Category: Careers

This question over at Ask Metafilter might not seem relevant to PhD students, but my last post on supervising as part of your PhD should make it clear why I think it is. I’ll let the title speak for itself:

” What books should I recommend to my scientist friend who is having a hard time with being a good manager in his lab?”

Check out the comments; they contain several recommendations for resources - not just books but websites, articles and podcasts - along with specific pieces of advice.

In general, doing a PhD degree is about working on your own projects and managing your own research. However, it’s important to remember that there’s a good chance you’ll be asked to do some supervision of students during your PhD. The likelihood of this will vary between countries and institutions, but it can take several forms:

• Supervision of undergraduate students who are carrying out short projects in the lab (normally a few months, possibly part time)
• Supervision of postgraduate students on Masters courses; these people will usually be working full time for a longer period
• You may be tutoring/demonstrating undergraduate courses - this will involve looking after more people, but for a small amount of time, and spread over several months in a more structured manner

There are lots of benefits to doing some supervision during your PhD. You’ll get experience of directing other people’s research (essential if you want to have PhD students of your own someday!) and you’ll have a better idea of what it’s like for your own PhD supervisor. You get to explore interesting side projects which are not directly related to your PhD research.

You might get valuable feedback on your own work - I supervised several undergraduate and masters students during my PhD. They carried out projects using software I had written, and the feedback they gave me went into producing the next versions.

The down side of supervision is that it’s an extra demand on your time - one which can easily grow if you’re not used to it. The most important thing to remember is to treat it like any other task and manage it using whichever system you use to organise your time. I’ll have more to write about supervising in future posts, but even if you’re not planning on doing any supervising in the near future, it would be a good idea to think of the benefits, and plan how you could fit it into your schedule.

Here’s a blog by a guy doing a PhD at Durham university in the UK in which he writes regularly about advice for PhD students. I particularly liked this recent post in which he discusses advice from a retired scholar who has supervised many PhD students.