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them pointed out to you is not enough to avoid them. Most offer real blandishments that have to be determinedly resisted. Not wanting a PhD The first method of not getting a PhD is not to want a PhD. This may seem very strange, considering that a student is likely to be starving in a garret, living on a studentship pittance, perhaps having given up a job in order to study, or relying on the earnings of a spouse to put them through the course. At the very least, you will be devoting a great deal of time and effort and energy to research. Surely, you might say, considering what I am giving up to the project, can there be any doubt that I really want a PhD? Strangely enough, there can be. We think an analogy would help here. It is the case, isn t it, that none of us, research students and research super- visors, want to become millionaires? We should quite like it if someone gave us a million pounds and we didn t have to do anything for it, not even buy a lottery ticket that would sound like a good idea. But we don t want to set out to become millionaires. Obviously we don t; otherwise we wouldn t be considering how to do research and get PhDs we would be considering how to build a better mousetrap, to invent an innovative 34 HOW TO GET A PhD piece of computer software, to play the property market, to write bestsell- ing novels . . . There are many ways of making a million pounds, but doing a PhD is not likely to be one of them. Exactly the same phenomenon occurs in regard to PhDs. People think it would be a nice idea to do a PhD, they come with views of what they want to do and then they turn round and say: Please can I have a PhD for it? And the answer is often No . PhDs are given for a particular form and level of research activity (which we shall discuss in Chapters 5 and 6) and if you do not wish to carry out this work then you effectively do not want to do a PhD. It is precisely the same distinction as that between hoping to become a millionaire and setting out to make a million pounds. Clearly the purpose of this book is to help you to set out to obtain a PhD, and for this you need a degree of single-mindedness, a willingness to dis- cover what is realistically required, and a determination to carry it out. This is the sense in which you must want a PhD, and this wanting is important in that it has to work very hard for you. For example, it has to carry you through occasions when what you are doing may seem very pointless or fruitless, or when you ask yourself the question Why have I got myself into this? or Why am I inflicting this on my family? You cannot expect with an activity as demanding as doing a PhD that the intrinsic satisfaction (such as the interest of doing the research, the enjoyment of discussing your subject with other like-minded researchers) will be sufficient on its own to carry you through. You must always have a clear eye on the extrinsic satisfactions (your commitment to the whole exercise of doing a PhD, its necessary place in your career progression, and so on); you must want to do it. There are, unfortunately, many who turn up as beginning PhD students who do not want to do a PhD in this sense. Particularly vulnerable are those who lack clear career goals and those who are using the PhD process as a vehicle for a career change: Jason was very intelligent and sailed through his undergraduate degree course in biochemistry. He spent a good deal of his time on student union affairs and was very involved in Green Party issues. In spite of this, with intense revision in the two weeks before each year s exams, he got an upper second in his finals. He was delighted to be offered a research studentship in the department, which allowed him to research a topic in the chemistry of reduction of organic residues. But he did not cut down on his outside commitments to campaigning on green issues, seeing them as highly relevant to the political aspects of his research. When he first presented useful ideas that he might study, Dr Jacobs, his lead supervisor, was impressed and she encouraged him to develop a research design. But it became clear that he was more interested in sketching out the ideas than in HOW NOT TO GET A PhD 35 buckling down to designing a viable research study and carrying it out. When challenged, he always came up with a new and better suggestion for the research and promised to develop it. He carried on [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |