Review: 101 Top Tips for PhD Students
Professor Iain Woodhouse’s 101 Top Tips for PhD Students is a pocket-sized thing of 85 pages, seemingly designed not to intimidate its potential readers (we all know PhD students have plenty of reading already). It takes its audience through a total of 101 (the spoiler is in the title) tips to help find, organise and finish a PhD.
There are 6 main sections, covering the process of finding a project, planning it out, efficiency, thesis writing, help with the viva, and, finally, what to do after your doctorate. The bulk of the book is taken up by the middle two chapters - ‘Being Effective’ and ‘Getting Started on Your Thesis’. These outline the essential strategies for building yourself and your project into the best they can possibly be.
When I picked up the book, I wasn’t sure how much depth it could provide. It seemed more like a booklet from a student fair than something I would buy in a bookstore. Wisely, I did not let my scepticism prevail, as I had found in the past that the smallest books often induce the most powerful emotional (and intellectual) responses. As it turns out, I was right to give this one a chance.
Professor Woodhouse writes from years of experience, not only as a humble PhD student with difficulty networking and managing his time, but also as a former supervisor of many conflicted, lost and eager aspiring academics. As he explains in his preface (p. 5), he aims to provide a ‘practical toolbox’ of useful information for anyone, at any stage of their PhD journey.
And that’s very much what 101 Top Tips does. The manageable size of the book means that one can easily go through it in a few hours to get an idea of what being a research student is like, and then look up particular tips whenever a situation calls for a refresher or specific guidance.
Every tip is simply formatted in a few paragraphs, sticking to the point while maintaining a humane, empathetic quality that keeps the reader from getting lost in dry instructions.
What I deemed particularly useful, was the fact that the author succeeds in describing the most common bumps on the way to a successful PhD thesis, without resorting to sugar-coating or downplaying anything.
If, like me, you have a tendency to be paranoid (or to read advice and think ‘why am I not already doing this?!?’) then you’ll appreciate Woodhouse’s tenth tip: Don’t panic. Ever. It even includes a Harry Potter reference.
For the remainder of the book, the author maintains a perfect combination of warm, supportive and insightful, speaking in a voice that mixes experience and reassurance. ‘This is normal’, is a common and soothing theme, such that every time your brain goes ‘Alright, time to have a panic now’, the book finds a way to say ‘No, no! It’ll be ok! And here is how you can help yourself. . .’
Emphasis is put on many of the elements of successful research besides actually doing research. This involves personal skills like time-management and its importance for wellbeing (#19 b) on p. 24 – ‘Never go into a meeting without knowing when it is going to end’ – reminded me of a particularly painful 5h meeting on a Friday afternoon in my first year of PhD). Other tips cover networking (online or in person), attending conferences, public speaking and so on. In a modest volume, Prof Woodhouse details the hows, the whys and the ifs without ever coming across as patronising or dismissive.
Plenty of guidance is given for starting and managing your thesis writing, in addition to structural information, techniques and choice of language. In principle, these are all things any PhD student should know, but this guide ensures they make sense, fills in unexpected gaps and gives an overview of ‘what you need to do’ in your role as a newly-fledged researcher.
If there is one thing that I felt the book could benefit from, it’s perhaps a little more detail in the ‘publishing in journals’ section (pp. 68 -73). As this is a fairly important element in the career growth of any academic, I was slightly surprised that this part of the book remained rather laconic.
That thought aside, I regret not having found this guide around the start of my PhD. As a research student, I rarely have the luxury to dedicate long stretches of time on reading something outside of my project topic and finding a useful book that was quite quick to finish, was a pleasant surprise. I can see myself going back to the text, both for tips on what to do and, notably, to be reminded of the okay-ness of having a crisis.
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