StratiGrad PhD Students

1. I’ve started to take proper ownership of my project. This sounds a bit silly, because of course a PhD is an individual project that only you can do, and of course it’s your research – no-one else is going to do it for you. Having spent the first six months here feeling like a total impostor and like nothing was going into my thick skull, somehow I haven’t been kicked off the cohort … well, I guess I have to just accept that I’m here for the foreseeable future, and that means actually trying to work something out of this enormous mountain of, well, stuff, that will eventually look something like a PhD thesis. My project is amazing, and it is the most supreme privilege to be here, surrounded by people who are focussed on finding creative and innovative solutions to the world’s problems – with science! – but sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of that, or become totally overwhelmed by it.
2. I’m trying to be ruthless about how I use my time at work. The Pomodoro technique (a good timer is here) and Evernote were good friends during undergrad exam periods, and a week ago I had to wonder why I wasn’t being as productive and efficient now as I was then. I’ve whipped them back out again, and whaddya know – I’m getting more work done. I want to spend the time I have at college actually working: it’s far too easy to get distracted, or lost in a wild goose chase of papers and ideas and unrelated topics. I also want to avoid working at home as much as possible, because trying to keep a PhD and the remains of what you used to call a life separate are difficult at the best of times without actively inviting your work into your personal space.
3. As a corollary of this, I’m trying to focus on daily, achievable goals. It’s so easy to feel swamped by the amount of work you have to get through; I’m finding the best way to cope is set very specific tasks, and enjoy the feeling of immense satisfaction/relief as I cross them off. I go home knowing I haven’t forgotten anything, which means I can sleep without worrying, and come into work with an immediate set of goals to focus on, so I can get to work right away. After the obligatory first cup of tea, obviously, which is a very necessary thing for the nerves after cycling in rush-hour London.
4. Talking of sleep, I’m making sure I’m sleeping at least seven hours every night, ideally 8, and no more. Every night. No sleeping in on weekends, no 5-hour nights in the week. You need to be awake, refreshed, happy and ready to work when you get into work, and if you’ve not sorted out your sleeping pattern, this is nigh-on impossible. For me, this also means avoiding coffee, which royally screws up my sleep. They say PhD students live on caffeine, but if my fellow Stratigrads are anything to go by, we fall into two camps – hardcore addicts *coughcoughAdamcoughhackblergh* and abstainers (unless there’s an emergency/deadline/hangover). It’s hard to keep to though, because I do actually like the taste of coffee, and I’m still using copious amounts of tea as a replacement crutch. Decaff just doesn’t cut it.
5. I’ve learnt that reading is equally important as doing stuff in the lab. Again, I know I’m supposed to be doing a PhD and that this should be self-evident, but my supervisor is a big believer in just getting right into the lab and making a big ol’ mess. Which is great, but then you have to figure out why you’re doing what you’re doing, what the context is, how you’re actually improving this little corner of science you’re poking about in. It’s also terrible to find you’ve had what seems like a great idea, only to find out six weeks later that everyone else already knew it. Keep reading, and find a smart way to keep a track of what you’re reading. I’m finding Mendeley, Evernote, Endnote and trying to actually knock out a literature review are really helping with this.
6. Lastly, I have to stop writing off a bad day as a sign of a bad week. Some days you don’t get much done as you’d like, or you get stuck on something. That’s fine – put it to one side, focus on something else. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Most importantly, start fresh – now. Don’t leave it ‘til tomorrow; hit the reset button. Right, so this morning was bad. Yeah, you had the wrong setting for the whole of that experiment and now you have to do it again. Be cool, have a cuppa, put some tunes on, set your Pomodoro to 25 minutes and go at it again.

I’ve got about a million more where these came from, but I’ve really got to crack on with today’s to-do list, which right now looks like this:

Argh!

Kate