3 questions you should never ask a PhD student

Through supporting budding PhD students at PartTimePhD.com, I’ve come to appreciate the challenge many face in building a strong support network. Family and friends are often complete strangers to the process, with 3 difficult questions often arising:

1. When are you done?
The most frustrating question PhD students will regularly hear is “When will you be done?” For most ordinary degrees, there is a definitive end point — a final exam or deadline for submission of a thesis.
PhD degrees are different. You are done when your supervisor tells you you’re done. This can be the earlier of:
- Your research has produced meaningful results
- You have been able to craft a suitable theoretical model
- You have successfully articulated the value-add of your paper
Bottom line though, your supervisor is your manager. They decide when your work is suitable for submission.

2. What exactly is your subject?
PhD’s are extremely iterative. The subject is always in a state of flux, with even the most carefully prepared PhD will likely end up looking nothing like what was intended. You set your sights on a subject — say wedding rituals of Maori — but then find:
- You struggle to get data (don’t get responses from Maori tribal leaders)
The data does not tell you anything meaningful (rituals end up being very similar to other tribes)
- Your data points you in a completely different direction (coming of age rituals of Mauri are more interesting)
- Other papers come out that supersede your work (new publications in Anthropology journal on the Maori)
- Your supervisor moves you in another direction (they obtain data on wedding rituals of several aboriginal tribes)
- You hence keep pivoting your way to your end-subject. This can be challenging process, involving considerable amounts of deleting, rewriting and rehashing of materials.

3. Why don’t you just take a break from it?
PhD degrees can feel like a guilty conscience for most students. You never fully distance yourself from the work that is required. When you’ve having an evening off or a holiday, the first thought often is: “I could be studying”
This level of constant commitment is what separates PhDs from vocational degrees. You’re not just consuming some specific knowledge, you are undergoing a significant amount of personal growth:
- intellectual growth (understanding how to truly contribute to science and the academic pool of knowledge)
- professional growth (planning, stakeholder management, time management)
- mental/emotional growth (dealing with setbacks and failures, being comfortable with unpredictability and lack of instant gratification)