meets your research interests. However, it is better to consult the professors who organized that PhD theme in which one of them could be your future supervisor. They usually have their emails at the end of the PhD brochure. It is helpful to send them an email asking about the program and if your MA topic or any other topic related to your degree could also fit into their research interests. Any enquiries sent to them are positive, and they will feel that they have been heard and are probably happy to work with a student who wants to enter academia or industry. For example, when I applied for a PhD at Swansea University, the PhD they offer yearly is Classics and not Ancient History. After having a conversation with my current supervisor, I could apply for it even with a proposal whose topic was in the context of Ancient History since my research also deals with some classical sources. Nevertheless, they may have changed, but it is worth looking at the department’s website. Once again, PhD topics are limitless, and some research and narrowing your choices into one that fits your interests is helpful and gives you some research skills when you get into your postgraduate project.
The third point I want to bring up is about motivation, emotional endurance and critical thinking in a PhD. This means that it is essential to stay motivated, have emotional resilience and develop critical thinking skills throughout the PhD when facing bigger challenges throughout your project like meetings with your supervisor, the ability to disagree with his viewpoints, listening to his feedback, or the ability to skim-read other thesis, articles, books or papers faster and with criticism. During a PhD thesis, we generally feel discouraged and unmotivated when aspects of our research come out of our comfort zone, and sometimes we do not come up with solutions to tackle our adversities. Moreover, a PhD can give us the feeling of loneliness because it is just us “conversating” or taking a coffee with our research, and there are moments where we feel burnt down, procrastinate, and wish to quit the project, losing thus the motivation and emotional endurance to keep going on. According to Susan Webber, motivation in postgraduate research is critical from the beginning, development and end of the project until the preparation and defence of the dissertation. The motivation must also come with the term “love”; love in what you like to study. Obviously, even when we love our PhD topic so much while researching it, keeping us motivated to take further levels, moments of emotional breakdown will always occur, trying to pin us down throughout the thesis. That red flag must turn into a green flag by thinking that in a PhD, consistency is essential since moments of emotional breakdown may suggest that the approach we are taking is not entirely wrong but to adapt it to something more practical and faster. They are expected in a research project but can help us think of other solutions, for instance, searching for different keywords from articles or books you might not have thought to research through, but you had the idea to go for them and to build your critical thinking. All in all, I believe that is what “love” means, alongside motivation, critical thinking and emotional resilience, after you have decided to study for a PhD degree.
Once you decide, consider that a PhD is finding resilience strategies to avoid losing time with things that keep us distracted and lose valuable time but can increase your motivation and love for what you want to research. Simple and realistic strategies could be like this, what is your big picture in your PhD? Why and what drives you to do a PhD? What are your ambitions, expectations and main goals when you finish the PhD?. Another strategy would be time management while having, for example, a part-time job, a hobby, daily house duties, or talking with your family, girlfriend or boyfriend about your research and asking them for solutions, even if they are not specialists.
Next point, but it is more like a question: Will I have the patience to research, write and discuss my thesis work with my supervisor during the years of the PhD? This also brings about the emotional resilience point I talked about above. Still, my approach here is about having the patience to be solely dedicated to researching, reviewing the literature, writing and discussing your thesis with your supervisor during the years your PhD program is composed of. PhD entails years of research. In the UK, for instance, where I am studying my PhD, it could be full-time or part-time, meaning it could take up to 3 to 4 years full-time and 6 to 7 years part-time. But the point here is having the patience to dedicate years of your life to plan, structure, write and discuss research with people who are curious about your topic, merely the experts of your field, besides your supervisor. Patience is crucial in a PhD because it helps you to cope with the anxiety of feeling lonely, stress and build strategies to structure and write your research topic more thoughtfully, avoiding different ways of distracting yourself with things that consume minutes and then hours, leading you, therefore, to have anxiety, because you lost precious time, interest in your research, and mainly a year or two that you have dedicated for nothing. Our brain plays procrastination tricks on us, as we are creatures that we distract very often and quickly by things that are meaningless depending on the contexts we are inserted within. According to an article from the Guardian, Eugene Carey quotes: “the potential for losing your patience, losing your interest, and even losing your mind is high, evidence of which is the dropout rate among researchers, and the considerable number who take longer than formal completion period.” Eugene here is right in this premise regarding patience. Over 50% of PhD students each year quit their research, find aimlessness, lack of patience or exhaustion in completing their PhDs, and other factors such as bad relationships with their supervisors or proper mentoring or support. If you have decided to apply for a PhD, then patience is an important skill you must have, and if you have not mastered it yet, that does not mean that you are not meant to do a PhD because you can develop it throughout your research by accepting and bearing the feedback your supervisor suggests to improve it within your desire to become a doctor of philosophy. Remember that a PhD is not a race, it is a marathon, and as in a marathon itself, patience is essential.
Another point I want to bring up for this session is funding your PhD. Not only are PhD tuition fees costly, but also applying for it has financial implications and responsibilities. Furthermore, your supervisor works with you to improve your research for the academic audience, as he or she is under evaluation by the university you are studying for your PhD, paying for their tuition services.
Most likely, the main struggle of students who want to apply for a PhD is the concern about paying tuition fees that are pretty high in general, and it depends on where you want to take it. Overall, we spend significant amounts on tuition fees whether we study locally or at another university in our home country or an international institution, even though the article by Ben Taylor from FindaPhD.com says that a PhD is considerably lower than a BA or a MA in terms of fees. Building a mindset of narrowing the universities we want to study for a PhD concerning their costs can make a difference. However, you could face the reality that the topic you wish to study at a university of your choice, which might be cheaper, may not be available, but at another university with higher fees. Furthermore, when facing the issue of tuition fees, the student crisis aggravates even more. There are also the adult responsibilities of paying rent, amenities, resources, and food, our engine in keeping us “alive” throughout the PhD. Also, the concern of inflation affecting the worldwide population makes it even more difficult to survive in buying and paying for amenities and resources (e.g., books, laptops, desktops, copies of documents, etc.). Those steps, which are naturally part of our lives, must be considered alongside the tuition fees, as without shelter, internet and food, pursuing a PhD gets behind. While for undergraduate and master’s students are already hard for them, for PhDs is even more challenging. That is, if you live alone, like myself and many others. If you have decided to do your PhD at a university near your home, however, things may be easier, as you will probably deal only with the payment of the tuition fees, unless your parents force you to pay rent even living in your own home.
Nevertheless, universities offer funding options, and there are student loans as well to help you to pay the fees, which alleviates some of that crisis. Very often, teachers or even the finance team of any university inform students about funding or grants during the PhD. Very recently, a PhD student from Exeter University shared on the Refinery29 blog her experience with the current rising costs and how she managed to cover her costs with a scholarship. She says that after being accepted into the PhD in diversity and inclusivity, her scholarship 1+3, which is £15000 per year, was not enough to cover expenses and tuition fees. As for amenities, she pays £610 for rent, £54 for Wifi, and £60 for water and electricity, respectively. She says that finding strategies to cover all of this and working as a teaching assistant at Exeter University came from sacrifices she had to make. She adds that there will not be any space for financial errors because of the rising prices that will happen from October onwards due to what is currently happening in the world. Deciding to study for a PhD carries love and dedication, but the financial sector is also or if not the most critical aspect to consider. Grants may help you cover the fees and amenities, but financial strategies must be pondered to avoid getting yourself into debts. It is the case to say in this PhD context that it is instead a matter of having financial power rather than love feelings of wanting to pursue a PhD degree.
The sixth and last point is that after you decide to pursue a PhD, consider projecting yourself into the industry and academia job market to have a perspective of what you will expect when you start seeking a job after completing your doctoral degree. This is not a thing to be scared of, as I am included in this extensive list of PhDs seeking employment in their final years or after graduating. Sometimes when I think about it when I am not doing research, it gives me some tickles in my stomach about what is gonna happen to me after the degree. As mentioned at the beginning of this session, your PhD degree should be considered a professional job that gives you research skills in the future, whatever the topic you are researching. At the same time, your future matters, as it has to be in unison with the labour market regarding the list of opportunities for PhDs, whether in academia or industry. Realistically, the job market is competitive for BA, MA and PhD graduates, and I think the solution for a student who decided to go for a PhD is to create a pitch strategy to approach potential employers within the field you want to research. Not only it increases your visibility through, for instance, LinkedIn, but also it boosts your CV when seeking a job in the future. For example, suppose a student studies for a PhD in creative writing and poetry. In that case, the strategy could be searching for and sharing content related to different forms of writing and/or curiosities about poetry. Anyway, once you go for a PhD, the point here is to try to incorporate your research degree for employment matters by being active online. This is not the thing you go to your social media and write something random about your research; otherwise, you will lose time for your study but have an online mindset where you sell your PhD to any potential employer/expert in your field. Try sharing some content you think it is worth, such as conferences, research papers, articles, PhD curiosities, small projects related to your PhD you are working on or speaking to some of your followers and engaging in conversations and exchanging ideas.
According to Dr Arthur Krebbers, founder of the PartTimePhD.com, employers love active PhD students as they are looking for outside-of-the-box students who seek to engage and develop their analytical and problem-solving skills through independent work outside of the 9-5 PhD “job” yet it is related. In the blog FindaPhd.com, Dr. Krebbers gives us six steps to pitch an excellent employment strategy for the job market and gain attention from employers: Integrate the PhD in your own development to develop goal-oriented skills, linking the PhD degree to an employment corporate strategy through long-term strategies, such as industry leadership and client servicing, producing working papers about a company and its specific needs, meaning finding gaps and provide time-consuming solutions through writing papers to convince the company’s employer, sharing your knowledge through training courses, which is widely helpful, the website skillshare is an excellent example if you have interest in doing a training course to share your knowledge you have acquired during your BA, MA and related work experiences outside university, planification of promoting the company’s diverse agenda by using your PhD as a case study to attract potential employers who seek diversity, and finally community engagement through research through the share of information about your PhD across specific links where academics and employers are more active such as Twitter and LinkedIn.
These are what I think are the six main points of what to ponder when you decide to pursue a PhD. However, I would like to share one more brief point here: being happy in writing your research topic! All the points mentioned above can only function harmoniously if you are happy and demonstrate happiness across your PhD because a PhD student will experience happiness when he or she builds his experience of pleasure and pain when facing adversity and overcoming them afterwards. As German philosopher Emmanuel Kant said: “Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.” In my opinion, if you see yourself completing the PhD and having a job afterwards, you will become a happy person, as you were able to experience and overcome the demanding, painful and natural challenges of a standard PhD marathon.
And with this bonus point, I wrap up the first session of the PhD Iceberg series. After my long absence due to my PhD, I hope you have enjoyed hearing it at the PhD Lounge Podcast, and more episodes of this new series are coming soon. However, I cannot guarantee that the publication of new sessions and late-night interviews will be regular as the full-time PhD becomes more demanding regarding research and writing. My initial thoughts were headed toward doing the PhD full-time at the same time running the podcast regularly, but things do not go as we want, and therefore I apologize to you for this aspect. Nevertheless, I am still running the podcast to educationally entertain you.
To continue following the PhD Lounge Podcast, consider leaving a review at your favourite podcast platforms, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Anchor FM. Or you can drop me an email at luisphdlounge@gmail.com and follow the social media accounts: Facebook: phdpodlounge Instagram: phdlmf and twitter @phdloungecast
As for the website, it is still in maintenance until I find a solution, and my apologies once again on that matter, but more details are coming soon.
Thank you all for listening, it has been a pleasure!
Selected Bibliography:
https://www.phdportal.com/articles/450/important-things-to-consider-about-pursuing-a-phd.html
https://patthomson.net/2016/05/05/on-the-reading-and-writing-that-no-one-sees/#:~:text=Hayot's%20notion%20of%20the%20iceberg,most%20related%20to%20immediate%20projects.
https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-ultimate-guide-to-deciding-if-you-should-get-a-phd-and-become-a-professor-cc73c20be856
https://www.findaphd.com/blog/3612/to-phd-or-not-to-phd
https://www.elsevier.com/connect/9-things-you-should-consider-before-embarking-on-a-phd#:~:text=Make%20sure%20the%20PhD%20program,not%20quite%20what%20you%20expected.
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/109855/how-to-speed-up-my-research-as-a-phd-student
https://openriver.winona.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=educationeddbooks
https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/12-thing-you-should-know-before-you-start-a-phd-9c064a979e8
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ejed.12514
https://www.findaphd.com/guides/phd-cost
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2016.1185406
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/cost-of-living-crisis-phd-student
https://www.cwauthors.com/article/Four-factors-you-should-consider-when-applying-for-a-PhD
https://getaphdparttime.wordpress.com/execphdconsultations/
https://www.findaphd.com/blog/4328/pitching-a-phd-to-your-employer
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-man-who-took-a-phd-in-happiness-science
