Speaker 1: There are some things that I really wish I had known before starting my PhD, and the first one is expectations change depending on your supervisor. There is a dramatic kind of spread of the different types of expectations different supervisors have of their students. Some supervisors want you to be in all the time, on the weekend, you know, 14 plus hour days, that's what they want from you. Whereas in even in the same department, there can be another supervisor that is just like, oh, come in when you can, kind of like approach to things. And this can really affect the way that your PhD evolves, and it can really affect how different people perceive a PhD. Some people are like, oh, this is great, like I'm doing what I want. Whereas other people are like, this is hell, I'm in here all the time, and I'm stressed out like constantly. And unfortunately, there's no way of really telling which side your supervisor is on unless you speak to the current PhD students, or you have some experience with them saying an honors year or a master's year. But really, it is so varied, the expectations of supervisors. And for some reason, we don't like to just speak about them upfront. I think that every single PhD student should sit down with their supervisor and just lay their cards on the table. The supervisor could just be like, look, I'm incredibly stressed out, my career isn't going as well as I want, so I am putting a lot of pressure on my students, or I'm very successful, I have to keep on publishing papers, and you are here to help me keep publishing papers. I expect this, this, this, and this. But we push that under the surface, and we just kind of have to work it out a lot of the times without any direct prompting from the supervisor. So it can be a very stressful adaptation time, particularly at the beginning of your PhD, to work out what on earth you should actually be doing. So I wish someone had just said, just ask your supervisor out, right, what they actually want and expect. The varying pace of research is something that I think not a lot of people actually get used to. Some days, you are on top of the world. It's like you've done one or two experiments and everything is just going your way. And then other times, for months, nothing will happen. And this kind of like long drought versus quick kind of like wins is just so hard to get used to. It's kind of like torture in a way because you're not quite sure what the day, the month, the week will hold. It's just the nature of research. And unfortunately, students have never really experienced anything like this before. In undergrad, it's like do these lectures, pass this exam in this time period, you're sweet. Whereas in your PhD in research, it's like you've got three years, good luck. It could go really well initially and then you have a drought for years. It could be that you have drought for years and then all of the sort of like great results come at the end. There are ways of managing this with different risk kind of approaches. So you do all of the risky stuff upfront to weed out the things that are actually going to work. It's something that really plays havoc with your own sense of how well you're doing and whether or not you should be there. I'm sure it's one of the leading causes of imposter syndrome. Another thing I wish someone had told me is that relocation is very important in academia, particularly in today's modern academia. I know of loads of people who have tried to find a job in their home sort of city or even country and struggled. PhDs do have to move around a lot. And look, by being open to moving to different countries, different departments, different cities, even within your own country, you will open up more opportunities. It can really limit you when you want to say, okay, I want a job in this area. Moving around is not just for sort of like career prestige to be like, ooh, I've been somewhere else, I'm exotic and new, maybe you want to employ me. But also, it just gives you more opportunities. Of all of the PhD graduates that I've worked with in the past, I would say that a lot of them found success outside of not only their home city, but also their home country. Some go to the UK, some go to Europe, some have even gone to the States. It's those people that are willing to uproot their entire life and leave that really do find the greatest benefit from an academic career. Unfortunately, a lot of people do get to the end of their PhD and have just set down roots where they are. Because they have family, they have friends, they have a life that they've built for themselves, and they don't want to all of a sudden pick it up and move it to another country. And that's completely, obviously, reasonable. But it is something that really should be spoken about, which is, at the end of your PhD, to maximize your success of actually getting any academic position, you need to be open to working anywhere in the world that will take you. Depending on the size of your field, it can be incredibly difficult to keep up with the latest advances. Even though the academic publishing process, publishing peer-reviewed papers in journals is the best system we have, it is so fragmented. Even within an individual field, you may have multiple publications that you're expected to keep across and find the greatest results that are new. And staying up to date is incredibly hard. You have to stay up to date with all of the little journals in all of the areas of your field to make sure that you haven't been beaten to a result, or beaten to achieving a certain thing. And that is always niggling at you in the back of your mind. It's like, I wonder who's working on this, and I wonder who will win. Is it going to be me, or is it going to be someone else? And really, it's conferences and speaking to other collaborators where you kind of get a sense for where they're up to. Because the paper publishing process means that you are only seeing about six months ago what happened. You're not seeing the most up-to-date information. So getting out into conferences, into symposia in your field really will help you. And so, there's always this noise at the back of your head, which is like, whoa, you could be beaten by this other group. And it's just always there in your mind. Your career after your PhD will not go the way you want, for most of us. Some people are the lucky few that do end up in a career that they love because they've planned it and they've ended up there. I think there's so many PhD students out there at the moment that when they graduate, they have this plan for their life and it never really goes the way you think because your career is sort of like a collection of decisions and opportunities and luck that sort of just forms what you do. I think that for the majority of PhD graduates, their career will end up satisfying them eventually, but there has to be a lot of searching before you find it. For some people, they do just end up in academia, they get that job they've always wanted, and they continue their life. For most people, arguably, there is going to be this moment of extreme sort of turbulence in their career where they are just not quite sure what they're doing, where they're going, why it was even worth doing a PhD in the first place. But I'll tell you what, a lot of the time, you have to get rid of all of that sort of like self-imposed stigma. Like, well, I can't do something that doesn't require a PhD because I've spent all this time doing a PhD. I can't do something that's, you know, is not in a particular field because I've spent so many years in this particular field. Once you kind of like slowly shed those expectations throughout that turbulence, you do end up finding things that you enjoy. You've got to keep searching. Let me know in the comments if that is true for you. Your PhD may lead you down a certain path, but you have to keep on walking down that path to find out what you actually want to do. And you may end up in a career that you never ever thought you'd be in. So let me know in the comments. Is that you? Are you happy where you are? What advice do you have for people when they graduate? Is it super turbulent? Did you find that you went through this kind of like semi-weird, kind of really unsettled stage like I did? I'd love to know your experience. So there we have it. There's everything you need to know about the things I wish someone had told me about doing a PhD. Let me know in the comments what you would add. And also there are more ways you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter. Head over to andrewstapeton.com.au forward slash newsletter. The link is in the description. And when you sign up, you'll get five emails over about two weeks. Everything from the tools I've used, the podcasts I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract, my TEDx talk and more. It's exclusive content available for free. So go sign up now. And also go check out academiainsider.com. That's where I've got my eBooks, my ultimate academic writing toolkit, the PhD survival guide, and I've got a new resource pack for applying for PhDs in graduate school. Go check it out now. And I've got my blog and my forum over there as well. It's all there to make sure academia and your PhD works for you. All right then, I'll see you in the next video.