Speaker 1: I've been accused on this channel of being too down on PhDs, always representing PhDs in a negative light. Now that is not my intention. My intention is to give you the real realities of doing a PhD. And so what I want to do today is provide a little balance to that weigh scale and give you the best PhD experiences that I think I experienced during my PhD and you can expect too. The first one is all about that moment of discovery. Like, I really feel like academics and PhD students are sort of like bouncing around in this addictive sort of reward and punishment system where you can spend a load of time just failing and failing and failing and then all of a sudden something works. And of course, remember the reason that something worked is because you failed all those times. But in that moment, it just feels so incredible. It's like a little dopamine rush. Like, I remember when my first solar cell worked and it shouldn't have worked. It was a solar cell that was made up of an aqueous dispersion of polymers and it shouldn't have worked. Water kills the insides of solar cells. But all of a sudden, I had a working solar cell that had been made from water based inks and I couldn't believe it. Like, it barely worked. Do you know what I mean? Like, it was 0.0000 something, but it worked. And the rush and satisfaction and the moment where it was like this one new bit of information is mine and I discovered it and I know that everyone's going to be excited. My supervisors are going to be excited. I was excited. You know, I was looking forward to writing the paper, which I'm not a big writer, so I was never into writing papers. But I was like, I can't wait to tell people. And I think that is one of the most rewarding things that a PhD can provide you is that feeling of accomplishment when things are seemingly against you. And so that is one of the best experiences I think a PhD provides. And getting there to that point of first new discovery is very difficult. Another thing I really liked was getting an insider view into academia and a university. I think in your undergraduate years, the university and your lecturers can seem like these godlike figures, like they are untouchable. They know so much. They're sort of lecturing to you, providing you with all of this information. And then during your PhD, especially the first six months, it's kind of really sort of like detrimental to your pedestal that you put them on because you realize they're just normal people. They're just normal people trying their best to survive in a very difficult and complicated system, which is academia. And it really sort of breaks down the facade of what a university is, what goes on behind the scenes, and the sorts of personalities and characters that exist in there. Like in my undergraduate, I saw my lecturers and the academics at university as these just incredibly smart, sort of like godlike, big brained, incredible thinkers. And they are partly that, but that's only a very small part that you see during the lecture. There's also this other bubbler stuff that goes around. And to be honest with you, it made me completely not scared of speaking to academics and researchers. I remember in my undergrad, I was always a bit nervous about speaking to the professor, the lecturer. But when I saw them as just normal people, it was so much easier. And they don't know things. They're finding stuff out. It's just they've got a little bit more experience in the academic system and can navigate it and have built up a body of work that they know a lot about. And you're at the beginning stages of that. So you can kind of see a pathway. And you just see them as normal people that are fallible, that make mistakes. And it's a lovely experience. And I really enjoyed that. I loved conferences. As a PhD student, I was very fortunate to do a couple of conferences, student conferences in Australia and also in the UK. And one thing I think, looking back on it, is that I didn't use a conference for what they were actually meant for. I saw it as one big party. And partly, conferences are that, if you want them to be. I think I didn't really understand that you've got to work hard and play hard at a conference if you want. I just decided to play hard. And I turned up to the lectures and the talks and the keynotes and the poster presentations. But really, I was there for the evenings, for the socials, for the dinners, for the socializing. And it probably wasn't the best use of my time at those conferences. But nonetheless, in that moment, I enjoyed them. I enjoyed them a lot. I enjoyed them to the point where it was probably very detrimental to my health. Nonetheless, conferences, the opportunity to travel, the opportunity to meet other people, the opportunity to explore new cities. They often, at conferences, have an afternoon free, so you can go and explore new places. So all of that was very, very fun, very rewarding. I just wish that I spent a bit more time actually using the conference to network, to build up connections, to find out new and interesting things that I could apply to my own research, rather than trying to find the other people there that were there to party. Nonetheless, great time. I loved conferences. A great opportunity if you get that as a PhD student. Flexibility and freedom. There is something really lovely about a PhD, depending, of course, on your supervisor relationship. But I had fortnightly meetings. And in between those fortnightly meetings, I was very free and was able to do what I wanted. And I thrived on that. I really haven't sort of got along with having to be somewhere at a certain time. Like I can be self-motivated, I can do certain things day in, day out. But for some reason, as soon as someone tells me to do it, I'm like, no, I'm going to find every way that I don't have to do it. Whereas in a PhD, it was like, here's what we're kind of working out. Go and try to do that. And I really liked that. And I think that's why I've probably ended up where I am today with different entrepreneurial things around the internet, is because I can work hard. I can motivate myself. And my PhD was the first kind of like taste I got of that, where it was very open-ended. The freedom and flexibility allowed me to explore ideas. And I always delivered results every fortnight. But how I got there was completely up to me. Sometimes, and this is probably true for a lot of PhD students, I'd get to the end of the first week and I'd be like, oh, it's probably time to collect some results now. And I would go and do that. But it wasn't a bad thing. I always ended up doing what I said I would do. It's just sometimes, I was just a lax PhD student. We've all been there, right? So overall, the freedom and flexibility, I absolutely thrived on. And it gave me a taste of what life could be like if you didn't have to do a nine to five. I actually went into nine to fives afterwards and really didn't like it. It was the structure, the rigidity, the corporate hierarchy, having a boss, being told what to do. It just didn't work well for me. Maybe a PhD was my taste of what life could be like. And I wanted to continue that party afterwards. And it can be very different depending on your supervisor. If your supervisor is a micromanager, it can be much more like a traditional job where you've got nine to five and skills and a boss and someone that's on your back all the time. But for me, it wasn't like that. So make sure you're very, very clear with your supervisor what sort of supervision you need to thrive. Now, maybe this one's a bit embarrassing to say, but I absolutely love the fact that I was doing a PhD and it was a little bit mystical to people outside. Now, as I've matured and grown up a bit, I probably cringe a little bit when I look back at old Andy during his PhD, but there was something nice about being seen as the clever one, as someone able to do a PhD. Even though I hadn't got a PhD while I was doing my PhD, it felt like I was judged nicely by those around me for being a PhD student. I don't know if I felt sort of cleverer. I certainly got knocked down a few pegs as I started to understand that I didn't understand the world, but it was nice to have parents that were proud of you for doing a PhD. It was nice to be seen as the clever one, even though you don't feel it. It was nice to have that external kind of mirror reflected back on you and it does sort of boost you up when you're not in your little PhD bubble. Now, I think this is probably only true for the early stages of a PhD. As you get through, you are more and more unsure about the things you know and you are saying and you lose all of that undergrad confidence that you've built up from passing all those exams, but it definitely sort of is a bit of a confidence booster when people speak about you as a PhD student and that you're clever and that they're proud of you and all that. So, really great experience and something that I think made me feel very good about why I was doing a PhD. So, there we have it. There are all the best parts of doing a PhD and I think this rings true for a load of people, but let me know in the comments if you agree, disagree or what you would add. Also, there are more ways to engage with me and this channel. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter where you'll get five emails over about two weeks, everything from the tools I've used, the podcast I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract and more. 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