Should you love your PhD?

You might love your PhD. Or you might have been told you are supposed to love your PhD. And love is weird, and complicated. PhDs are messy and complicated. Let’s talk about feelings.

Is 2021 the year you finish your thesis?

Look, the true answer is ‘probably not’. I’m not being discouraging here, I’m talking about cold hard maths. Here are 10 … More

When talking in seminars makes you feel like you don’t belong

Some workplaces and research cultures explicitly or implicitly run so that every conversation is actually a battle for airtime, and it’s common to try to sabotage other people’s chances. We should be working towards the exact opposite: energising, authentic, worthwhile, academic conversations. That’s what we love about getting together with our nerd pals.

You don’t have to feel ready to take action

All of this works because we start doing the work. By not delaying the real work through endless reading and procrastination, we start working towards our end goal, in ways that actually contribute to our goals. That is, we start making words on the page that can be added to and refined until you have enough good enough words to submit a passable PhD thesis.