Seven Secrets to PhD Success

Posting hari ini berkait dengan penulisan thesis. Semalam ada seorang kakak- kawan atas kawan yang tak kenal secara peribadi pun sebenarnya mengirimkan artikel ini ke peti Inbox.

Ceritanya, saya bertanya kawan2 dalam facebook tentang tips- tips untuk menulis Literature Review, maklumlah sekarang ni sedang berusaha untuk 'memulakan' penulisan thesis dengan bersungguh- sungguh. Alhamdlillah, ada ramai jugak lah yang sudi berkongsi ilmu pengetahuan masing- masing, walaupun hanya sebaris ayat sahaja. Ok lah tu. Very much appreciated.

Dalam banyak2 tips tu, saya rasa yang di bawah ni worth utk share dengan kawan2 yang in case terjenguk ke sini.

Menurut hasil Google yang saya buat secara sepintas lalu, kalaulah tidak silap, tips di bawah ini adalah rumusan ringkas dari sebuah buku yang bertajuk : 'Defeating self-sabotage: getting your PhD finished' oleh Hugh Kearns dan Maria Gardiner.

Berikut adalah tips ataupun rahsia tersebut secara ringkas:

1.Your supervisor(s)

• Keep your priorities in mind first
• Have regular meetings, even if you’ve done nothing
• Have an agenda
• Email them before (agenda) and after the meeting (follow up)
• Be gently persistent

2.Write and Show as you go

• (it’s not hide and seek)
• Writing is not recording
• Write before you are ready
• Write early and often
• Write for 2 hours every day, preferably in the morning (this was a big tip, they even said if you wrote intensively for 2 hours every working day of the year, for three years that you were guaranteed to get your thesis done).
• When doing the 2 hour writing ‘nail your feet to the floor’- no email, no checking weather etc, not checking references- just writing, even if its ‘not good’ or you don’t feel ready . This is an exercise aimed at getting you into the habit of writing and getting over the anxiety or avoidance of writing.
• Keep in mind you are not your thesis.
• You are growing a ‘PhD brain’ so it’s going to be hard, this doesn’t mean you’re doing in wrong.
• If the red pen is too scary for you, write in green pen and ask your supervisors to do the same.
  

3. Be realistic

• it’s not a Nobel prize
• Perfectionism is dangerous: ’the best is the enemy of the good’.
• Is not a cure for cancer
• Imposter syndrome (most academics feel like they’re a fraud)
• Academic culture (learn that criticism is a part of this)
• You are learning how to do research
• Just because you feel bad, does mean it is bad: ‘feeling are not facts’.

4. Say no to distractions

• Students are very good at finding ‘displacement activities’ (i.e. distractions).
• Do not turn on your emails first thing in the morning.
• Make your most important PhD task the very first thing you do once you start work.
• Set specific times for checking emails and doing ‘other stuff’
• Multi-tasking can give your brain the same effect as a cognitive impairment ‘makes you dopey’.

5. Your PhD is a job

• That means working 9-5, but you get holidays
• If you know when to work, then you know when not to work. This means you can guilt free switch off your brain. You will get more done this way.

6. Get help

• You are not an owner-operator single person business!
• It’s okay together help for editing, formatting, statistics, transcribing, collecting and entering data and for methods consultation.
• Takes far too much time trying to figure things out for yourself.

7. You can do it

• A PhD is 90 percent persistence and 10 percent intelligence.
• Less than 1 percent of PhD students fail but 35 percent don’t complete
• Usual completion rate (Australia) is 3.5-4 years
• Need to persevere.

Personally saya rasa these tips are among the best one.

Semuga bermanfaat untuk diri saya dan juga rakan2...

Wallahu a'lam.