Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.

Finishing the PhD

Tribulation or Rapture? Surviving the ‘End Times’ of your PhD

I’ve been asked to speak later on this month to the third+ year theology PhD students on that last year or so of getting the PhD thesis to submission (and beyond). The university’s Student Learning Centre has lots of resources and tutorials to walk PhD students through the process of writing, research and formatting etc. so I want to add to the material that they (should) have already seen.

I’ve decided to do a quick Top 10 things that came out of my PhD journey and to help that process over the next few weeks I’ll be blogging them here to help get them straight in my head before the actual meeting. I also figure they might be useful to other students outside of that group, though the discipline you’re involved in will have specific requirements that will shape thesis development.

My current Top 10 list is:

  1. Don’t Panic!
  2. Doing it with style
  3. Practice makes perfect
  4. A footnote in history
  5. You have backed up your work, haven’t you?
  6. Supervisors are people too
  7. Reading. Just say No!
  8. Thesis trajectory
  9. Finding my own voice
  10. Finish or else!

I’ll expand on each of these in later posts.

2 Comments

  1. Hi Stephen

    Not bad advice for masters students either! I’m just finishing my thesis but I’ve not worked hard enough and now am cramming it all in. I just hope I pass! Terrible attitude I know but work takes over a lot of the time. It’s important to keep the end goal in sight!

    Thanks for the tips!

    Gina

  2. Stay tuned. I’ll flesh out each tip over the next few days.