A Social Science Student's Guide to Surviving Your PhD

A Social Science Student's Guide to Surviving Your PhD

Author: Kohol Shadrach Iornem

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)

Published: 2021-01-11

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0335249647

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This book is written by a successful survivor! This clear and supportive text provides a detailed synthesis of, and rationale for, the key issues involved in a PhD and is highly recommended for anyone contemplating embarking on a PhD programme - it should be read from start to finish before starting the journey and consulted at regular intervals throughout the journey using the lists of dos and don’ts as checklists at strategic milestones along the way. Professor Eleri Jones, Professor Emerita, Cardiff Metropolitan University Dr Iornem presents the topic of a PhD journey in the same way as he undertook the journey itself: with enthusiasm and joy. Any student wanting to tackle this daunting task should use this book as a guide and as a motivator. Dr Iornem recognizes the hurdles and the fears which face a research student and addresses them with realism, pragmatism and humour, based on his own personal experiences. Dr John Koenigsberger, PhD supervisor: Cardiff Metropolitan University; University of Wales, Trinity St. Davids From development of the research proposal to preparing for the viva voce and post-doctoral career options, this handy survival guide provides an invaluable source of advice and inside knowledge on the entire PhD process. All stages are explained in simple terms, and potential pitfalls are clearly highlighted, along with how to avoid them. This accessible, informative and engaging book is highly recommended as essential reading to anyone considering undertaking a PhD. Dr Hillary J. Shaw, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Urban Research on Austerity, De Montfort University The doctorate is an emotional and academic journey, filled with dilemmas and obstacles that are normal for every student. Offering a new perspective to help navigate and adjust to a new environment and culture of learning, this book seeks to answer questions like: •What if my research is not up to a PhD standard? •What makes a thesis original? •What if I cannot finish the course before the stipulated 3-year period? •What kind of training do I need before commencing a PhD? Drawn from the author’s own experience, alongside the stories of other students and graduates, the book illustrates possible solutions to the academic and emotional challenges faced by today’s PhD student. Key features: 1.Reflections from contemporary PhD students and graduates. 2.Comprehensive table of contents including research, proposal writing, avoiding plagiarism, publishing, and preparing for the viva voce. 3.Accessible and practical approach to the common problems faced by today’s doctoral students. 4.Conversational style for an easy-to-read experience, particularly useful for international students whose first language is not English. 5.Simplified coverage of the research journey in a logical step-by-step format from pre-application to the final Thesis Defence. Essential reading for students and supervisors, A Social Science Student’s Guide to Surviving Your PhD will also be of use to international students seeking to gain further insight into the application process and the demands of research degrees in the UK. Dr Kohol Shadrach Iornem is a senior lecturer at the International Foundation Group, London, UK, where he teaches Business Management, Organisational Behaviour and Study Skills. He is also the Director of Programmes at London Graduate School.


How to Survive Your PhD

How to Survive Your PhD

Author: Jason Karp

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.

Published: 2009-12-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1402247486

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How to Survive Your PhD is your insider's guide to avoiding mistakes, choosing the right program, working with professors, and just how a person actually writes a 200-page paper When you're getting your PhD, you never know what surprises to expect. But now, you can be prepared! How to Survive Your PhD is your step-by-step guide to the right way to tackle every part of the doctoral process. Getting your PhD is not an easy process, and the decisions you make before and during your doctoral work can mean the different between having a PhD in four years or eight, Jason Karp has been there – and made the mistakes – and he shows you just what to avoid, what you should be doing, and how to make the best use of your time and resources. Plus insider tips on: Choosing Your School Dealing with Finances Picking the Right Academic Advisor Researching the Dissertation Managing Your Time The Exams Tricks of the Trade The Defense And so much more


Mastering Your PhD

Mastering Your PhD

Author: Patricia Gosling

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-11-19

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 3642158471

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"Mastering Your PhD: Survival and Success in the Doctoral Years and Beyond" helps guide PhD students through their graduate student years. Filled with practical advice on getting started, communicating with your supervisor, staying the course, and planning for the future, this book is a handy guide for graduate students who need that extra bit of help getting started and making it through. While mainly directed at PhD students in the sciences, the book's scope is broad enough to encompass the obstacles and hurdles that almost all PhD students face during their doctoral training. Who should read this book? Students of the physical and life sciences, computer science, math, and medicine who are thinking about entering a PhD program; doctoral students at the beginning of their research; and any graduate student who is feeling frustrated and stuck. It's never too early -- or too late! This second edition contains a variety of new material, including additional chapters on how to communicate better with your supervisor, dealing with difficult people, how to find a mentor, and new chapters on your next career step, once you have your coveted doctoral degree in hand.


A PhD Is Not Enough!

A PhD Is Not Enough!

Author: Peter J. Feibelman

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2011-01-11

Total Pages: 93

ISBN-13: 0465025331

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Everything you ever need to know about making it as a scientist. Despite your graduate education, brainpower, and technical prowess, your career in scientific research is far from assured. Permanent positions are scarce, science survival is rarely part of formal graduate training, and a good mentor is hard to find. In A Ph.D. Is Not Enough!, physicist Peter J. Feibelman lays out a rational path to a fulfilling long-term research career. He offers sound advice on selecting a thesis or postdoctoral adviser; choosing among research jobs in academia, government laboratories, and industry; preparing for an employment interview; and defining a research program. The guidance offered in A Ph.D. Is Not Enough! will help you make your oral presentations more effective, your journal articles more compelling, and your grant proposals more successful. A classic guide for recent and soon-to-be graduates, A Ph.D. Is Not Enough! remains required reading for anyone on the threshold of a career in science. This new edition includes two new chapters and is revised and updated throughout to reflect how the revolution in electronic communication has transformed the field.


Writing for Social Scientists

Writing for Social Scientists

Author: Howard S. Becker

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-11-15

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0226041379

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Students and researchers all write under pressure, and those pressures—most lamentably, the desire to impress your audience rather than to communicate with them—often lead to pretentious prose, academic posturing, and, not infrequently, writer’s block. Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published nearly twenty years ago, Writing for Social Scientists has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker’s message is clear: in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then begin writing. Revise. Repeat. It is not always an easy process, as Becker wryly relates. Decades of teaching, researching, and writing have given him plenty of material, and Becker neatly exposes the foibles of academia and its “publish or perish” atmosphere. Wordiness, the passive voice, inserting a “the way in which” when a simple “how” will do—all these mechanisms are a part of the social structure of academic writing. By shrugging off such impediments—or at the very least, putting them aside for a few hours—we can reform our work habits and start writing lucidly without worrying about grades, peer approval, or the “literature.” In this new edition, Becker takes account of major changes in the computer tools available to writers today, and also substantially expands his analysis of how academic institutions create problems for them. As competition in academia grows increasingly heated, Writing for Social Scientists will provide solace to a new generation of frazzled, would-be writers.


The PhD Handbook: How to Take Care of Yourself, Your Research Project and Your Future

The PhD Handbook: How to Take Care of Yourself, Your Research Project and Your Future

Author: Rosemary Doyle

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)

Published: 2023-10-23

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0335252109

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This book includes an accompanying Online Learning Centre. The link can be found within the preliminary pages of the book. “This book will undoubtedly become a must read for every PhD student.” Dr Steven McCabe, Associate Professor, Birmingham City University, UK “A great addition to any supervisor or student's bookshelf" Professor Inger Mewburn, Director of researcher development, Australian National University, Australia “The PhD Handbook is an essential read to make this journey easier and more structured” Prof Dr Carsten P Welsch, Head of Physics Department, University of Liverpool, UK “The PhD Handbook is a vital companion to PhD studies in any discipline." Colin G. Johnson, Associate Professor, University of Nottingham, and co-author of How to Get a PhD Based on the authors successful training courses run around the world for thousands of PhD students, and drawing on personal experiences of completing their own doctoral degrees, this book offers tried and tested approaches to help students at all stages meet the demands of a PhD. Full of practical and highly applicable tools, techniques, activities and templates, The PhD Handbook looks beyond research challenges to provide an accessibly written step-by-step guide to the wider project management and personal effectiveness skills needed throughout your journey toward a successful and timely qualification. Each chapter focuses on the most common issues PhD students encounter, including how to: • Create a useful plan when you don’t know what you’re doing • Actively shape a positive supervision partnership • Stop worrying and start working • Get the most out of every day • Get going again if you get stuck • Bounce back when things go wrong • Use your PhD as the launchpad for your future career As well as helping you make the most of the doctoral experience, the book also provides a toolbox of transferable skills that you will find useful in setting yourself up for a successful career beyond your degree. Dr Rosie Doyle is a highly respected trainer and coach, with a career of more than 25 years specialising in personal effectiveness, teamworking and leadership. She works in the UK and Europe with clients in the university, space industry, arts and charity sectors. She completed her PhD in 2009 at the University of St Andrews, UK. Dr Fraser Robertson is an internationally acclaimed trainer, consultant and speaker. A project manager in the industry for over 20 years, he established Fistral Training in 2008 and specialises in supporting researchers around the globe from PhDs and PostDocs, to PIs and the Professoriate. He completed his doctoral degree at Edinburgh Napier University, UK in 2015.


The Professor Is In

The Professor Is In

Author: Karen Kelsky

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 0553419420

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The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.


Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School

Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School

Author: Adam Ruben

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2010-04-13

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0307589455

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This is a book for dedicated academics who consider spending years masochistically overworked and underappreciated as a laudable goal. They lead the lives of the impoverished, grade the exams of whiny undergrads, and spend lonely nights in the library or laboratory pursuing a transcendent truth that only six or seven people will ever care about. These suffering, unshaven sad sacks are grad students, and their salvation has arrived in this witty look at the low points of grad school. Inside, you’ll find: • advice on maintaining a veneer of productivity in front of your advisor • tips for sleeping upright during boring seminars • a description of how to find which departmental events have the best unguarded free food • how you can convincingly fudge data and feign progress This hilarious guide to surviving and thriving as the lowliest of life-forms—the grad student—will elaborate on all of these issues and more.


How to Get Your PhD

How to Get Your PhD

Author: Gavin Brown

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2021-03

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0198866925

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A unique take on how to survive and thrive in the process your PhD, this is a book that stands out from the crowd of traditional PhD guides. Compiled by a leading UK researcher, and written in a highly personal one-to-one manner, How to Get Your PhD showcases the thoughts of diverse and distinguished minds hailing from the UK, EU, and beyond, spanning both academia and industry. With over 150 bitesize nuggets of actionable advice, it offers more detailed contributions covering topics such as career planning, professional development, diversity and inclusion in science, and the nature of risk in research. How to Get Your PhD: A Handbook for the Journey is as readable for people considering a PhD as it is for those in the middle of one: aiming to clarify the highs and lows that come when training in the profession of research, while providing tips & tricks for the journey. This concise yet complete guide allows students to "dip in" and read just what they need, rather than adding to the mountain of reading material they already have.


Surviving and Thriving in Postgraduate Research

Surviving and Thriving in Postgraduate Research

Author: Ray Cooksey

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-06-27

Total Pages: 1199

ISBN-13: 9811377472

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This handbook provides an in-depth exploration of the entire journey of postgraduate research in the social and behavioural sciences, from enrolment to its culmination in the form of a thesis, dissertation or portfolio, and beyond. It is written in an accessible and example-rich style, offering practical and concrete advice in virtually all areas. It also includes references to additional resources and websites, and each chapter features key recommendations for improving the postgraduate research experience. The book addresses not only research-related aspects (e.g. supervisors; selecting your guiding assumptions; contextualising, framing and configuring research; reviewing literature; sampling; writing proposals; ethics and academic integrity; selecting a data gathering strategy; surviving your thesis/dissertation/portfolio examination; and publishing), but also questions concerning how to integrate, manage, and balance the research journey in the context of the postgraduate student’s broader life-world (e.g. skill development and supervisor relations; effective time and project management; a healthy work–life balance; maintaining motivation; and dealing with criticism). The book adopts an explicitly pluralist perspective on postgraduate research, moving beyond mixed methods thinking, and offers concrete examples from postgraduate students’ real-world experiences.