PhD Career Series: Finding and Developing Your Inner Leader

We often don’t think about leadership in grad school and what it means to be a true leader. Often, you are a lone ranger in the lab, and are rarely exposed to a cross-functional team environment in academia- which is typically seen in highly matrix-driven organizations when you enter industry (this of course, will depend […]

How A Rock Band Helped Save My PhD

When I look back on graduate school the one thing that I am forever grateful for is the fact I played in a rock band. It was a way to escape all the frustration. When an experiment failed or when I felt like a failure in lab, I was up on stage having fun. And […]

Dealing With PhD Stress The Right Way: Advice From 3 PhD Graduates

When I think back to the PhD, I think about the physical and emotional stress that I had to go through, especially the final months leading up to the defense. PhD stress is not something that should be ignored. Do you know who gets the PhD? The person who perseveres. And dealing with the stress […]

Write Your PhD Thesis In One Month Or Less

Thesis/dissertation writing need not be a multi-month ordeal that makes you pull your hair out and roll up into a fetal position. The trick is to get a head start, set goals and deadlines, and work steadily—not feverishly—toward that ultimate satisfaction of handing your magnum opus to the graduate school. The first three sections of […]

5 Ways to Gain Valuable Skills Outside of Your Academic Training

The PhD Industry Career Gap I eventually realized that, like many Ph.D.’s in many other fields, I had fallen into the Ph.D.-industry gap—i.e., the gap between highly specialized Ph.D. training and corporate-world expectations of hiring candidates who are industry friendly. Even in “lucrative” fields like computer science, job postings that say things like “Ph.D. or dropped […]

A PhD Student’s Race Against Time – How To Win/Graduate Faster

Time As The Enemy for Ph.D. Students Most Ph.D. students worry at some point about how long it’s going to take to finish their research, write a dissertation, and defend it successfully so they can finally move on. The majority will manage to get it all done within a reasonable amount of time (albeit usually […]

10 Ways To Successfully Defend Your PhD

Well, I’m back. After 3 months of intense thesis writing, revisions, and successfully defending (all while working a part-time job in industry), I want to share with you Part 1 of 3 of this series. Part 2 will be how to finish your thesis in a timely manner (and write a good quality thesis). Part […]

Considering Grad School? Important Things You Should Know Before, During, and After Applying

It’s That Time   Being in your senior year is exciting as you near the end, but can also be overwhelming at the same time. You can’t wait to move on and consider the thought of graduate school, but you still have to evaluate all your options before you can proceed. Additionally, you could be a working professional […]

Short and Sweet: Five Job Hunting Mistakes PhD Graduates Should Avoid

You might argue that if I leave academia to, say, teach high school or become a journalist, I’ve wasted my laboratory training. This argument is ridiculous. Since the Ph.D.’s inception in 18th century Germany, the product of a doctoral education has been a dissertation—a body of research that, in a small way, moves a field […]