PhD Coaching Blog

    Let me share that shocking news again.  Your opinion doesn’t matter if you’re writing a thesis.  Many doctoral candidates want to use their thesis as a platform for airing an opinion, to try to  persuade everyone to agree with them.  A thesis is all about providing evidence.  It’s about reviewing the literature, conducting research, reporting the findings, and drawing conclusions.  That’s conclusions based on the findings, not on your own biased opinions. When I break the news to candidates that they have to hold off presenting their own unsupported ideas, they often say: “But how do I present...

  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...

  The question I posted on my recent LinkedIn  page was can you complete a PhD if you live with Dyslexia.  And my answer was Yes!  I hope you’ll take a minute to read what I said, and let me know if you want to discuss. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7132954873876123649/

  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...

Matt Might has diagrammed the PhD this way in his brilliant Illustrated Guide to the PhD.  I love it because he cleverly shows that doctoral research pushes beyond the edges of what is known, to discover new knowledge outside the boundaries of the human record. This is what examiners are looking for. In fact, they can't award the PhD unless you've demonstrated that you have made an original contribution to what is already known.  You have to poke at the edge of human understanding and find your own Eureka! moment. And that's hard.  You're in unchartered territory.  You find yourself the world's...