What's your advice on PhD study?

Talk to your supervisor as often as possible. Be proactive; don’t wait for anyone to tell you what needs to be done. Don’t assume anyone will inform you of the correct procedures even for the simplest administrative things. Work harder than they tell you to or expect you to. Find or create your own motivation, because there are going to be times when you’ll be very discouraged, but it’s worth hanging in there. Get to know your committee members, because they can be good allies, and ideally are there to help you. The difference between a PhD and a Master’s is that you’re supposed to be able to see the “big picture”, so try to keep that in mind when you’re writing (proposals, papers, scholarship applications, etc.) – that is what people are looking for when they assess your work: whether you can relate what you are doing within your project to what has been done, what is being done, and what should be done next by others.

Get ready for a lifetime of feeling broke, hopeless, and completely inadequate.

@nikipedia Well I don’t mind feeling broke, we usually are. I don’t mind feeling inadequate, I sense there’s a lot of that coming up and it’s kind of a syndrome amongst PhD students. As to hopeless, well in many ways, I already do and it’s not related to my work or intended studies so feeling even more hopeless will be fine, I think. Thanks @dappled_leaves, as well, so well-put.

There’s so much to do. Your coursework is only the beginning. There is tons to read because you have to know everything about the field.

I assume your work will be on gender issues, so I would keep an eye out for issues to study and for data sources, both qualitative and quantitative.

Your dissertation will take forever and involve more work than anything you have ever done. But it’s all by formula. Lit review, research question, data, data analysis, report,conclusions. So your work is pretty well structured. You put one foot in front of the other, and it’ll get done.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir…....I don’t have any yet….but I’ll be starting in January.

I’m glad you are doing it. I put it off a very long time and I regret postponing it. I am looking forward to it.

@DarlingRhadamanthus Well, let’s keep in touch then! We can commiserate and celebrate together!

That sounds great…and what I should have also said was that I think what you are doing is inspiring to other women. So, thanks for that.

Sorry, I don’t, but I can tell you this: I wish I had done it when I could have.

You have my best wishes.

@Jeruba It’s never too late. I’ve seen several ladies of a certain age working on dissertations where I work.

I’m afraid it is, @wundayatta. I’m still good for ideas, concepts, and analysis, but loading up on data just doesn’t work for me the way it used to. You can’t study linguistics or add languages without a lot of memorizing, and my memory leaks too much now. I scratch the academic itch with an assortment of college classes, one at a time, without a degree program.

@Jeruba You mean memorizing the names of researchers and which work they did for the oral exams? Or else, how does memorization come into it? Are you talking about learning a new language? I’m sure there are branches of linguistics that do not require memorization, and that you will be able to pass orals given the reading you do.

If you really wanted a PhD, I know you could get one. You are way more competent and way smarter than most of the PhD candidates I see. One of my former assistants just defended his diss yesterday. The chair of his committee (who is my boss) told me that he edited the candidates work mercilessly. It required a lot of work. I doubt very much that my boss would find much to edit in your writing.

SIgn up to get this guy’s comics. NOBODY illustrates the PhD life better than this guy does.

PhD Comics by Jorge Cham

@linguaphile Done! Thanks!

@wundayatta, thanks for your encouraging confidence. Writing isn’t the problem. Any subject matter area involves content, and there’s a lot of content in classwork before you get anywhere near a dissertation. Even those subjects that are mostly process knowledge rather than content knowledge involve formulas and steps.

I don’t really want to dwell on this point, but the fact is that I am just not able to retain stuff well enough for mastery any more. I had to study like crazy to get a 96 on my film class final last year, and it was an intro. class in a community college. I gave up studying Sanskrit about ten years ago because although I could remember the rules and write the Devanagari alphabet, I couldn’t remember simple vocabulary. So I’m accepting my weaknesses as they are and going with my strengths.