I started my own PhD exactly six years ago this week and looking back there are LOADS of things I wish I’d known when I started! Previously I’ve written a whole post about my PhD regrets. In this post I want to focus on actionable advice and tips which I hope will help out any new first year PhD students.
Even if you’re already midway through your PhD I hope that you find some of the advice useful. Do you have a piece of PhD advice yourself? Feel free to share it with us in the comments section below.
1. Set Up Regular Meetings with Your Supervisor
One of the main things which really helped during my PhD was having regular one on one meetings. Not only do you get an opportunity to check things with your supervisor, they’re also a useful way to stay focussed and disciplined.
Rather than set up ad-hoc one on one meetings when you need them, I’d really push for a regular slot. I had a recurring weekly meeting, mostly just with my primary supervisor but sometimes my secondary supervisor came along too. Some people may find this is too frequent but in any case regular meetings are crucial.
Supervisors will be familiar with many challenges you’re likely to face. They can offer invaluable advice to not only solve the problem quickly but also offer perspective to put your mind at ease. It is almost impossible that you won’t have anything at all to discuss. In fact you are likely to end up receiving lots of other advice which you may not have been actively seeking near the start of your PhD, such as career guidance.
Some supervisors by default only have group meetings with their PhD students. Whilst they can be great for getting to know what everyone in the group does and for getting feedback, these really aren’t the place to raise a lot of issues to do with your PhD. For starters it isn’t an effective use of other students’ time to sit through you doing a deep dive into technical details. In addition, some topics are far better suited to a private meeting: mental health, a review of your progress etc.
For any prospective PhD students reading this, it’s a good idea to gauge how much support you can expect to receive from a supervisor ahead of time. If you’ve already recently started your project, now can be a great time to set yourself up with regular meetings.
2. Don’t Work Too Hard
When you’re new in the research group it is natural to not want to come across as a slacker to your colleagues and supervisor. However please don’t become that person who feels the need to hang around in the office just to be seen to be committed to the project.
A perk of a PhD is that they’re flexible: you should be able to control your own time and work when you want and take breaks when you want. Some people see this flexibility as merely theoretical and instead end up working really long hours. Please don’t!
Instead I suggest treating the PhD like a job (in a good way!). For me personally I found that working roughly 9-5 Monday to Friday was more than enough time to complete a PhD at a top tier university in less time than average. For more details, including my own calendar just over one year into the PhD, check out the separate post:
3. Work Smart and Learn to Take Breaks
Working in unison with the previous point about the number of hours you put in per week, a top tip for new PhD students is to learn to work smart and take breaks where necessary.
Repeat after me: don’t waste time being unproductive.
An effective PhD student shouldn’t need to chuck their entire life at the PhD. Instead, learn how you work best and use this knowledge to find a work pattern which boosts your productivity. Along with figuring out whether you prefer to start work earlier or later in the day, I personally found it useful to figure out how long I could sit at my desk before my productivity starting dropping. On the topic of working hours and productivity: no, PhDs don’t need caffeine.
Taking frequent breaks are great, not just for your productivity but also your sanity. By breaks I mean everything from a five minute walk through to a proper holiday away from work.
If you realise you’ve started procrastinating, take a break: reading a few pages of a fiction book or taking a short walk can do wonders for PhD motivation and your mental health. Breaks are particularly important for anyone starting to feel the potential effects of burnout. In fact it may be worth reading my whole post about PhD burnout.
Beyond daily walks, take days off when you feel like you need them. While you no longer enjoy months off in a row like undergraduates, do be sure to take holidays too: yes PhDs should definitely take holiday. Here is how much annual leave I used up for holidays throughout my whole PhD.
4. Start Thinking About Publishing
Clearly you’re not going to be in a position to publish original research for quite some time (as first author at least), but your first year is often filled with a lot of reading. In addition to using this reading to help with your project direction, you could turn this into a writing exercise which can be useful for three key reasons:
- Boost your understanding of the topic. Writing things down in your own words will strengthen your comprehension.
- It can form the basis for the literature review in your thesis. Always useful! Also handy for any early stage milestones that your university has. Mine had a checkpoint at nine months where it can be pretty handy to demonstrate that you have some idea about your research field!
- A relatively easy and early publication: a review article. It’ll really help give you confidence in the publishing process.
One of the best research groups I collaborated with during my PhD had an initiative where all first year PhD students should try to publish a review article. I think this is a great idea and wish I’d considered it myself so consider publishing a review article a top tip for new PhD students!
Before I tried submitting my own first original research article, which wasn’t until over two years into the PhD, I found the whole publishing process quite overwhelming and intimidating. Had I dipped my toes in early with a review article I’d have realised it wasn’t as complicated as I suspected (as with most unknowns) and instead probably tried to submit my own research much sooner. I’ve since written an entire series of guides about publishing your own paper, check it out here:
5. Get Some Good Habits Started
There’s no better time to get some good habits established than when you’re just getting started with your PhD.
Have a think about what kind of habits you’d like to have by the end of your first year as a PhD student and start putting plans in place to work towards them.
Good habits may include:
- Managing your own time effectively. This includes things such as:
- Using a calendar so as to not be late to meetings or lab bookings
- Reflecting on times that you procrastinate and instead pushing yourself to take proper breaks
- Healthy and low-cost eating habits. Nothing is more important than your health, and what you eat is a key part of keeping yourself healthy. At least in the UK it can get really expensive really quickly if you buy prepared food (cafes, restaurants, takeaways) for all of your meals. Instead, I strongly suggest starting to cook for yourself. It is much cheaper and usually more healthy. I wrote a series of posts about cooking during a PhD, check them all out here:
- Getting a good amount of sleep. I won’t prescribe how much sleep to get or when your bed time should be (I’m not your parent!) but just know that getting into a regular sleeping pattern to stay fully rested will do wonders during your PhD. I already mentioned how caffeine consumption is not a prerequisite for those of working in research and sleeping enough so that you don’t feel tired is a good starting point.
- Doing regular exercise. Try to make it something that you enjoy so that you stick with it. Want to be uber efficient? Combine it with your commute: I cycled to work during my PhD. Bonus points for any exercise which is sociable.
6. Get Involved
As interesting as your research may be, your PhD shouldn’t all be about working on your own in the lab. Take the opportunities presented to you. Such as:
- Collaborations. Working with other people can be much more fun than working on your own and could lead to some interesting developments for your own project.
- Presenting at meetings and conferences. It is a great experience. Scared of presenting? Even more reason to get started.
- Side projects. Got another idea you want to try? Give it a go!
- Make connections. I don’t want to bore you with networking spiel, instead I’ll just say that making connections (or hopefully friends!) with lots of people around your department, university or elsewhere can really enrich your PhD experience.
- Learn new skills. Not just “boring” lab stuff like analytical techniques, think about anything else in life you’ve always wanted to try. For instance you can join student sports clubs and societies like any other students at university. I tried scuba diving and gliding during my PhD and I’m so pleased that I got involved. Read my whole post here about opportunities during your PhD:
7. Enjoy It!
There is no doubting that a PhD can be tough at times but do try to enjoy it and remind yourself how lucky you are!
As a PhD student you’re in an enormously privileged position. You’re getting paid to be a student, which in itself is pretty great but on top of that you get to become an expert in a topic you find interesting. It is pretty amazing really. My final tip for new PhD students is to savour the PhD experience. The years will fly by before you know it, so make sure to take a breath once in a while to appreciate where you’ve got to and where you’re going.
A Quick Summary of Tips for New PhD Students
- Set up regular meetings with your supervisor(s)
- Don’t work too hard
- Work smart and take breaks
- Start thinking about publishing
- Get some good habits going
- Get involved
- Most importantly: enjoy it!
If you’ve enjoyed this post you may also like to check out my post on How to Master Data Management in Research. This will help you to develop good practices in this area right from the start of your PhD and minimise any potential stresses from lost/ confusing experiment data further down the line!
Good luck to all you PhD students, new and old. Hopefully these tips for new PhD students help give you some ideas to make your PhD a more pleasant experience.
Do you have any other ideas for tips to help out PhD students? Let me know!
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Valuable information I received reading this article. One question in my mind is that how to tackle the course work in start of PhD to get CGPA of 3.5 out of 4.0 in course work which is an essential requirement to qualify for work on research thesis otherwise the student will be dropped from PhD program.
Thanks Abdul. There is no such requirement for PhDs here in the UK, so sadly can’t answer your question from experience. The closest thing we have are progress reviews which are typically annually but these very much focus on research activity which I think may be quite different to the advice you’re looking for. I can’t promise anything but I’ll try to find someone with relevant experience to help answer it. Best wishes