This document provides tips for surviving a PhD program. It discusses managing your time, maintaining motivation, developing key academic and personal skills, navigating supervision relationships, avoiding and addressing conflicts, and planning for successful completion of the dissertation. The average completion time for a PhD is around 5 years, with some programs taking less time. Regular progress evaluations, breaking work into smaller goals, and thinking ahead to the finished dissertation can help students stay on track. Support from supervisors, research groups, and fellow students is also important for navigating the ups and downs of the PhD journey.

1. How to survive your PhD
Tips and triks

2. Record:
Male: 2:20:56 (1996)
Female: 2:38:22 (2001)
Midnight sun
marathon

3. Our marathon
• 1980-1981: 42 %
• 2002-2003: 76 %
• Average race time: 5.5 years
• Lately possibly less: 5.1 years (class of 2011)
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4. What is a PhD? / Who are you?
• Research?
• You are a scientist
• Original, extensive, autonomous/limited assistance?
• Creative
• Training, “school”?
• You are a student
• Original, but not necessarily groundbreaking
• Organized, not creative?
• Skill development for future career
• Learning within a research community

5. Your tasks along the way
• Tasks: Reading - Doing - Writing
• Keep the passion
• Read and learn
• Network
• Write
• Have pitstops to rehydrate

6. You - Key academic skills
• Review and discover your
research field
• Write, write, write and publish
• Practice presenting your work
• Complete courses
• Help yourself by loving statistics
• Good tools:
• Make a system with litterature:
Endnote with PDFs
• New litterature:
Google Alerts
• Use time to illustrate your
work: Figures and power point
• …..

7. You - Key personal skills
• Perseverance
• Self motivation
• Stay sane!

8. Supervision and help
Supervision is a maze of responsibility, freedom, comitments,
demands, roles, agreements, conflicts etc.
Stay active towards your supervision/supervisor

9. Who/what is your supervisor?
• Administrator
• Academic advisor
• Personal relation
• What does s/he want? Motivation of the supervisor.
• Importance of the research group

10. Boss
Leader
Master
Guru
Teacher
Expert
Guide
Project manager
Colleague
Friend
Subject
Led
Apprentice
Diciple
Pupil
Novice
Explorer
Team worker
Colleague
Friend

11. Skill level
Time
Student
Supervisor

12. The supervisor’s duties
• Within 240 hours supervision, in total
• Scientific responsibility
• Keep track of progression relative to the deadline
• Be in touch regularly
Discuss: what is the supervisors duties in
1. Formulating and delimiting hypothesis/research questions?
2. Producing, interpreting and presenting results?
3. Finding literature?

13. From the phd regulation:
(10) The supervisors are to
-provide advice on the formulation and delimitation of topics and
problems,
-discuss and assess hypotheses and methods, results and their
interpretation, conception and implementation of presentation,
including organization, language, documentation, and so on,
-and assist in finding relevant literature and data such as available
through libraries and archives, etc.
(...)

14. What do studens say about their
supervision and their supervisors?
• 50% enough
• 80% happy
• 40% too little
• 20% unhappy
• Not an expert in the
exact field
• Not dedicated to the
project
• Too little time
• An expert in the field
• Encouraging,
supprotive, positive
• Maintain focus

15. Plans
• Concretely:
• Contracts
• Courses
• Papers
• Stays abroad?
• Conferences?
• Avoid unrealistic
expectations
• From either part
• So talk about it early
• The writing
• The editing
• Litterature
• Statistics

16. Progression plan
• Midway-evaluations and standardized agreements (EPINOR
supervisor forum)
• Break it down to smaller goals
• Count backwards from finish
• Take the victories along the way
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17. Time
• Time management
• «Other things» and projects
• Dialog versus alone time
• Product versus process
• Dealing with stress

18. Ups and downs
• Diverse group of runners. Some of us have better luck during the
race
• Keep the passion
• You are not alone!
• Do little things like litterature
on the «slow» days
• Write something

19. Safety nets
• Research group
• Department
• Other phd’s
• Other colleagues
Remember: research = collaboration
Multi-diciplinarity
Use them actively =networking!
Dare to expose your ignorance

20. Conflicts
1. Research group leader
2. Head of department
3. Advisory board of conflicts at Helsefak. (Konfliktråd)
“In case of a conflict, both student and supervisor can independently present
their case to the advisory board of conflict at Helsefak”
• Section 11 and 12 in the PhD regulation
• Ethical guidelines
You are responsible for asking for help before it’s too late!

21. The thesis
• Start early thinking of the disposition of the thesis and collect
background material
• Tip: Left over documents
• Keep thinking of the finishing line
• Ref: Bent-Martin

22. Some advice
• Use a progression report actively
• Expose your ignorance (quote:
Eiliv Lund), ask for help=
networking
• Involve others early in problems
• Act proffesionally and do not
lash out in e-mails
• You are your own project
manager
• Think constructively and self-
motivate
• You are privileged to have time
to focus

23. If it was easy, anyone could do it
KEEP PUSHING