PhD Tips and Tricks (or learning from others' experience)

The first day of Spring just passed us by, meaning a number of post-grads have recently notched up their first semester and a bit of PhD life. As with any other new undertaking a lot of lessons have been learned by the fledgling PhDs. The student-led Social Lab Group decided to create somewhat of a repository for recently enrolled PhDs, comprising both the lessons we learnt and some useful tips for surviving your first semester.

I'll preface the list by saying the tips seem to fall into two (maybe one) broad categories; 1) DO THESE THINGS ESPECIALLY IF THEY SCARE YOU, and 2) USE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY TO TRICK YOURSELF INTO BEING PRODUCTIVE.

• Conduct your first study as soon as possible, and definitely before you feel ready.
• Make yourself accountable by creating small goals and deadlines and announcing them to your advisor or scheduling meetings on their due date. It's not your advisor's responsibility to harass you about this, but simply telling them of what you plan to accomplish by X date or Y meeting can be a good motivator.
• If you're looking to wrap up a meeting, taking a moment to summarise the key points out loud is both an effective hint and it makes you look totally engaged and on top of things.
• Visit the journal websites to sign up to their free email notifications for new issues.
• When reading a newly released journal article that appears to have completely and perfectly investigated your PhD topic, you should print it out and get out your angry highlighter and big red pen and lay into it. Identifying what the authors in their incomparable stupidity have failed to look at, control for, or explain is not only very therapeutic, but will help you realise that a) you still have a contribution to make, and b) people care about the topic you're researching!
• Get in as much writing practice as you can. If you don't have any data of your own to write up, your advisor will definitely have some data somewhere (e.g., old honours student data) that they would be happy for you to cut your teeth on. The best of this is that your lack of emotional investment in the dataset will make the inevitable and crushing rejection substantially less crushing.
• Look for potential paper collaborations as a 3rd or later author. Providing comments - even doing substantial editing - on a draft initially written by someone else is by far less exhausting than starting from a blank page.
• Encourage, accept and laugh (as applicable) at criticism you receive. If someone is giving you honest and constructive criticism, that means they care enough about your work (yay!) and want to help you improve it (double-yay!). By seeking out criticism you are seeking out opportunities to improve your work and your understanding.
• It is important to note that as a PhD student you are in research training, and are not expected to have all the answers. You are in research training, and not expected to have all the answers. You are not the exception to this expectation.
• Tutoring is great for you. It allows you to develop presentation experience, deal with left-field questions, work on explanations for that much-venerated "intelligent but non-specialist audience", hone your time management skills, and pays well. You should do it at least once during your PhD, the earlier the better.
• Force yourself to present wherever possible. Say "yes" to things like lab group, 3 minute thesis, RHD-Day, and conferences. When someone asks you "what do you do", use that opportunity to hone your 30-second version (and your self-control when they follow up with "so why does that matter?").
• Attend conferences, summer schools, small group meetings (mini-conferences), seminars, lab groups and coffee dates wherever possible. The importance of your peers' and colleagues' contributions to your work, whether formally or informally, cannot be overstated. They can ask uncomfortable questions, point out flaws, grant blinding insight, listen to you whinge, and order another bottle of wine. How invaluable!

So, on behalf of the students from the Social Lab Group, I hope you can take something away from this post that helps you at some point during your candidature.

Feel free to add any of your own tips and tricks in the comments :)

Morgan

Psyc update - 30th March 2010

First semester is well under way and the research is getting done!! I thought I’d give a quick summary of what’s been going on over the last month or so.

Conference Preparation
The first big local (Australasian) psych conference is coming up in a week or so. The Experimental Psychology Conference (EPC) is to be held in Melbourne this year and a large contingent of cognitive and perception psychs are busy getting their presentations and posters in order, booking flights and accommodation, and sussing out what mischief they can get up to when south of the border. While I’m not attending (Matt, Will, and James are, so stay tuned to see what they trouble they cause in Melbourne), I am keenly monitoring the process of creating a poster because I'll hopefully be presenting one in San Francisco later this year!

Confirmations
The first major milestone of the PhD is confirmation and tends to happen about a year into the program. Up until this point you aren’t technically a PhD student, you are a PhD candidate, which essentially means the university hasn’t committed to you or your research yet. You need to convince a panel, representing the school/faculty/university, that your planned research is interesting, innovative, and feasible enough to continue. Since a lot of the latest batch of PhDs started about a year ago we are having a lot of PhD confirmation talks. The ones I’ve seen so far have gone really well. It’s great to hear what projects other people have been beavering away at. I’ve found attending conftalks helps me overcome the facade of pretending to understand what my friends are researching. There are one of two outcomes for me: either I finally understand what they do, with the help of their finely-tuned explanations and diagrams, OR, I still don’t understand, which by this point is no longer hidden by the facade but exposed as glaring fact (“What do you mean you don’t get it? You were at my conftalk, right?!”)

Assassins’ League
I can’t give too much away about this, it’s terribly secretive (though I’ve already been chastised for blabbing to anyone who’ll listen). It’s a tense game of cat-and-mouse that lasts for two weeks, played exclusively among psych students and faculty, and not for the feint-hearted. I won’t say any more about the actual game but I will say that it’s a really fun way to get to know others in the school. Currently playing are a bunch of second-years, some masters students, some PhD students and some RAs. You never know who’s coming for you... Anyway, if you are interested in finding out more please visit this site.

So, fun times around the school. Almost makes a fella wanna do a PhD ;)

- Morgan

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??
Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Ramblin' Man

It's said that one of the perks of academic life is travel. I can vouch for this. I'm a first-year PhD student but have already made two trips to the USA without spending a dime.

The purpose of this post is partly to gloat but mostly to convince you to take the opportunity to travel during your PhD and realise the value of getting your name and face out there on the international stage.

In October I was invited to speak at the University of California Irvine and the University of Lethbridge in Canada. (Securing funding is much easier if you can get someone to invite you!) I met Associate Professor Simon Cole, a big player in my research field of fingerprint identification. He gave me some tips on where to focus my research and his grad students showed me where they work and play.


Associate Professor Simon Cole and me

I was then treated to dinner by Professor Elizabeth Loftus. I'm sure you'll know her. She is best known for her pioneering work on the misinformation effect and the implications for eyewitness testimony. Loftus sits half way down a list of the 100 most influential researchers in psychology of the 20th century (just below Posner and Broadbent : ).


Professor Elizabeth Loftus, Me and her grad-student Shari Berkowitz

I also attended the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in San Antonio, Texas. An intense week: 8 hours work, 9 hours play, rinse, repeat. The powers that be were impressed by our creation of the first HFES student chapter in the Southern Hemisphere -- HFES-UQ. Because Tobi, our wonderful president, couldn't make it (he made up some excuse) I was treated like an academic rock star by the organisers and fellow students.


Morgan, Dave and I receiving an award on behalf of HFES-UQ from Assistant Professor Sandra Garrett

Despite all this nerdy stuff, I still caught a Bruce Springsteen concert in New York with my dad, got drenched at Niagara Falls and cruised down the Las Vegas strip hanging out a limo sunroof drinking beer with my mate Morgan (not on tax-payer's dollars of course).


Morgan and I in a limo on the Las Vegas strip

So, get your academic persona out there and be sure to have some fun in the process!

Matthew B. Thompson
mbthompson.com

I thank HFES-UQ, NICTA and my advisors Dr Jason Tangen and Professor Penelope Sanderson who made this trip possible.


Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??
Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au