Rocky road to earning a doctorate: A blueprint for self-guidance and personal responsibility

By Atilla Vuran and Gunnar Seide

WHAT do you want to earn your doctorate FOR, and HOW? Sooner or later, many doctoral candidates have doubts as to whether the journey they have embarked on really makes sense for them, and/or want to get more out of their investment of time and energy. The solution often lies in self-guidance and personal responsibility which is where this book comes in. It offers various ideas and suggestions for how to strengthen your competency in self-leadership. What do you want to earn your doctorate for, and how? That is the central question of this book, which is aimed at doctoral candidates, teachers, university training centres, and whoever is interested in self-leadership. Lead yourself on a high level, taking full responsibility for yourself during your doctoral journey, and, going forward, as a leader in your field of expertise.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jünger Medien Verlag
• Release date: Mar 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9783766480347

Book preview

After

Preface

Earning a doctorate is a big challenge, a multi-year endeavour to enter uncharted scientific territory. At the start, you don’t know in any certain terms what you are in for. Unexpected problems may arise; there will be setbacks, plans will have to be altered, and you may even need to reframe your topic. But, on the other hand, you do not yet know the feeling of happiness that comes with reaching a breakthrough or gaining totally unexpected insights after a hard spell of thinking or preparing complex experiments. The road to your doctorate leads through highs and lows, and sometimes through dry spells. At other times, things run smoothly, in a flow. You must persevere and be able to inspire yourself over and over again to take up the challenge.

This book will help you on this journey, teaching you many things about yourself, your goals, needs, attitudes and ways of working. The insights you will gain from working with this book—which is a working book rather than a book you will read in one go—will serve you well, and not only during the time of preparing your doctoral thesis, with its setbacks and successes, its apparent standstills and sudden breakthroughs. Arguably, the most important message is found at the end of the book: as you work with this book, you will learn to self-guide—and only if you are able to guide yourself are you able to guide—or lead—others. Providing you succeeded in completing your doctoral thesis and earning your doctorate, the odds of you taking up a leading position later in your career are certainly high relative to the average population. And, as a leader, you will be able to, and will feel the need to, apply the very capabilities you will have earned during the time spent in preparing your doctoral thesis.

I do not know of any other book that presents you with typical situations occurring during the run-up to the doctoral degree the way this book does, offering you helpful instructions on how to handle these situations pro-actively, and providing insights far beyond tackling the problem itself. This book has been written by practitioners experienced in supervising doctoral projects who have also worked on psychological and sociological topics with a relevance to doctoral projects of this type. This is what makes this book so helpful. Whilst you will certainly not incur each and every problem or question covered in this book, they are all instructive and worth considering.

I wish readers a fruitful and helpful encounter with the topics presented. Since most of you are probably at some stage, early or late, of preparing your doctoral thesis, I also wish you a successful completion, so that, in the time after the defence, you will look back at this stage as a beautiful and satisfying period of your life.

Professor Dr. Ferdi Schüth

February 2017

Vice President of the Max Planck Society, Scientific Member and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research

Introduction

Why this book has been written

Care to guess how many attempts to earn a doctorate fail for subject-related reasons? And how many fail for other reasons?

We have seldom heard of failures due to subject-related reasons. Most of the time, those giving up do so for other reasons. Our experience tells us that personal reasons are a major factor.

Learning from and avoiding failure—these are the central topics of this book. By failure we mean setbacks that tend to weaken an aspirant’s confidence in his or her own ability to earn a doctorate. We mean the failure to master every-day tasks and challenges, the criticality of which often becomes obvious only after an aspirant has started to work on his or her thesis. Most of the aspirants concerned were highly gifted students who experienced few difficulties before they embarked on their doctoral journey.

It is our aim to make it easier for doctoral candidates to master the task of writing their doctoral thesis—a mission characterized by a multitude of challenges threatening to overwhelm almost everyone who tries. We will do so by looking at the doctoral process from the perspective of self-guidance and providing tips for dealing with oneself in the face of challenges typically encountered during the doctoral process.

The goal of this book is to help candidates avoid failure to complete the doctoral process, however, without taking the easy way out of skirting difficult key stages altogether. We would like to assist candidates in compiling their best possible doctoral thesis by putting the individual at the heart of the doctoral success.

How to use this book

A workbook helping candidates compile their doctoral thesis, this book is meant to be a catalyst for self-development. Here and there, it therefore provides space for readers to jot down their own insights.

The book has not been written as a guidebook in the sense of tips and tricks for earning a doctorate, from A for aim to Z for zeal, but as an interactive workbook. In our view, in order to tap into its true value, it’s best for readers to actively grapple with its content rather than just absorbing" it.

The structure of the book

The conditions defining the doctoral process differ greatly depending on the subject and the doctoral scheme. Common to all subjects and doctoral schemes, however, is the fact that the doctoral process pushes almost every candidate to his or her limit.

The book builds on three pillars: HAVE, BE and DO (see the figure below). To each pillar, we have dedicated five chapters. Each of these fifteen chapters is self-contained. Chapters can be worked through in any order. We recommend readers to start with the topic that most appeals to them on a spontaneous basis. By structuring the various topics critical to successfully earning a doctorate into the three topic areas HAVE, BE and DO, we aim to reduce the complexity of the book. In our view, the doctoral process is all about developing both oneself as an individual and the scientific topic.

The three pillars of this book

Each chapter begins with a story from everyday life to introduce the topic of the chapter. These stories all take place in one specific engineering sciences institute. The protagonist, doctoral candidate Laura Spielberg, lives through various situations as she prepares her doctoral thesis. Whilst the situations presented certainly do not perfectly fit into each and every doctoral setting, and although everyday life in medicine and the social-humanitarian disciplines may look quite different—and admitting that the doctoral process is not the same for candidates who are simultaneously working as research associates as for those who are not—in our view, the topics are ultimately the same in each case. Only the priorities among them may differ. Though based on true cases, the stories have partly been accentuated in order to highlight the underlying topic. Individuals’ names, titles and functions have been changed.

Next comes a Theory part offering key facts around the topic. Since the book has been conceived as a workbook, the subsequent sub-chapter is always an Exercise helping readers adapt theoretical insights to their individual situations. The next sub-chapter highlights typical Challenges. In A Nutshell summarizes the gist of the chapter. Each chapter ends with Questions For Self-Reflexion to help readers further adapt the content of the chapter to their individual circumstances. Not all questions are relevant to all situations. Just focus on the questions you find most interesting as you read the book. Finally, for each chapter, we have compiled a further reading list related to the topic at hand.

The topics of this book have been chosen based on long-term observations and doctoral supervision activity. We make no claim of completeness, and here and there the suggested solution approach may even lack a scientific proof of effectiveness. Based on our experience, however, we believe that the ideas presented can be useful to a great number of doctoral candidates. Thus we see this book as a helpful contribution rather than a panacea.

Chapter 1:

It All Depends on the What For and the How

"Am I what others tell me?

Am I what I know about myself?"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

1.1From How to What

With stage fright, it is not as simple as you might think: some people, such as stage actors, may need it to be better able to focus. Laura, however, was not an actor, but a typical research associate preparing her doctoral thesis. On that day, she was going to have a meeting with her doctoral supervisor, Professor Cornelius. Since the professor principally asked his doctoral candidates to meet him at his private home, she had started out in good time and well prepared. With each step that brought her nearer to the professor’s home, however, her stage fright got stronger. Laura hated it! Standing in front of the large, heavy entrance door, she felt like a hurdler about to compete in the Olympic games finals. She could hardly have been any more jumpy. Moreover, Laura’s stomach growled audibly. The young doctoral candidate hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, since she was unable to swallow the slightest bite. She felt her heart throbbing even faster as she pressed the cast-iron bell push and heard the muffled ding dong from inside the house.

Yes, please? a rather high-pitched, well-articulated voice promptly answered. It belonged to Professor Cornelius and perfectly matched his personality type. Laura had only been employed at the institute for a matter of months and did not yet know the professor very well. In person, she had met him only once, at the application interview, where she had had the impression of a calm and factual middle-aged man. There is not much temper to be found in this man, Laura had thought to herself. To her, he had appeared somewhat colourless and hard to fathom.

This is Laura Spielberg!, Laura dutifully announced, slightly stooping forward to make herself better heard through the intercom.

Ah, yes, one moment, please!, the voice answered. Laura clearly felt how nervous she was, her clammy hands being a clear indication—not to mention the lump in her throat. She was curious how things would turn out and whether today she would gain a clearer impression of her doctoral supervisor. Pull yourself together! What can possibly happen?, she thought, trying to calm herself down. After all, to prepare for the meeting, she had intensively occupied herself with her doctoral thesis, read a book on the doctoral process and studied the doctoral degree regulations. She was familiar with the details of the process and the rules of the procedure. She had written outline notes on the content of her doctoral thesis and spent hours polishing the text the day before. What else could she have possibly done? Nonetheless, she felt incredibly nervous!

Professor Cornelius opened the door. Hello, Ms. Spielberg!, he greeted her in a friendly voice, shaking hands with her. I’m glad you are here. Please, come in!

This evening, the professor wasn’t wearing a suit as he normally did at the institute, but was dressed informally. Just like Laura herself. He wore a pair of jeans that had seen better days and a grey jumper.

Hello Professor Cornelius! Polite and gentlemanly, Professor Cornelius took a step back and, with a broad gesture, welcomed Laura in. He took her coat, putting it in the wardrobe, and led her through the vast parlour with its many pieces of antique Art Nouveau furniture into the winter garden.

Take a seat, please, Ms. Spielberg!, Professor Cornelius said and pointed at one of the voluminous armchairs.

Thank you!, Laura replied and hesitantly let her eyes travel. Looking through the large glass panels, she beheld a well-groomed garden with a large pond.

Would you like to have something to drink?

Yes, I’d like to. A glass of water, please, Laura heard herself say, sitting in a rather tense posture in one of the astonishingly comfortable armchairs. It’s quite nice here, she thought to herself. As Professor Cornelius headed toward the kitchen to get the drinks, Laura put her folder on the coffee table, turning it in such a way that Professor Cornelius would be able to read it from his side of the table.

Cornelius returned with a tray and filled two glasses with still mineral water. Next to them, he placed a bowl with crackers and a bowl with fruit. Help yourself, if you please, he encouraged her, pointing at the glass bowls with his right hand. Laura’s initial nervousness began to give way. Since she was hungry as a bear, she didn’t need to be told twice and pluckily took to the crackers. Having seated himself in the opposite armchair, Cornelius also helped himself to a cracker, leaned back and relaxed. Smiling, he chattily asked in a friendly voice: How are you, Ms. Spielberg?

I have worked a lot on my outline notes these days, Laura succinctly replied. I think I know which topic is suitable.

For a moment, the professor looked at Laura silently, but with a friendly and soothing smile. After another moment, he asked, still smiling: And how do you feel?

Eh… well, Laura replied in an authentic, slightly pusillanimous tone. She couldn’t deny that her doctoral supervisor’s reaction somewhat puzzled her. Being in no way factual and matter-of-fact, it momentarily put her off her stride.

I’m pleased to hear that.

After this welcoming chatter, how about cutting to the chase?, Laura thought to herself. She was already on tenterhooks and couldn’t wait getting to the heart of things. In the hope of being able to sort out her thoughts, she took a big gulp of water, throwing a glance at the professor. As their eyes met, Cornelius gave his doctoral candidate a friendly and confident smile. Laura put her glass down. So, now…, she thought and picked up her papers.

Based on the state of technology, no one has yet… Laura began her presentation, giving a detailed description of the essence of her outline notes. Professor Cornelius’s facial expression showed that he was listening attentively. At one moment, he nodded approvingly; in the next, he looked critical. With a slight shake of his head, he signalled his disagreement with some points. There was no doubt that the professor listened to the detailed presentation, which was full of technical terms and carefully researched data, numbers and facts.

When Laura finished, she was first and foremost satisfied with herself and her performance. The initial nervousness had disappeared. Now she was overcome by a growing sense of excitement—especially when, after a little pause, Professor Cornelius seemed to be about to ask a question. Laura focused her attention, since she was eager to answer this question concerning her outline notes in a technically accurate and professional way. With anticipation, the young doctoral candidate waited for her professor’s first question. What will he go into first? Laura asked herself. Which detail would her doctoral supervisor first focus on? She watched him with large, expectant eyes.

And what is important to you? Professor Cornelius calmly asked, smiling charmingly. I mean, in our conversation?

That I’m going to know the exact problem to be solved, later today, when we are done, she replied quick as a shot. In particular, when it comes to the measurements. Laura started into another very detailed presentation, lining out three potential approaches and evaluating them with all their pros and cons.