What I wish I’d known when starting my PhD (The RED Team)

Cally: Much of what drives me in my job now as a researcher developer is based on what I wish someone had mentioned to me as a PhD candidate – I want to shortcut others to more effective practices. Among the biggest challenges of doctoral studies are the lack of structure and apparent flexibility. This means it’s easy to take time off during the week to do other things – and really tricky to make it up later on! Many successful candidates treat their doctorate as a 9-5 job, keeping regular hours and, importantly, taking scheduled breaks to refresh. Participating in local School-based or discipline-based events helps create a structure for your week, and RED Program workshops are designed to provide a broad structure to develop necessary skills across candidature. Research writing is very different from coursework writing and takes time to learn, so getting plenty of practice from the very beginning can enormously reduce stress in the final stages.

Dan: I thought I knew everything I wanted from my PhD before I started. Coming from a background as a struggling musician, the scholarship money I was lucky enough to receive looked relatively good, but I still ended up relying financially on my partner, and I would not have been able to do it without her support. I was primed to work remotely on a clearly defined project, involving a year spent overseas ‘in the field’. I had exceptional guidance from impressive supervisors. With this in place, I didn’t really think about how it would all affect me in the longer term. It’s a bit cliche, but doing a PhD really is a transformational experience, full of sliding door moments. In hindsight, I wish I had made better efforts to connect with others outside my project, to learn to navigate the system better, and to work on developing clarity about my capabilities and self-expectations. This is why I am now such a passionate advocate for researcher development: I know there are others out there like me who maybe just need a small push, or an invitation, to think about their research journey as personal development. If I can help them with this, I know it will equip them to navigate future challenges more effectively.

Katherine: I have written four books (most recently Writing Well and Being Well for your PhD and Beyond) about things I wish I’d known before I started my PhD – not because my PhD went badly (it went incredibly smoothly and I had such a good time I’m still here) but because everything gets better the more times you do it, and you only start out as a graduate researcher once. There is now so much good advice for researchers, in the form of blogs, books, advisors and workshops that didn’t exist when I started my PhD, so I’d recommend making use of those resources. I made some mistakes that you don’t have to repeat!

Meagan: There was so much I didn’t know and didn’t even know to ask about when I started my doctorate, but a couple of things have stayed with me over the years. Practically speaking, I didn’t think much about what I wanted to do when it was all over – I was too damn focussed on getting the thesis done. But finishing then felt more like falling off a cliff than it needed to, and I wish I’d talked about job searching with colleagues and supervisors more, as well as using the career services that were available (side note: we do have careers workshops specifically for graduate researchers in the RED Program). On a more meta-level, I wish I’d known how much doing a PhD would change me. I never imagined the process would gift me life-long friends, great colleagues, and even a partner. And I wish I’d known that I’d find so much meaning in research and teaching that I’d want to do it for a living.

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As you can probably pick up from these accounts, after some jogging of our memories, the challenge quickly became one of narrowing down what to focus on among the myriad of things that we wish we’d known! Indeed, in different ways, we each reflected that helping others avoid our own worst mistakes often shapes our practice as researcher developers.

These are also the kinds of conversations that can be incredibly helpful among peers and colleagues. Next time you’re in a workshop, at a conference, or mulling around at a School or discipline-based event, consider striking up conversation by asking someone what they wish they’d known when starting their research degree. Whether they began just six months ago, or decades before you were even born, the answers are always interesting and can often illuminate things for you to reflect upon, too.

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The Graduate Research School’s Research Education and Development (RED) Team supports and assists La Trobe academic staff and graduate researchers in:

• quality research practices
• strategies for success in research publication and funding
• insight into researcher career paths and industry sectors
• practising excellent research communication skills

The RED Team is dedicated to providing a diverse, responsive, and forward-looking development program.