How to Survive Your PhD - it popped up again at Jill's today. She's been having an anxiety attack about finishing her thesis and I really understand her, being much in the same situation. I keep telling myself, what I tell the students whose Master's dissertation I supervise: you do not have to invent the wheel all over again, no one expects that of you. But of course you want to.

In Denmark, these three years of ph.d. work, is actually called the "Ph.D. education". We are supposed to take courses ourself, we are supposed to learn how to do research. In some sense, we are still at school, yet everyone is expecting us to behave like grown-ups and be very responsible about our own thing. It is a strange "coming of age" time, and I for one cant wait to get it over and done with. I think I know how to do research now, I know how to teach, and there is very few courses that would actually be able to teach me something new (in my own field, that is!), and perhaps most importantly: I know what to do to get on in the academic world. Honestly, right now, the value of the Ph.D. thesis to me mostly seems to be that it earns you a piece of paper, that will make it easier for you to get a job in the academic community. But like in RL (Real Life as in outside of university), when you apply for a job, and no one reads your Masters Dissertation when they examine your credentials, no one seems to actually need to read your Ph.D. thesis when you apply for a assistant professorship etc. They want to see articles, in the end, articles are what counts and the ph.d. thesis is just the bread underneath it all. So no need to butter it all up.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:51