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The Ultimate Guide to Doing a PhD

Have you ever considered doing a PhD, but have no idea where to start? Or are you doing a PhD and feel like you're losing the plot?Deciding to do a PhD is going to be one of the most impactful choices you'll ever make. It's a multi-year commitment that can really shape your career and your life. Yet as important as the PhD is, there's not much collated information about the process as a whole: this is where this book comes in!It explores every aspect of doing a PhD from application to graduation, and the whole mess in between. There are chapters on the motivation to do a PhD, the application process itself, questions around workload, time management, mental health, (peer) pressure, supervisor (mis)communications, teaching, networking, conference attendance, all the way up to publishing your thesis, and preparing for the next steps. And no, the next steps don't necessarily mean continuing to work in academia. This book addresses both career pathways, whether leaving or staying in academia, equally.This book aims to take a PhD student or prospective student by the hand and outline the entire PhD process, answering every question you might possibly have along the way.

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PhD Book Club

The best reads about PhD life. Meets twice each semester.

PhD Book Club meets 3:30-5pm on Fridays every six weeks , with Revd Dr Harriet Harris and Dr Kitty Wheater (both PhD veterans!). Open to all PhD students, we’ll read books that cast light on the trials, tribulations, and mundanities of PhD life, offering perspective and inspiration for the time ahead. Past books have included Educated, by Tara Westover, Night Waking, by Sarah Moss, and On Beauty, by Zadie Smith.

Read more about PhD Book Club in this blog post by Harriet and Kitty for Teaching Matters.

For our last book before Christmas, we turn back to fiction, with  Susanna Clarke 's prizewinning  Piranesi . This extraordinary dark-academia-cum-fantasy novel won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2021 - join us for (Ph)estive Book Club on  Friday 8 th  December, 3.30-5pm , to talk dangerous supervision, perilous memory, and the joy of the scientific method, over mince pies. 

Email [email protected] to register for PhD Book Club. Copies of our books (current and previous) are available for members to borrow from the PhD Book Club Library.

This article was published on 2024-06-24

PhD Book Club - 'The Weekend Effect' by Katrina Onstad

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Teaching Matters blog

Promoting, discussing and celebrating teaching at the university of edinburgh, phd book club: “i call it an education”.

Image credit: Kitty Wheater.

Harriet Harris and Kitty Wheater explain why a PhD book club can offer solace, community and shared understanding during the often lonely and painful journey of doctoral work. This post is part of the Learning and Teaching Enhancement theme: Showcasing the Doctoral College .

By December I was so far behind in my work that, pausing one night to begin a new episode of Breaking Bad , I realized that I might fail my PhD. I laughed maniacally for ten minutes at this irony: that having sacrificed my family to my education, I might lose that, also. Tara Westover, Educated

It can be a lonely and dispiriting life, working on a PhD. If you didn’t know that other doctoral students also find it lonely and dispiriting, you might think you weren’t cut out for it. You might lose momentum, lose courage, lose your mind, lose your resolve to carry on.

There are at least two remedies that you can apply for PhD loneliness and doubt: talking to other PhD students, who will show you that you are not alone in feeling as you do; and reading authors who capture in biographical, fictional or other literary forms just how it feels when another day goes by of not getting to your research, or how you’ve spent another all-nighter in the lab, or how you are the oddball in your family because they don’t understand why you are still at university, or how you are the imposter in the faculty because everybody else knows what they are doing.

In these two remedies lies the purpose of the PhD Book Club , which Harriet thought up a few years ago and which Kitty brought to life this year. Its purpose: to connect PhD students with one another across disciplines, and to grace our communing with the sympathetic and humane understanding of writers who articulate both the pain and the pull of the academic calling that draws them forward.

Since we launched in February, we have read two novels and two autobiographies. The novelists have been Englishists, and the autobiographers an historian and a paleobiologist/geochemist. Between them, they convey doctoral and post-doctoral trials in surly, heart-achingly honest, humorous, or intimately confessional tones. They also elate in the joy of their findings and breakthrough ideas, which make their research its own sweet reward.

In Tara Westover’s bestselling memoir, Educated , we found a journey from home-schooled, rural, Idaho to a PhD in History at Cambridge. The book navigates fundamentalist Mormon parenting, violence, and life-changing injury, along with the wonder, beauty, and personal cost of the truth about past and present. While Westover’s story is extraordinary, its themes – of the complexity of family belonging, the personal challenge of education, and the existential turmoil of new ideas – are universal. And what PhD student does not resonate with the magnetic pull of Buffy over lit reviews?

For our second Club-meet, the novelist Sarah Moss joined us to talk about her novel Night Waking . This was the novel that first put the idea of a book club for postgrads in Harriet’s mind. It is actually about two postdocs, married with young children: Giles, struggling to study seabirds in the short season allowed by their migration habits, and Anna, who is trying to get her foot on the academic ladder and attempt historical research whilst being lumbered with most of the childcare by her oblivious, preoccupied husband.

In Night Waking, both researchers are lonely, despite or because of their marriage and children. They need to find how to let each of their academic lives breathe, and then they can move in directions that feel fulfilling rather than maddening, and can create space for their feelings and for their children. Sarah Moss shared with us her experiences of having a child whilst doing a PhD, and of navigating an academic and creative-writing career whilst being the breadwinner for her young family. In Night Waking , the focus and competitiveness of academic life had not prevented the two young researchers from marrying or having children, as is a theme in another of our books, Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl . It is also a theme for many young researchers, which a previous Chaplaincy ‘club’ – Babies and Books – explored.

In Lab Girl , Jahren’s prizewinning 2016 memoir about plants, science, and mental illness, paleobiology and geochemistry have never been so human. For a woman who grew up in a small Minnesota town, the glory of a discovery in the lab is ‘accompanied by the knowledge that I had formally and terminally missed my chance to become like any of the women that I had ever known’, and the process of research itself is captured in all its adventure, tedium, and hope. When she discovers a new mineral inside the seed of a hackberry tree, ‘I knew instinctively,’ she writes, ‘that if I was worthy of a small secret, I might someday be worthy of a big one.’

In all our books, there is a recurring theme of how we cannot do research alone. In Educated , Westover is helped and mentored. At a key moment of financial crisis, a bishop pulls out his personal chequebook, just to keep her in university. In Night Waking , Anna and Giles must find ways to talk to each other, so that when the key opportunity arises, Anna can leave the children in safe hands and disclose an untold story about the past. In Lab Girl , Jahren and her lab partner Bill work doggedly together to survive exploding laboratories, homelessness, and the exigencies of American science funding. As Jahren says, ‘something so hard can be so easy if we just have a little help.’

To register for PhD Book Club, email [email protected] .

To find out more about the PhD Book club, visit their website : PhD Book Club

Kitty Wheater

Dr Kitty Wheater is the Mindfulness Chaplain, and runs the Mindfulness Programme for students and staff. She has a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford, where she was a Postdoctoral Associate. Kitty is a firm believer in the power of connections through reading and writing: she is the author of the weekly MindLetter , which has over 500 subscribers across the University, been viewed thousands of times during COVID-19, and been picked up by the BBC. She also founded and hosts Why Don’t You Write Me , a postcard-writing, art and connection project.

Harriet Harris

Harriet Harris is The University Chaplain and Head of the Chaplaincy Service. She completed her D.Phil in 1994, in the prehistoric age when people could still (with some persuasion on her part) go straight from an undergraduate programme to a doctoral one. She has since supervised and examined many PhDs, and worked alongside numerous PGR students on: ‘to PhD or not to PhD’; mental health in academia; discerning vocation, academic or otherwise; and long-distance relationships and family-planning (!) when embarking on academic careers.

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PhD Book Club – European Private International Law in a Digital World 8 December 2021

Under the auspices of the project “Time to Become Digital in Law” ( DIGInLaw ), funded by the Erasmus+ Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness, the University of Aberdeen organizes in collaboration with the Universities of Osijek, Zagreb, and Milan, a PhD Book Club – European Private International Law in a Digital World.

The PhD Book Club will be held online on 8 December 2021 . The goal of the book club is to raise awareness and expand knowledge through a discussion on contemporary private international law issues that stem from digitalization.

Participants can choose to join one or both of the following discussion panels:

10.00 – 11.30 UK time – Topic 1 –  Jurisdiction in Digital World: Focus on the Extraterritorial Effects of the General Data Protection Regulation and the EU Commission’s Proposal AI Act 

12.30 – 14.00 UK time – Topic 2 –  Cross-Border Family Law in Digital World: Judicial & Administrative Co-operation and the Use of High-Risk AI Tools in Cross-Border Family Litigation

The reading list will be distributed in advance to allow participants to prepare for discussion, which will be moderated by law professors and lecturers from the above-mentioned universities. All PhD researchers are eligible to apply. Please follow the registration link available on the event webpage here: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/law/events/16837/

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PHD Downtown

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PHD Downtown New York Bottle Service and VIP Table Booking

The ultimate rooftop lounge of 4-star Dream Downtown Hotel, PHD Downtown New York has guests absolutely love the panoramic view of Manhattan Skyline, Hudson River and the Empire State Building. Designed with Italian Portoro marble, nickel finish walls and lavish Venini glass chandeliers, it never fails to make everyone fall in love with its ambiance.

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What is the address for phd downtown.

You can easily find the nightclub when you see a grand exterior, ocean-liner inspired steel façade of the main hotel, perfectly located at #355 W 16 th St. New York. PHD Downtown is in close proximity to 8th Avenue Station .

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For a perfect night out at PHD Downtown New York, please note that table prices are a little bit higher than the common night clubs that you can find on nearby streets.

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Since PHD Downtown is not your average nightclub, expect that the minimum bottle service can be a bit expensive with ranges from $ 1,800 up to $ 5,000.

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Usual guests here at PHD Downtown are elite people working as models, jet setters, young entrepreneurs, and corporate executives. You are obliged to wear upscale dress as the club strictly enforces the dress code. Gentlemen are not allowed to wear open shoes and shorts at one of the best night clubs in New York. .

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Welcome to The PhD Club

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We guide you through all the phases of a distant PhD Programme , and we produce the most collaborative PhD Community powered by the creative personalities of our successful doctoral students and Mentors .

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To help you find the purpose behind it, we analysed dozens of our students. We grouped them together and came up with 5 unique types of PhD heroes who all benefit from their doctoral studies differently.

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Looking for a Book Club? PPL has you covered…

August 26, 2024.

PPL has a variety of book clubs to choose from. Check out PPL’s ongoing monthly book clubs schedules, details, and upcoming reads.

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‘He’s Not Off by Miles, He’s Off by Crucial Inches’

Welcome back to Beach Read Book Club ’s discussion of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Long Island Compromise. Today, we’re talking about Nathan and his many anxieties. (If you’re new, you can catch up on part one here and part two here .)

Zach Schiffman: Nathan obviously was a very stereotypical neurotic Jewish guy, but I found a lot of the minutia with him really funny. The stuff with him thinking Alyssa’s cheating on him, but it’s just the renovation, was obvious in a way, but then also surprising in little ways. I loved really living in a neurotic Jewish guy and not letting it just be a throwaway character or a joke. And his neurosis with his family makes perfect sense in a way that’s obvious but satisfying.

Emily Gould: I also really appreciated the contrast with Beamer. I thought it was really interesting to contrast someone who probably has a lot of baseline anxiety that he treats with handfuls of drugs, compulsive overeating, and having sex workers shove things up his butt and reenact kidnapping fantasies with someone who has a lot of anxiety and deals with it via ineffective apps and breathing and just taking some Zoloft every day. Nathan has all of these deep-seated problems and he is determined to tough them out and accommodate them by making his life and his family’s lives as much of a padded cell as possible. Which is actually in a way so much crazier than Beamer, but it looks really functional from the outside.

I also thought the land-use stuff and going deep into the specifics of the rules surrounding the Yellowton Giant’s was really interesting. I think that’s why Adelle Waldman wrote such a positive review of this book, because she is the world’s leading expert on the inner workings of big-box stores . That was one of my favorite parts of the book, and oddly, the minor characters who populate that aspect of the book — like the dickhead committee members of this small town who are blocking the incursion of this big box store — actually seemed more like real people and more closely observed than the minor characters who populate some of the other parts of the book, like the neighbors in the first section or the sex workers in the Beamer section.

Kathryn VanArendonk: I find the stakes of the Nathan part to feel both bigger and smaller in ways that work really well. The Giant’s land-use story is actually a huge, important, meaningful role that this family plays in this community, as does the factory, which Beamer is also so distant from. Nathan’s inability to cope with any of what’s sort of surrounding him — you can feel the magnitude of what happens when these people’s lives collapse in a way that actually is real unlike Beamer, where it’s this hole that he is just himself digging deeper and deeper and deeper into and the only other people who are caving in are just his immediate family. At the same time, the stakes of how Nathan is failing this are so plausibly small. He lost money in a way that is extremely believable and makes total sense for his personality and his need to have this one thing that felt cool and risky. His wife needing to renovate the kitchen is so funny and so correct about how this would actually play out — it is not that you need the money to save the world, it’s that you need the money because you can’t tell your wife that she cannot have this kitchen reno and it’s blowing out of proportion. In general, the proportions of what is happening inside of Nathan and outside of him feel so much better suited to tell the kinds of story about dysfunction that Taffy wants to locate in this character.

Again, the factory is also so clearly at the heart of what this story is. Styrofoam as a metaphorical substance for them to be making — how it takes up so much space and it weighs nothing and it means nothing and it is about protection but it’s also the flimsiest object imaginable. All of it. I’m like, yes, give me this . Nathan is so much closer to it and Beamer just feels like he’s spinning out into this other place in ways that I have a much harder time connecting.

Emily : I talked earlier about whether we have any hope that the characters are capable of pulling themselves out of the situation and whether they are capable of change and how we invest in them more if it feels like there is some glimmer of ability to fix their problems on the horizon. Of all the characters, Nathan had the most opportunities to take the other path, swerve away to not fuck up any of the three or four different situations that he is simultaneously fucking up in his life. That made it feel like the stakes were more meaningful.

Zach : The way that the wealth affects him is also the most interesting. It’s not Jenny who can just be listless. It’s not Beamer who can be a fuckup. It’s Nathan’s ability to not excel but still keep working. He’s good at what he does but he’s not getting promoted and keeping his nose to the paper and not being a go-getter. It’s like the wealth gives him a level of comfort to stick with the status quo. There’s a way more interesting thing about the security of the money there than in the other two.

Jason P. Frank: I also had a much stronger reaction to this section. Is there a reason why it couldn’t go first? I think it’s a stronger section. It would make sense to run down the siblings in order of age. I think that the reason that Beamer goes first is probably because if you’re writing it you think that it’s going to capture the audience more because there’s the glamour of Hollywood and there’s a shock thing. It’s stylistically a lot more flashy. I think there’s a lot more style — and I don’t mean that positively or negatively — to the Beamer section. So I understand in that way, but would it work if Nathan went first? Would it work better?

Kathryn : I was thinking about this also because one of the big ideas here is that it’s not really the kidnapping that’s the trauma, it’s the money that’s the trauma. The way the book is constructed, Beamer is kind of furthest from the money, and as you get closer through this order of siblings, you are also getting closer to that idea. Beamer’s thing, it’s so wrapped up in the kidnapping. He can’t stop writing the kidnapping stories and he’s fucked up in these big dramatic crime-y kidnap-y kinds of ways. Nathan is apparently the most financially secure — or seems like he should be — and yet you realize his inability to take risks, his deep anxiety about all this. And then, as you get closer to Jenny, you are getting closer to the idea of money as the center of what’s happening. So that order does track to me, but I agree with you that when you’re starting with Beamer, it’s this kind of complicated inversion plot where you’re starting further away from the thing you actually care about.

Julie Kosin : I thought she had to work so much harder in the Nathan section to get you invested in Middle Rock. The way that Middle Rock is set up in the intro, I did want to stay in that bubble of this very tightly knit community, and then she pulls you out of that. I’m honestly almost more interested in what’s going on back there — I don’t care about Hollywood in comparison. So Beamer is a detour you’re going to read to get back to Middle Rock.

Cat Zhang: I wonder if Beamer’s section comes first because she wants to introduce Charlie as fast as possible as the outside observer. This also makes me wonder how everyone feels about Mickey — I think it does track that Nathan would move his money solely out of fear of being bullied.

Zach : I also think Mickey tracks with that suburban Jewish thing of like, this friend that you made as a child in your tightly knit Jewish suburb — unfortunately, you’re gonna give him your money one day. I sort of bought that. To me he looked like RFK Jr. That relationship made perfect sense to me. I did think it was over-the-top with the kangaroo, but I never once doubted they stayed friends.

Maybe the bullying is a segue into considering Nathan’s status in his workplace alongside his fumbled attempt at blackmail. What did you think about his attempt to take over the narrative?

Jason : I think it was fun to see that he has some vision of people who operate through the world normally as, “they’re blackmailing and they’re doing all this crazy stuff.” So when he tries to just get something done, his way is like, “I’m going to have a beta blocker and then I’m going to get this thing done like my co-worker would,” but his co-worker — who is shady — isn’t blackmailing people. I thought it was an accurate version of what Nathan would think his co-workers do in order to be normal around human beings. I enjoyed that.

Emily : Maybe Nathan’s fatal flaw is that he overcorrects in these situations. He’s so risk-averse and so incredibly anxious that when presented with the opportunity to take action, he’s taking the biggest action possible rather than just taking a sane action. Rather than giving the money to his middle-school bully he could just choose a different broker who has a slightly less risk-averse investment strategy. Instead of blackmail … I don’t actually know what he could have done instead of blackmailing. He was sort of painted into a corner in that whole situation. He was clearly set up to fail by his company by being given that assignment in the first place, they have no reason to not want to get rid of him. What actually gives this character genuine pathos is that he, within his limitations, is doing his best in these situations, trying to please other people, keep his job, not alienate himself from his wife and children. And he’s just missing the mark over and over again, but he’s not off by miles the way that Beamer is, he’s off by crucial inches.

Julie : I think the depiction of anxiety and OCD in this is pretty convincing. I loved the line about the fact that he was gonna have to say this prayer to keep his family alive for the rest of his life. That felt extremely real and exactly what a character like him would do. The OCD part about buying all those insurance policies, I was like, Of course if you are somebody who is that mentally ill and had that much money, that is exactly what you’re going to do to ensure the future of your family .

Zach : Nathan in some way seems like the least affected by the kidnapping. Nathan’s thing is about needing the approval of his mother and not in the same way as Jenny. It is divorced from Carl in a way; it’s like he’s just a man with neuroses that come with everything in this family and it’s not so weighed down by this need to address Carl.

Kathryn : His marriage is also believable and a meaningful form of characterization in a way that’s not true for Jenny or for Beamer really. Like the dynamic that plays out in his marriage explains so much about how he interacts with other people in the world, the kinds of choices he has made, the kinds of things he needs. Plus you have this person who is, like all of them, flawed, but who clearly does actually love him and see things in him, his flaws and good things. And so just having her as a part of who he is as a character gives you this way of being like he’s a fucking mess and there’s this person who is also a mess and they work together and she likes him and she really can see some of the dysfunction that’s happening here. It allows you to feel warmth toward him even though you are just as aware of how totally messed up he is. And the absence of any kind of close relationship like that that really works for the other two characters is so challenging. And I think actually the same is true for Mickey. Mickey’s whole existence helps explain who Nathan is in a way that Charlie is supposed to be doing for Beamer and instead you’re just distracted by the fact that he’s stolen the story and he’s making this TV show and it’s all warped by this kind of Hollywood thing.

Jason : I would say the flashback to college-age Nathan and Alyssa — I just felt so situated reading that, like it felt good. And maybe that’s also because I went to Brandeis, I know those couples who literally met on the first day. I know where they met on campus. But the moment on the train where she looked at him and said I would give up all my Orthodoxy if I could be as wealthy as you, that was one of the few moments in this book that I really felt hit by something — by a piece of dialogue, by just a sentiment at all. And maybe that’s because it was coming from a non-wealthy character looking in but there’s a lot of non-wealthy characters in this book and none of them said something as impactful to me as that.

Kathryn: It helps so much that Alyssa is messed up about this. Whereas Charlie is like, I’ve figured it out. I’m on the outside and I know that you’re broken and I’m able to create this whole story about your brokenness . Alyssa’s complicity in the whole project of it really explains so much about all of their functioning toward each other.

Zach : Nathan’s is really one of the only parts where Jewish religion is relevant and not just Jewish culture and history. I think that’s actually really compelling when this book is about, what is Jewish American culture? And what is actual Jewish religion? 

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Kemerovo Oblast—Kuzbass

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Kemerovo Oblast—Kuzbass is situated in southern central Russia. Krasnoyarsk Krai and Khakasiya lie to the east, Tomsk Oblast to the north, Novosibirsk Oblast to the west, and Altai Krai and the Republic of Altai to the south-west. Kemerovo was founded in 1918 as Shcheglovsk. It became the administrative centre of the Oblast upon its formation on 26 January 1943. The city is at the centre of Russia’s principal coal mining area. In 1998 Tuleyev signed a framework agreement with the federal Government on the delimitation of powers, which was accompanied by 10 accords aimed at strengthening the regional economy. The Oblast’s main industrial centres are at Kemerovo, Novokuznetsk, Prokopyevsk, Kiselyovsk and Leninsk-Kuznetskii. Kemerovo Oblast’s agriculture consists mainly of potato and grain production, animal husbandry and beekeeping. The Oblast is the largest producer of coal among the federal subjects, and a principal producer of steel.

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