When are you Ph.Done? on becoming an independent researcher…

As of this post, thesis defenses and graduations are either happening or just behind us. If this is you, congratulations! 🎉 For those still working, there is light ahead!

Near the end of any dissertation path, there comes a time to schedule your defense. But when are you ready? What is your path to becoming an independent researcher ?

Sure, you can ask your advisor, your committee, you can use the plan you made in your proposal. But research is organic, and the studies, analyses, and plans you made may not have (and likely did not) turn out exactly as you hoped, planned, or expected.

In my own Ph.D., I had written a two-year proposal with a plan for three studies, including a “capstone” study that was supposed to show how successful my technological intervention was in the classroom. As we got closer and closer to my planned end date, I had to look for jobs, while finishing building my system, and planning a full classroom study was getting more and more out of reach.

I remember meeting with my advisor and worrying aloud about whether I would have done “enough” for me to graduate. He told me something I still paraphrase for my students now:

One perspective is that a dissertation should be a nice neat package that wraps everything up at a logical end point in the research. But, another perspective is that the dissertation work is establishing the minimum required set of evidence that you can conduct independent research.

You may also hear the axiom:

A good dissertation is a done dissertation, and a perfect dissertation is neither.

Ph.Done = Research Independence

By the time you are approaching your defense milestone, it can feel like there is a cliff in front of you above the great unknown, and maybe you want to cling to the safety net of your lab, advisor, program, or research project. You may also be so totally ready to be done that you can’t wait to wrap up your last study, line of code, or analysis.

Whichever way you feel, remember that finishing the Ph.D. is just the next step in your career, not the last step. And if you’ve been writing code, running experiments, performing analyses, most likely more and more independently over the last year or so, you’re probably ready to do it without your advisor looking over your shoulder.

Try this: start a day without emailing or asking your advisor for guidance, or wondering what you should do. Make a plan, execute it. You can ask your peers. Scientists consult with peer colleagues frequently during their work. Start with a day. Then try two days. Then a week. Before you know it, you are reporting your progress to your advisor instead of asking advice on what to do.

And that is “all there is” to becoming an independent researcher!

You’ve got this! I believe in you! If you find yourself in need of an editor or coach during these final months, contact me to chat about my services 🙂

Winding road photo by Dariusz Grosa under CC.