What’s your name and where are you from?
My name is Dr. Rebecca Barber, and I am from Mesa, Arizona. I graduated in May, 2011 with a Ph.D in Education Policy from Arizona State University.
What is the name of your website and what is your role there?
Protoscholar.com - I started protoscholar in 2005 as I was beginning my graduate school journey. The blog was a way for me to track my emergence as a scholar and the tools, tips and tricks I learned along the way.
Briefly, what’s your website all about?
Protoscholar is a blend of personal experience going through a doctoral program mixed with tools and productivity tips that helped me manage my life during that period. It includes reviews of books and tools that are of specific interest to graduate students and new faculty, as well as a view of how I used those tools to organize my life and work.
How might your website be helpful to doctoral students?
I hope that Protoscholar is useful on two levels. First, it includes tools and recommendations that many students have found useful, distilled to the most important elements. Some of the most popular posts have included:
What would the one, most important message be that you would hope those who read your work would take away?
They are not alone, and they are far from the first to be facing whatever stumbling block it is that they are facing. There are tools, techniques, and most important people to commiserate with when the process starts to get you down.
Do you have any suggestions of other resources that doctoral students might find useful?
StudyHacks: a blog by Dr. Cal Newport that began as a way to help undergraduates become better students. Many of the techniques and suggestions are still relevant to graduate students (focus on one thing and do it REALLY well), but in addition since he started writing Cal has completed a Ph.D in Computer Science and gone into his first job. His posts often are applicable far beyond his original audience. Most interestingly, he posted his research system, which I think EVERY graduate student should read and consider as a way of forming their own long-term research agenda.
Prof Hacker (tools and productivity for the academic)
Find out what the top blogs in your field are and READ them. Not too many - but enough to keep up with the scholarly conversation.
phinished.org A great place for comisseration, people to keep you accountable, and when you are feeling especially alone!
Do you have any advice for students currently trying to finish their dissertations/theses?
I have two cliche's that I posted on my wall and looked at whenever I felt down:
1) The only good dissertation is a DONE dissertation.
2) Your dissertation should be the WORST piece of research you ever publish.
They go together. The thing to remember is that this is NOT your magnum opus. This is your final apprenticeship project. It needs to be decent and conform to a relatively strict format, but it is the START of your research agenda, not all of it.
Get it done and move on.
Any final words of wisdom for all those hardworking doctors-to-be? Or anything else you would like to share?
First, consider marketability when choosing a topic. I know we all want to "follow our passion". But if you can't get a job after graduation, your passion won't keep a roof over your head. Focus on something that is in demand in your field or up-and-coming, and do it well. Once you have the job you want, nothing will stop you from looking at other topics. But graduate school is about creating a career, not about feeding your soul. Be pragmatic about your choices and focused about meeting your goals and you will do well.
Second, if you intend to go after an academic career, you should be publishing from the beginning of grad school onward. Conference presentations, papers in lower tier journals, co-authored papers and such all add up to marketability. Find a topic you love and be working on it from the very beginning so that by the time you are ready for your dissertation you already know much of the material you need and your CV reflects an expert right from the start.
BUT just because you decided to get a doctorate does not mean you have to go down the academic path. My statistics courses were the single most marketable thing I learned in grad school and earn me twice what a starting associate professor would make. Understand your options from day 1.
Third, make sure you know what you are getting in to. You don't have to be a genius to get a Ph.D, but you DO have to be stubborn, determined, and detail oriented. ~50% of graduate students don't make it to graduates, so it's important to make sure that what is waiting at the end is worth all that effort. The ability to make annoying people call you Doctor is not enough on it's own (although I would be fibbing if I said it wasn't kind of fun :-) ).
Finally YOU are in charge of the process and you need to manage it as such. Part of the doctoral process is learning to be an independent scholar, and you will be best accepted as one if you take independent control early.
- Choose your adviser and committee carefully, not just for their academic qualifications but for their willingness and history of working well with graduate students.
- Read all the policies about your program and school that you can find, and ask early if any are unclear. Then make sure you follow them all to the letter so that you aren't making any more work for your adviser than is necessary.
- Set realistic goals and deadlines, then meet them. Make yourself a model of dependability so that others will want to be as dependable when working with you.
- Create or join a writing group and use it, if only for moral support. 50% of grad students may not finish, but all five of the people in my writing group did.
