Speaker 1: The number one biggest mistake that I see PhD students making is allowing their PhD supervisor to dictate the progress and pace of their own research. The thing is, is that supervisors have this habit of like putting blockers in the way like changing the project at the drop of a hat or you know sitting on some writing for ages and saying oh yeah I'll get that back to you no problem. The thing is, is that at least once a year PhD students should start looking at ways around these blockers. Ignoring your PhD supervisor is an option. Now I know some people some PhD supervisors who say like I'm purposely hands off because it teaches PhD students to be self-sufficient that I think is a bit of a cop-out. One of the things I recommend you do is write a list write a list of all of the issues that you're having with your PhD supervisor and brainstorm the ways around it. If they're not getting back to you with writing there are other people you can send your drafts to. If they're changing your PhD topic or direction at the drop of a hat there's things that you don't need to tell them. You don't have to tell them exactly what you're doing and you can sort of pursue for a couple of months on a particular thing and then just smile and nod when they tell you stuff. I've had every type of PhD supervisor and some of them you do have to keep in the dark a little bit just so you can make some progress. These people change their mind all the time so just relax. Now this is obviously very dependent on the type of PhD supervisor you have but getting around those blockers is so important. You should do this once a year get around them brainstorm ideas and you'll be amazed at how quickly your PhD can progress if you're not reliant on this one person. Now this is something that PhD students have never had to deal with in the past but you should now check the AI policies of the journals you want to submit your papers into. The problem is is that this is such a fast moving area at the moment that people are literally doing u-turns. Check this out. This is an article talking about science journals and how they overturned their ban on chat GPT authored papers and this is from the prestigious science family of journals. The reason this is so important is because they have decided that chat GPT now is a valuable tool. They've literally done a u-turn from banning it to allowing it. So you should check in right now and do it regularly to see what the AI policy are for the journals you're interested in submitting to. It's so important to do because AI is there to help you. This is the future but at the moment we're in that weird gray zone where everyone's like a little bit scared. Oh no AI we can't possibly use it. Well we can use it. Oh no don't use AI. Oh actually no it helps us. It's okay it's okay. That's where we're at at the moment. The materials and methods section of a peer-reviewed paper is often the most overlooked part of the paper. Unless you're doing something very specific if you're reproducing sort of experiments sometimes you just kind of skim over it. Now that is the wrong way to look about it. At least once a year you should have a look at the materials and methods section of a paper and decide whether or not it's the skills you want to build. The methods that are reported in this section tell you what you should be training yourself to do. Like for example in my paper here we've got scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy. All of those things were invaluable for me to learn to do myself. If you're going through papers and you realize that in the methods section there are things that are regularly pop up and that you cannot do yourself. Set yourself a plan to learn at least one or two of these skills every single year and then by the end of your PhD these skills are going to be so valuable if you decide to stay in academia but they're also incredibly valuable outside of academia wherever you want to go. Now how familiar is this to you? When I was a PhD student I used to sort of like have regular meetings but there was no one meeting where we just decided the direction for the next year. At least once a year you should be in charge of arranging a meeting with your supervisors or supervisor just to be like okay here are the big issues I'm facing and also let's talk about the big strategic things we need to get through for this project. So project direction. Where are you going? Is everyone on the same page? Your research question is the second one. Make sure that everyone is still on the same page. The research question inevitably evolves as you're going through your research because you find things that are interesting you decide to go further down that route. It's so important and I see very few people doing this as part of their PhD progress. Every research field evolves at different speeds. In the physical chemistry space it is almost monthly. Something new is coming out but in other sort of fields it can be yearly and so at least once a year or even more you should be looking at the emerging trends in your field. Now it's really easy with AI tools to find these emerging trends now. Check this out. All we have to do first is go over to elicit and I put in recent trends in OPV devices. I don't know why I did such a little V. Anyway so over here recent trends blah blah blah blah blah and then I go here and I sort by most recent and up here 2023 a review on recent progress in OPV devices for all indoor applications. That's interesting to me. That's relatively new. So I should go over then to Lit Maps and I put that paper into the discover tab. So here it is in the middle. This is a review of recent progress of the indoor applications and then I have a look to see what else is new and what is out there. It only came up with one thing but here it says current status in applications of photovoltaic technology and wearable sensors a review. So this could give me a direction for my research. This is so important if you're planning on doing more research after your PhD in the postdoc world applying for grants. Just being aware of these recent trends and just sort of like keeping them in mind making sure you can see them is so important. I'd be doing this probably two or three times a year at least. Too many PhD students are not planning for the future. I have spoke to them and say like oh what's your plans for after your PhD? Too many people, too many say I don't know and that is I think a failure of the PhD system but that failure you need to sort of like overcome yourself. Start networking with careers that you find interesting. Speak to people outside of academia if that's where you want to go. You can also get in contact with graduates from your research team to see what they did. All of these areas are open to you. The world is your oyster but all too often we feel trapped in academia and sometimes we feel a massive pressure to do a postdoc because like that's what we've trained ourselves to do. So don't feel that pressure. A job is such a huge thing. It takes up so much of your life and yet we don't think about it enough. We just think about the money or survival. You should be thinking if I don't get into academia or I don't like academia and that's absolutely okay by the way, you can also say I want to do this and this and this. I thought I was going to be a patent attorney for a little bit and then I went to a patent attorney office and it looked very very boring. Just all these people sat in their cubicles with loads of paper around them just being like oh no like that just didn't look interesting. They were all wearing suits as well and I don't like wearing suits. Anyway all of that made me realize that wasn't for me. All too often academics are in their little bubble doing their little bubble work and they don't look outside their field. They don't look outside even their sort of like research lab, their little tiny thing that they're doing. So it's important that at least once a year you make an effort to look for interdisciplinary collaborations or information or inspiration. Just those will just sort of make your PhD far more interesting to you. There are a number of ways you can do it. You don't even need to go very far. Every department that I've ever worked at has had a weekly or fortnightly seminar. Turn up to another discipline. Turn up to one that's adjacent to you. Even just go to someone else's group meetings. Ask if you can sit in at a certain professor's group meeting. They always say yes. It's where I've got a lot of inspiration and not a lot of people actually sort of like just step outside of that comfort zone. It's as easy as sending an email. It's as easy as just bumping into someone and saying oh you know your work's interesting to me. Are you going to talk about it or can I turn up to your group seminar to find out a little bit more. Always always it's been such a valuable experience and not enough people do it. That's a huge mistake. If you like this video go check out this one where I talk about what PhD students find out too late. It's a really good watch and something that's invaluable if you're in a PhD or starting one. So there we have it. There are the mistakes that PhD students make every single year. Let me know in the comments what you would add. But also remember there are more ways that you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter. Head over to andrewstapleton.com.au forward slash newsletter. The link is in the description. When you sign up 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. It's exclusive content available for free. So why wouldn't you sign up? And also go check out academiainsider.com. That's my project where I've got ebooks, I've got resource packs, I've got blogs, I've got forums, I've got courses. Everything is over there to make sure that academia works for you. All right then I'll see you in the next video. you