PhD Coaching Blog — Doctorate

In honour of International Women's Day, I'm posting this tribute to the women who are working on a doctoral thesis whilst juggling dozens of other responsibilities and demands.  If you're one of those, I salute you. Often the thesis writing for these candidates is done in stolen precious moments at the end of the day, or waiting for a bus, or in stolen breaks in the the office.  Even women who are full-time students still have to find time for research and personal writing in the midst of lab work, writing journal articles, or attending meetings with advisors. And then...

      Expecting to be dawdling over your thesis in 2024?   To help you avoid that, I invite to join me for a four-week series of tutorials on how to write a “Good Enough” thesis, starting January 25th. Why?  Well, did you know that the average thesis takes eight years to complete? I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks that PhD programs are excessively long and that doctoral students take too much time. In spite of the best of intentions, too many find themselves failing to reach the end of their studies, and there are probably several...

  Graduate Pathways to Success Model When you're planning to build something, like a doctoral thesis, it's a good idea to create a model that shows how all the pieces connect.  I'm very proud of the model that I created for the Graduate Pathways to Success program at the University of British cancel, and I saw it was still in use when I visited for a special event this week: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/current-students/professional-development Also pleased to see that I'm still being given credit for my work with GPS: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/current-students/professional-development/about-gps Of course that may change shortly, because the special event was the retirement...

  Few things  test endurance more than working on a doctoral thesis.  This is a “self-portrait” that one of my clients sent to me to share with anyone who’s in the same boat as she is. Do you recognize yourself? This client has been working on her research topic for a long time.  In fact, she’s written a book, and is a practitioner in her area of expertise as well. But it’s taking a long time to get the thesis written, and from time to time she gets weary, as you can tell. We often talk about the need to...

One of the things I love to do is to bring my coaching clients together in small groups to chat and exchange advice on Zoom.  But in the free drop-in today it was a special treat to spend time with a candidate who had graduated a last month, and was happy to share his experiences.  One issue that he emphasized was the choice of supervisor.  As all doctoral candidates know, the supervisor has the power to approve your thesis and move you on to your oral defense (or Viva if you're in the UK), So having a supervisor who is interested...