Being successful at a Ph.D.

[Postbib Yeshuist]

The halls of academia are littered with stories of those who dropped out after a year or two, or those who never quite got past the ABD stage (I happen to know one of the latter personally). I have my own plan on how I intend to avoid this (one being a wife who will kick my tail if I slack off), but I'm interested in anything anyone else has heard on successfully navigating the 5-6 years between matriculation and graduating. I bought a book (How to get what you want, I think), but other suggestions are definitely welcome.

Edited March 29, 2010 by Postbib Yeshuist

[fuzzylogician]

I'm just a first year so I'm not going to pretend I have all the answers but it seems to me that there are two kinds of people who quit - those who simply figure out they don't want to have a career in research, and those who work themselves to the ground and as a result feel that the program is too intensive for them and drop out. If you're going to be one of the former, there's nothing you can do against that, sometimes things just aren't what you imagine that they would be like. Other than that I guess my strategy for not dropping out is not taking things too seriously - taking time off to rest, having other interests, going out and doing non-work-related things. I think that if you keep everything in proportion and have other things you love and care about, and at the same time you really do enjoy the work you are doing, then you will get past the hard times and be successful in grad school.

[cgking]

I'm reading Graduate Study for the 21st Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities by Gregory Colon Semenza, and finding it really useful. He includes a timetable describing how to pace yourself so that you don't end up writing your dissertation for 10 years, practical advice for how to deal with department politics, and things like that.

Edited March 30, 2010 by cgking

[Medievalmaniac]

based off of my interviewing of others relentlessly, meaning a lot of discussions with people who have their PhDs and people in the middle of their programs and people who have quit and gone on to other things, I have come to the conclusion that there are as many reasons not to finish as there are people in PhD programs. But the primary culprits appear to be the following (in no particular order, and keeping in mind I was polling English profs and prof wannabes):

1. wrong fit, either in terms of department and or/subject matter. Most of the people who have told me this was their reason were traditional, straight-through PhD students. A lot of them indicated they wished they had taken a gap year before starting because they didn't think they would have gone into the program in the first place. Only a couple were people who had done something else first and then gone back to school.

2. burnout. A lot of people get halfway through the academic portion and just start thinking: "God, I'm so tired of being in the classroom! It's not worth it!" There are also a lot of people I have spoken to who told me they got to a point where they were sitting in their classes thinking: "I already know all of this, what's the point?" When it got to where they had to take classes, but they really felt they knew more than the professor teaching the class, they lost focus. A couple of these quit their program, most of them got to burnout part two....

3. burnout part two. They work themselves to death, for a pittance of a stipend and / or fellowship, and it's drudgery with no end in sight (their words, lol). They teach freshman comp class after freshman comp class, they barely have time to get their own work done, and "if this is academia then screw it!" (in my opinion, these are people who probably should be in the "wrong fit" category, but were too stubborn to say so - they like the IDEA of professorship, they just don't like the reality - which is teaching and grading a lot of poorly prepared students among the shining starts). Most of these end up getting to ABD, but then they hit burnout number three

4. ABD burnout. In this case, they've worked their butts off for two or three years taking classes and teaching classes. Now they're faced with the freakishly stressful idea of writing their own book, from scratch. They also have way less supervision. The temptation to revert to pre-PhD coursework slacking off status can be extremely hard to resist - if your first chapter's not due for three months, why not rest and take some deserved down time? The fact that they managed to get as much done as they did while teaching lures them into a false sense of security in terms of what they can get done in what amount of time. Then they freak out because the chapter is due and they haven't started researching. This leads to missed deadline after missed deadline and active engagement in trying to avoid everything having to do with the dissertation, which eventually becomes a not-written dissertation.

5. Dissertation fear - this isn't quite the same. You don't not do it because you're burned out, you don't do it because you are paralyzed at the idea that your idea might not be good enough, your dissertation isn't going to be long enough, your thesis might be debunked, your writing might show you as a fake scholar, you may never get it defended - this one is a purely psychological hangup. Apparently (based on what I've been told) people in this category "knew" they were going to have to write a dissertation "eventually" - but when "eventually" came around they felt so overwhelmed they couldn't get past that. In this case also, a lax advisor is very unhelpful - if you are already terrified, and then your dissertation advisor expects you to be a fully independent scholar and does not offer you a lot of support (i.e. handholding) this can result in an unfinished (unstarted) PhD. Some people need more coaching than others. Knowing this about yourself ahead of time can save you grief because you can then make sure you choose an advisor who is more willing to give you extra assistance/coaching through your hang ups. Alternately, (I have been told) seeking out a therapist and talking through this is a good idea.

6. family issues. This can take the form of anything from aging parents, to young children, to family members with disabilities, to your own disabilities, to divorce, death, etc. etc. etc. - but the stress of real life can absolutely, when coupled with the stress of dissertating, lead to no dissertation - if something has to give, it's often the PhD, at least temporarily...and if time runs out and you can't get an extension, then that's that.

7. Program cuts/lack of funding to finish out. This can be because there's already a lot of debt in the family or because you choose specifically not to go into debt, but finances appear to be an important reason not to finish.

These were the most often listed problems with getting the PhD...but there were several others as well. Essentially, I think you just have to stay focused and motivated - and since your PhD is a very personal and individual thing, that's sometimes really hard to do.

Hope that helps...?

[Postbib Yeshuist]

Hope that helps...?

Are you kidding? That's phenomenal! You should write a dissertation on why people don't write dissertations.

Edited March 31, 2010 by Postbib Yeshuist