Managing your DPhil

Doctor of Philosophy =
physical work +
minimum brain power (99% human being has this) +
language +
what else??

Several days ago, I took 'Managing your DPhil course', by the lecturer, a PhD degree holder, from Imperial College. This course seemed to be mandatory to new DPhil students, so I went to the lecture room with no hesitation. Surprisingly, there was no one other than the lecturer in the lecture room. Recently, I often get surprised by my amazing punctuality. Being puntual at a meeting or whatever and waiting for others to arrive make me feel quite nice than you imagine.

This session was booked for the whole afternoon (1 to 5 o'clock). I knew it was going to be a waste of time and actually it was. Four hours is ridiculously long to learn how to manage my doctoral research. The content of the session was quite predictable, and indeed it covered stuff like time management, plagiarism, originality and etc.  

Since I came to the UK, I've taken quite many training courses such as presentation skill (particularly several times for this one) and various kinds of management skills. Fortunately(?), I've never got bored from those sessions, thanks to the language. It requires high concentration and good listening skill. To me, it's quite impressive to see how British people pay attention to this this kind of sessions.

Despite the fact that four hours of managing your DPhil was obviously over the top, I have to say that the course was quite fruitful. During the course, I had to think about 'Why?' for a couple of factors associated with DPhil course, and it was a good opportunity to clarify more specific goals. For example,

What a DPhil is?

'Demonstrate your ability to conduct research, understand your subject, demonstrate critical and independent thought, show originality, contribute to knowledge, develop a model, explain and defend a model and so on.'

These are most of factors and qualities which I should always bear in mind as a DPhil student.

Another interesting point in the session was 'The Pareto Principle'.

'The 80:20 Rule.

A minority of input produces the majority of results.'

This implies several good points and suggestions to DPhil students. First and foremost, it is very likely that you will waste your time by sticking to one particular experiment. Success or failure could be determined by your extra input and effort, but it is less likely to happen. Trying to be well oriented is much more important than just hard working. Secondly, do not focus on just your work during your DPhil. It might be wiser to try to drill your other skills with your main work so that I can efficiently utilise the 80% of my time.

So far I feel doing DPhil is not tough as much as doing MPhil, but you should always bear in mind where you are, where you are heading, how you are doing in longer term. Probably, doing DPhil is another step to become more professional.