Trust Me, I’m a Doctor: A PhD Survival Guide

Abstract

So, you have decided to do a PhD … now what? In this essay, the author provides some advice for beginning PhD students, basically sharing what he would tell his younger self. Doing a PhD is a transformative experience, but the process is challenging, not merely on an intellectual level but also psychologically. To overcome these challenges, one needs a certain mindset and a bag of tricks. The author offers some help for getting in the right mindset, and shares some of his own tricks for studying, research, and productivity in general.

Keywords:

• advice
• graduate students
• PhD
• research

JEL codes:

• A20
• A23

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In addition to Jo Swinnen and all his LICOS colleagues past and present, the author thanks Saule Burkitbayeva, Maria Garrone, Seneshaw Tamru Beyene, Anna Salomons, Andrea Guariso, Lotte Ovaere, Alexander Jocqué, Jo Reynaerts, Thijs Vandemoortele, Ward Neyrinck, Angela Merritt, Luc Sels, and Wilfried Lemahieu for enthusiastic feedback on earlier drafts. Special thanks to his two external jury members, Julian Alston (UC Davis) and Steve Ziliak (Roosevelt University) for being the first jury members in the history of KU Leuven to formulate questions during a PhD defense in limerick.

Notes

¹Even as I am writing this essay, part of my brain is telling me that I am not a real economist and that some people in much tougher subfields of economics or much tougher universities would laugh at my pretensions, and so on, and so on.

²For more on this and other psychological phenomena, an interesting book is Myers (2000), in particular, page 299.

³For more on this, see Greene (2012).

⁴Of course, if you have serious and persistent motivation problems, perhaps you have chosen the wrong field after all. There is nothing wrong with that. The question would then be how you want to deal with the situation. You could continue the PhD regardless and find another job afterward, or you could stop before finishing the PhD. This is not a failure in any way. It is impossible to know for sure if you will enjoy a certain job or not, and this is as true for academic jobs as it is for other jobs. Again, use the growth mindset here: you have learned more about yourself, your skills, and preferences, and this knowledge will come in handy as you build your post-academic life. However, do not give up too fast. Like I said earlier, almost everyone I know has thought of quitting at some point.

⁵If you think this would also have some therapeutic benefit for you, the go-to reference is Gans and Shepherd (1994). Tons of classic novels have been rejected by publishers, too. Apparently George Orwell's Animal Farm once got rejected because “it is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.”

⁶Everyone understands the Pythagorean theorem, until you ask them to prove it. It is not that hard, but obviously we do not have the proof in our head when we use the theorem in a calculation. Yet, if you have a mathematical problem but suddenly you see how it can be translated into rectangular triangles, a little light bulb will flash, and you will “understand” the problem as being a variation on the Pythagorean theorem.

⁷Scott Young has called this “holistic learning.” See more here: http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2007/03/25/how-to-ace-your-finals-without-studying/.

⁸See, for instance, the papers by Nathan Nunn on the long-run effects of the slave trade on African development (Nunn 2008; Nunn and Wantchekon 2011; Nunn and Puga 2012).

⁹This metaphor is attributed to Arjo Klamer (2007).

¹⁰Plus, it looks good on your resume!