Thoughts on Finishing a PhD in 2020: The Truth Can Wait
A friendly reminder about setting realistic expectations, prioritizing, and understanding that your PhD won’t be perfect
“It’s time to land the plane”, my PhD supervisor said.
During the first part of a 5.8 years PhD (US average), students are taking off, reaching altitude, and exploring the horizon as a world of possibilities begin to emerge at ~31,000 feet.
Now, as I began my transition to becoming a “5+ year” student, my PhD supervisor used the flight-grad school analogy to tell me that it was time for me to land the plane.
This was not the first friendly reminder that I was past my expiration date in the PhD program. In fact, since my fourth year, people have been steadily reminding me that I needed to start “wrapping up” soon.
Right.
Trying to figure out what exactly “wrapping up” meant for a PhD, I came across this article titled Ten Simple Rules For Finishing Your PhD. (Simple?!)
Then, 2020 happened.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 introduced constraints to making progress in the lab. As a whole, the year 2020 proved to be a unique kind of experience that gave us abundant time at home at the expense of focus and concentration.
Still, in December 2020, I defended my thesis via Zoom from my living room. Not what I had envisioned but in total alignment with a PhD experience where I had to go against the grain on one too many occasions.
One thing that helped me “wrap up” my PhD in 2020 was to embrace Rule #3 which states: the truth can wait. As explained in the article:
If the project is ambitious, it might take several years to reach the final goal, and thus the thesis might only be a small part of the whole story. If the project is going well, it will open up new research questions and future directions, some of which will be beyond the scope of a PhD.
At some point, you need to decide that what you have is enough for a PhD and start writing (a strategy we heard described at a dissertation-writing seminar in Cambridge as “the truth can wait”; it helps to write this on a post-it note and stick it on your computer!).
As suggested, in the form of a post-it note, the truth can wait became an anchor statement that I repeated to myself every time I felt the urge to chase that additional experiment (it wasn’t probably going to work anyway). Even though, as academic scientists, we feed off the excitement of conquering the unknown, in the end, will you really be able to generate all the answers? Probably not. Hence, the truth can wait.
This rule became a constant reminder about setting realistic expectations, prioritizing, and simply being honest with myself. As a consequence, adopting this mindset spared me of many distractions. Ultimately, when approaching the target destination, one must regain control and focus to successfully land the plane.
In practice, I followed three tactics:
Practice The Daily Focusing Question
“What’s the ONE thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”
This focusing question is introduced in Gary Keller’s book The One Thing which discusses goal setting and efficient prioritization. By doing this exercise (daily, weekly, monthly), the author argues you can effectively narrow down what is the most important thing you should work on next.
Like many other researchers, in 2020, I faced the debacle of deciding what to do with a limited amount of time allotted per week to be physically in the lab. I found this simple “focusing question” useful to diagnose project status and pinpoint the most important task to focus on and effectively use that time.
Be Agile
In my article about project management tips for your PhD, I talked about doing a mid-semester revision to take stock of where things are and recalibrate. This exercise, however, doesn’t provide tools to quickly react and adapt when things take a left turn such as when a pandemic obliterates the cadence of academic calendars.
I found more success by (loosely) applying agile methodology for project management, particularly when operating under the constraints of the pandemic.
Agile project management puts you in the best position to adapt to change as well as gather and actuate on feedback constantly. An excellent step-by-step guide tailored for PhD student researchers was published by Laura Pirro in Nature. A variant of this approach known as “Agile Results” is explained here.
Go For The MFD
Tim Herrera writing for the New York Times introduces the idea of the Mostly Fine Decision or MFD. This concept represents a sort of compromise between the perfect and the unrefined — a “hmm… this is good enough” approach. In my experience, engaging in defining a “mostly fine” thesis provided me with a blueprint of attainable goals that were easier to prioritize.
Now, what is the mostly fine version of your PhD that you (and your dissertation committee!) would be ok with? Understand that this version will likely be somewhat far from the grandiose PhD you’ve always envisioned. I struggled with that notion, but accepted it and carried on.
The truth can wait statement is a friendly reminder that the outcome is not going to be perfect. After all, perfection(ism) is the enemy of done and the best PhD thesis is a finished one. Plan ahead, assess constantly, and trust your science.
A.J. Santiago-Lopez, PhD | Twitter: @AJSantiagoLopez
