I used to get raised eyebrows and looks of disbelief, when I responded to the question: ‘how long did it take you to get your PhD’ with the answer: 2 years. I could have said 14 months to submit and 22months if you include the graduation ceremony, but that would have been pushing the limits […] … learn more→

Of course a PhD is “hard” – as in it “has a high difficulty setting” and also “is a lot of work”. It is three or more years of creating new knowledge, after all. But how “hard” should it be, and what kind of “hard”? In my work teaching research and writing skills at La […] … learn more→

I commenced my PhD programme in Molecular and Cell Biology of Infectious Diseases at the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), the University of Ghana in August last year. WACCBIP is a world class research centre where young African researchers are groomed to be research leaders who would change the landscape […] … learn more→

You’ve heard of Lego your research method and Dance Your PhD. But now Bake Your Thesis is getting to be a thing. There’s a hashtag #bakeyourphd and active competitions in New Zealand, Canada and the UK. One of the Canadian thesis baking competition represents their research on immigrant communities through a cinnamon bun – a complicated and lengthy […] … learn more→

The PhD is finished, and finally, everything is packed away in my home office; but it took me 18 months to get to this concluding stage. My desk was unusable for the year-and-a-half that followed my graduation and the mess worsened as the months slipped by. After the final printing, the lovely purple-bound copy of […] … learn more→

My friend Tim’s PhD had been four years in the making when he finally dropped out. His decision followed a meeting with his supervisor: the culmination of almost six months of work preparing a further draft chapter of his thesis. Only at this point did he learn that his supervisor did not approve of the […] … learn more→

Decades ago, we sat in the library as graduate students, staring at shelves of books and thinking: “If only we understood all the knowledge sitting on just one shelf, what power that would be.” Today, we try to convince ourselves that such daydreaming was not naive. Of course, there are people who love to learn, […] … learn more→

One of the most difficult things I’ve had to deal with whilst working on my PhD is managing the expectations of my university. In the end, I realised we were working towards two different goals. While we both wanted me to complete the PhD, our relationship was more complicated than that. My Graduate School and […] … learn more→

‘Hello!’ to anyone who’s stuck in their PhD. I feel for you. As I write, I’m half-way through my PhD program, and I’ve been stuck too. I’m out the other side now, but it’s made me think: a PhD and Mars have a lot in common. Remember the movie, ‘The Martian’? Matt Damon plays astronaut, […] … learn more→

I made the decision to commence a full-time PhD after ten years in the workforce. At the time, many people made encouraging comments such as, “you’ll be fine, you’re very organised.” While I appreciated their compliments, I didn’t share the same level of confidence. Although I worked with researchers every day as part of my […] … learn more→