Why most books on "how to do your PhD" are full of s***!

Preface:

I recently published a book on the PhD process – the goal of it was to give PhD students the knowledge of how they’re between a rock and a hard place in their PhDs, and that largely comes about from their advisors and Universities. I also gave tools to deal with it.

By putting this book out there (it’s called “Do you want your PhD now?: The PhD Student’s Stratagem”), I hoped to turn around the PhD system and make it far fairer on the PhD student. By doing so, the quality of work would increase, not to mention that the right thing would actually be done.

Since putting out that book, I’ve received some comments from other authors who claim that they have written some similar points – I have yet to read them. If you have, then let me know – I’d be very interested to see them.

What’s more, after putting that book out, some of my friends, who also have PhDs, contacted me. They contacted me about some articles and books they recently read about the PhD process – they were quite mad about much of the bullshit (to use a descriptive term) that were in them – they showed me some of the ideas and assertions in those books and articles. We discussed them for some time, and our tempers flared up. I became incensed by many of these assertions that were flat out false. They’re manipulative, deceitful, and outright false.

I, like some of my friends, have children who we would like to become educated, and hopefully get PhDs in the future. I don’t want them going through a process where those manipulative paradigms are entrenched. So, I wrote this book. You might pick up on an angry tone in this book. I apologize for that, but when I read things on the PhD process that are simply not true, when they try to manipulate, deceive, or trick, and think about what it means for the future, then I get a bit angry about it.

In my previous book, I talked about how Universities, advisors, and a whole host of other people and entities try to put weak thoughts in your head. The points I discussed with my friends builds on that, and that’s what this book elaborates on.

I’ve written this book to breakdown the brainwashing that the PhD students go through – I don’t want that to be the norm in the future. Some might get a little “squeamish” by the word “brainwashing”, but a synonym includes “managing expectations”. That’s a marketing term, whereby managing someone’s expectations, you can control how they will react when things don’t go according to plan. As such, you’re effectively hard-core manipulating them.

That’s what most books on how to get a PhD are like. Even most articles, or any other form of knowledge transfer, are like that. They contain so many brainwashing elements, which cloud the PhD student’s judgements and make them far easier to manage by the University and advisors.

It might seem strange that, the authors of these books, articles, etc. are in cahoots with the University and advisors, but it’s actually quite intuitive – most of these authors want to make money – they want to sell whatever they have to offer. They know that, having Universities and advisors backing them gives guaranteed sales – if a University has 200 new PhD students this year, then the authors know that they’ll sell 200 copies of their books. The Universities will probably hire them to run some seminars or workshops for the PhD students, so these people are making quite a bit of money out of brainwashing the PhD students for the University and advisors. What’s more, it lends more credibility to the University and the advisors – someone from outside the University, someone external, has come in and corroborated any ideas, beliefs, and opinions that the University and advisors have offered the students – if so many people from so many different streams are saying the same thing, then it must be true … right? ….WRONG!

To elucidate this point further, ask yourself these questions: “would my University or advisors hire someone who would show me their faults?”, “would they hire someone who puts blame on the University or my advisors?”, “would they hire someone who makes their lives and jobs more difficult in any way?”. The answer to all of these questions is “No” – a resounding “No”. If you’re being lectured by someone who’s been hired by the University or your advisors, then be very wary.

My assessment of those books and articles that my friends and I went through was that, most of them were full of shit – no nicer way of putting it. The points they cover, the positions they take, and the advice they give, I am inclined to say that they show a contempt of PhD students. The books and articles are packaged nicely, and reading it doesn’t overtly offend you, but the goals of the books are highly in the Universities’ and advisors’ favor, not the PhD student. They’re designed to trick the PhD student into believing certain paradigms that help the University and advisors use and manipulate.

I’m going to dispel many of these contemptuous pieces of advice. I do so for the sake of the PhD students and the future. I won’t tell you where they come from for two reasons. 1) I want to train you to be more analytical – you’re doing a PhD, so you probably are already, but I want you to become better – you can always become better (even I can as well), and the better you become at detecting bullshit, the better off you’ll be. 2) I’m not interested in cutting anyone down – if you really want to know, then you can always give me an email – I’m here to help – I know that me stepping out and doing this is a one man crusade, but someone has to start somewhere. If I achieve the first point, then I’d consider this book a success.

So, let’s start.

“You need to be proactive, your advisors are busy people”:

This is one of the biggest pieces of bullshit I’ve ever heard.

This idea is peddled by many people “trying to help”. They reason that, your advisors are busy people, they might have conferences to go to, grant money to apply for, etc. So, if you want help, you need to be proactive about it and seek it from them. You need to be responsible for what’s going on in your PhD, you need to set up meetings, you need to plan your own research and…and…and, etc. My question is: “Aren’t they your advisors’ jobs?” As I covered in my previous book, Universities are businesses (make no mistake, they’re after money), your advisors are getting paid to do their job. Why should you be doing their job for them? To elucidate this point further, imagine that you work at a company. You have a manager, and all of a sudden, you’re supposed to organize the work, the project planning, the finances, etc. What’s the manager doing then?

You’re there to do your PhD, you need advice and supervision, that’s what your advisors are there for. Afterall, their jobs are contingent on the research that they put out – the research that you’re doing. So, to give another example of how ridiculous the idea of making the PhD student responsible for the project management is, let’s imagine that there’s this bakery and it’s operated by the baker. Would you find it strange if the baker didn’t care (or even make time) for making sure the quality of the baked goods was up to standard? Would you find it strange if the baker didn’t care if there were any baked goods in the bakery to sell? Of course you would. So, how are your advisors any different – their jobs are contingent on your research output and quality, their jobs are significantly geared towards managing that research, their jobs should be significantly geared towards helping people get their PhDs (but often they aren’t, or often they run the other direction). So, why should the PhD student do it then?

Sure, I agree in that you need to be proactive in your work in that you need to be motivated to do it, but you’re not supposed to chase your advisors to do the functions of their job. You’re not supposed to do their work for them. Like any good manager, your advisors are supposed to make sure the work is done on time and up to standard. If those goals aren’t met, then they’re supposed to find ways of making that happen. Make no mistake, their work includes you getting your PhD.

The only time I’d be happy to hear that my advisors were busy is if it were because they were actually doing their jobs and managing the research conducted under them. If your advisors aren’t being proactive about your research and PhD progress, then I don’t see any reason to protect them – those things are major parts of their jobs, if they can’t do them, then don’t they deserve to be fired?

“You’re lazy”:

There are so many books and articles out there that in some way, shape or form try to make the reason (or at least one of the big reasons) why your PhD isn’t progressing is because of your lack of work ethic. Bullshit!

Don’t be brainwashed into this belief. I can’t remember how many PhD students I’ve interacted with over the years, but I cannot remember anyone of the them slacking off. One book I read said that you need to treat your PhD as a job, and that many PhD students don’t make progress because they don’t put in the 40 hours a week – really?

When I was a PhD student, I remember my whole life revolving around my work. I constantly thought about it. I remember thinking about it in the shower, in the bathroom, while cooking dinner, while eating my meals, on the way to the University, on the way home – it was the last thing I thought about at night and the first thing I thought about when I woke up. If you tally all of the time that I spent doing my PhD work throughout the average week, I was up around 70-80 hours. But given that piece of advice – you’re not treating it like a job, you need to work harder! – I guess it was my fault, I didn’t realize that giving my time, energy, and soul weren’t enough, I didn’t realize that the University wanted my blood and semen as well, silly me – bullshit! I know that not every PhD student would be pulling 70-80 hours a week, but as I said, I can’t recall interacting with any PhD student that wasn’t doing at least 40 hours a week. Most of them have done far more.

But, those who preach this advice should be thankful that PhD students don’t treat their PhDs as jobs because if they did, then far less would get done – I’ve been in industry, so I know exactly how hard people work there – they barely think about work even when they’re at work – I remember one person who I used to work with, once spent the entire afternoon drawing smiley faces in paint (no joke, I’m not making this up). So, if PhD students spent the same amount time and energy as workers do in industry on their jobs, then they’d have far more time on their hands.

One question that begs asking is, “for those who think that PhD students are lazy, how do you think they got that way?” Let’s face it, getting into a grad program is no mean feat, it requires a lot of dedication, studying, time, and effort, not to mention that you probably had very good grades before that – I wonder how you got them (probably through intelligence and hard work). It’s true, and I see that same kind of tenacity usually following PhD students in their PhDs. So, how did they become “lazy” then? If you ever encounter one, let me know, but also try to figure out how they became lazy.

Interestingly, those who preach that PhD students are lazy also often preach that you need to be proactive with your advisors. So, what they’re saying is, I need to do more work, and then more work again because of my incompetent advisors – right, so in other words…be a slave – good advice.

“Advisors are busy people”:

I’m sure that some are busy, but still that doesn’t excuse them from not fulfilling their responsibilities to you.

What’s more, it’s no excuse for not being proactive in perhaps the most important aspect of their job – research.

But many are not busy:

I once watched an advisor be “too busy” in his office while playing Tetris.

I also saw some advisors who were too busy calling each other every Friday mid-afternoon to go get a drink.

I also saw one advisor being too busy chatting up the office girl for 20 minutes every day.

Or how about the advisor who got access to a secret room so that he could hide from people.

Or how about the advisor who went home because it was too cold, or too hot.

Maybe the best one that I’ve seen is the advisor who went home mid-morning because there was no more cake left in the coffee room.

I should note that, these aren’t the most outrageous ones I’ve see or heard, but those other ones are not appropriate to publish.

These people are so “busy” that I don’t know where they get time to do anything else in their lives.

You see, often advisors are not “too busy” because of workloads, but because they don’t want to be involved with things that entail responsibility for them.

“Your advisors are no longer interested in your field, but that’s okay!”:

I can’t believe that I’ve actually read this one: the reason why your PhD progress has halted is because your advisors no longer see that field as interesting, so you need to push them to progress in your PhD now. What?!

Sorry, how about the three years of your life that you invested? How about the funding that you have for your project? How about completing the research that you set out to do and which the University has funded?

Think about that idea for a moment; imagine that a manager all of a sudden decides to stop working on the project that he/she has set up and organized with their boss to do. Then he/she suddenly loses interest in it. How happy do you think his/her boss would be? His/her job entails completing the project. Interestingly, the University doesn’t often care about this problem, as the consequences are shifted onto the PhD student – the advisors can go off on a new direction, get other grant money, the University doesn’t have to bother about making sure everything is going along well, everyone’s happy – except the PhD student.

Don’t the advisors have a duty to see you through your PhD? In industry, if I start a project and halfway don’t like it anymore, bad luck, I have to see it through – how is a PhD advisor and a PhD project any different.

“Play the peacemaker between arguing advisors”:

This piece of advice is given when you have two, or more, advisors who continually argue and are effectively warring with each other. My question is, “how is it the PhD student’s responsibility to make the team function well?” Again, it is the role of a manager to foster strong team bonds.

Furthermore, isn’t it the University’s responsibility to provide a PhD student with competent advisors and support?

Why is any of this the PhD student’s responsibility? The PhD student’s responsibility is to do the work and follow the instructions given, not much more.

“90% persistence, 10% intelligence”:

The idea behind this advice is that, “to get a PhD, is only 10% intelligence but 90% persistence.” This is wrong on so many levels.

The only reason why persistence ever becomes the overriding factor required in getting a PhD is because of the advisors being incompetent. Chasing them around, trying to get them to give you support, etc. are the things that require persistence. Imagine how much more you’d get done if you could just focus on your work?

A PhD is not 90% persistence and 10% intelligence, it has only become that because of poor advisors (and as an extension, poor Universities because they aren’t remedying the problem).

What’s more, imagine what the connotations of this advice are? One major one is that, you don’t really need to think while doing a PhD, you just need to do. So, in other words, switch off your brain – that way you can be fooled better (isn’t that the end result?).

“Completing a PhD is hard”:

Way to go managing those expectations.

From what I’ve seen from around the world, the key factor determining whether a PhD is hard or not is the quality of the advisors. Let me give you some examples.

Example 1, there was once this guy who started his PhD. It was an interesting topic, but the problem was that, his advisors weren’t even sure if there was anything to be found. It turns out, 1 year into his PhD, he found that there was nothing to be found – what’s he supposed to do for the next 3-4 years. The problem was that, his advisors didn’t even put on a shorter-term project (like a Bachelor’s or Master’s project) to initially determine if the direction was worth taking. As a result, his PhD became kind of like what dung beetles do. There are two fixes to this problem, 1) the advisors should’ve made sure that there was something substantial to investigate in the first place, 2) the University should accept negative results as a qualification for a PhD.

Now, the second option is entirely justifiable, however, he only had 1 year of work – whether the amount of work he did was comparable to what others did in 3-5 years, is another story. His PhD wasn’t hard because of his work ethic, or his intelligence, etc. It was difficult because of his advisors (and as an extension, the system).

Example 2, there was another PhD student who had an incredibly good advisor. His advisor was so good that, this student graduated after 3 years of work – and his workload was little more than the regular 40 hour week workload. Was it luck? No, even he had some setbacks. There were two reasons why his PhD was so easy, 1) he didn’t have an incompetent advisor. 2) His advisor was actually really good.