The importance of good communication in the PhD
in the end … communication is everything!
If there is one thing that I learnt in my PhD journey is that communication is everything.
Not only it is important in the scientific writing context, where you need to communicate your results, conclusions and your research, not only in conferences where you need to present in a clear manner your paper to an audience of academics or people from the industry…but most importantly is the communication among supervisors and students.
In this journey I learnt how sensitive I am in relation to tone of voice (for some people it is normal to raise their voice, for me it is really rude), or certain words and expressions ( that to some people are normal and for me are extremely rude)…and of course most of these things are my responsibility and come from my background.
I cannot expect that my supervisors know my personal background or how sensitive I am or can be to some communication details, I am the one who needs to learn and adapt to their communication style too.
Of course, there are some personal boundaries that we need to respect (from both sides) and these are sometimes hard to learn on the beginning.
But in the end, I think that it is extremely important to have an excellent communication among supervisors and students ( and industry partners, and colleagues…) since the PhD last 3 years and things can be easily misinterpreted on the way.
