Some people will tell you that there is no 'right' or 'wrong' way to think about your PhD, and they're correct when it comes to the experiments, but (in my opinion) they're wrong about the rest. That might be a controversial statement, but read on and you'll learn why I'm right.
I'm now coming to the end of a very long 4 years; soon I'll be submitting my PhD thesis and finally I might become Dr InfraRedRum! Over the course of the last 4 years I've been through quite a lot - but here I am, still studying and only a hair away from completion. I sometimes I look back and wonder how I managed to survive it all; and with that retrospective hindsight I think I've found the best way to approach a PhD.
In order to complete your studies, you need a certain level of motivation and a whole lot of tenacity. I've found that the secret to maintaining this exhausting combination of soft-skills is simply this: pretend that you're a first year. Not literally of course, but I believe that if you maintain a new students' mindset, you'll have a much better experience throughout your PhD. I believe that this is the 'right way' to think about your PhD.
I realised that the first year mentality was the secret to PhD success when I saw the fresh-faced new students arrive at our institute early last week; at this point, they have no worries about their projects and no gripes with their supervisory team. I realised that, if I think back to the mindset of my first year self, I almost instantly regain a liberating optimism about my project. Honestly, try it yourself - close your eyes for a sec, and think back to the first few days of your PhD. How did you feel about your project? your supervisor? your own capacity to learn? Meditate on this thought for a few minutes and re-locate that sense of new optimism. Try this for a few days and see if it improves the way you feel about your work. Please do let me know what you think in the comments below - it worked for me and I'd love to hear whether it worked for you.
Now, I'm not saying that final year students should take things easy, as if they had all the time in the world. I'm also not saying that it's easy to forget the times you've argued with a stubborn supervisor or labmate. What I'm saying is that this: take a few minutes each day to keep your perspective fresh, and look upon yourself with the admiration that the new students look upon you. I believe that this will help you realise what you've achieved, remind you how exciting your work is, and ultimately help improve your research outputs. By thinking like a first year you'll be much more emotionally fit to work through your PhD.
~ InfraRedRum
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