A few checkpoints for PhD students

In this post, I will enlist a few important questions which PhD students can use as a checklist to track the progress of their work. Additionally, the students who are thinking of going for higher studies will be able to gather important pointers towards what constitutes PhD work and life.

Here, I am collating from my own experiences as a PhD student (with the benefit of hindsight that I now have) as well as from my experiences of having guided a few PhD students.

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The fundamental question:

So, the most basic point first. Ask yourself, what is the first measure of a successful PhD. It is: A successful PhD is a finished PhD. That’s it.

Well, whether the PhD is a good one or a middling one or not so good one is a different question altogether. But, the first and foremost thing a PhD candidate has to keep in mind is that they have to finish their PhD!

Fortunately, this is something I got into my head right from the zeroth day. It was the bedrock foundation of most of my decision-makings. You would be amazed how many research scholars do not quite do this.

I think it would be a good practice for all research scholars to ask themselves this fundamental question once every week at least:

Question: Am I doing the things which is taking me closer to the finish line?

Reading I: The fundamentals

Most of our undergraduate and to a certain extent even the Masters goes away in the blaze of the semester system. I managed to do the courses and get very good grades in many of the courses, but didn’t really learn the subjects fundamentally well. It was, however, during my PhD that I re-learnt certain things in a much better fashion. Additionally, since I was working in an interdisciplinary area, I had to pick up on the fundamentals of a couple of other subjects. All these I did by simply re-reading books.

Unfortunately, some research scholars don’t quite realize the importance of re-reading undergraduate level books even during PhD. Actually, there is no shame in going back even further and reading some 10+2 level books if that is what is required. It is simple. We first figure out that there is a gap in our knowledge. We then fill that gap.

Conversely, PhD has advanced level stuff. But, there are fundamentals even in that advanced stuff. For that, one has to study from good, authoritative books from the true masters.

Question: Am I ensuring that my fundamentals — both from the basic and the advanced stuff — are strong?

Reading II: The literature

Every PhD student knows that they have to read papers. But some of them mostly read what is given to them by their Advisors. Or, perhaps only in the near neighbourhood of those papers.

In my experience both as a former PhD student and a current PhD Supervisor, what is required is a mixture of reading: a mixture of the old and the new as well as a mixture of wide reading and in-depth reading.

In every research area, there are some classical and seminal papers. One must read them or at least be properly familiar with them.

It is of paramount importance that PhD students make it a habit (yes, a habit) of going through the literature to keep abreast of the recent papers. While this may seem like commonsense to many, I know there are some PhD students who are so caught up in their own focussed problems, they neglect going through the literature.

Now, being up-to-date with the literature probably requires a separate dedicated article for me to do proper justice to it. But, in brief: follow a few journals that are the staple of your peer community, and track what is published in them. Be absolutely, proactively aware of anything that pops up remotely close to your work. At the same time, don’t turn a blind eye to the interesting things going on within the broad domain of your work, even if they are not directly relevant to your work. Trust me, it will help you during postdoc job hunt later and beyond.

Questions: Is my reading deep enough for me to really be called an expert in my niche area in the not-too-distant future? Is my reading broad enough that I am not the proverbial frog in my little pond?

Consuming vs Creating:

Reading books, reading old papers, reading new papers, looking up stuff and learning new things is absolutely necessary. But they are far from sufficient. They all involve you consuming things.

But, the defining aspect of PhD work is creating new knowledge.

No matter, how much you may read and learn new stuff, you are NOT doing the actual work of PhD if you are not creating anything new. That new stuff could be a new modelling framework, a new theory, a new proof, a new algorithm, a new connection, a new experiment, anything really but that which is your brainchild - something that has not yet been found by anyone else.

Question: Am I creating any new knowledge that is useful to the peer community?

Implementing vs Ideating:

There are many PhD students who are adept at implementing the ideas given by their Supervisors. And, that is certainly important. The Supervisor, in all likelihood, has a broad and long-term vision, and the work that they give to their PhD students are parts or aspects of that larger vision. However, within the niche area that a PhD student is working, it is important for them to be able to generate ideas on their own. These may not be ground-breaking ideas, but one needs to develop the creativity required to germinate new ideas. This is especially important starting from the late second year, and especially the third year.

Questions: Am I just implementing my Supervisor’s ideas, or am I generating ideas on my own too? A few years down the line, will I be able to guide a PhD student in this area myself?

Creating vs Communicating:

Some PhD students go beyond consuming, go beyond just implementing - they develop a deep and broad knowledge base; they are up-to-date with the literature; they are creative and come up with ideas on their own. But, at the end of it all, all their knowledge, their ideas, and their implementations have no tangible output. The reason is that they shy away from organizing their work, and writing them up for a publication. Ultimately, whether you like it or not, the yardstick by which a PhD student is judged is their publication record. This matters for postdoc, and everything beyond. Even if they don’t stay in academia, their publication record is the record of their work done and an indicator of their discipline as well their ability to carry out a non-routine work in a fruitful way.

Question: Am I only doing the research work or am I working in a way that leads to a tangible output?

Beyond work:

Everything that I have discussed till now has been about the PhD work. But there is such a thing called the PhD life. It is, after all, a long-term commitment.

Try, as far as it is in your power, to keep your life simple. It is quite tempting to overburden one’s time beyond work hours with too many hobbies or side-projects. Perhaps pick one hobby. Leave a little time for entertainment. But, most important of all, try to surround yourself with a small group of friends - it could be as small as one or two! That group of friends should be such that you buoy each other forward.

Question: Are you using your “free time” to truly rest and recuperate?

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I have been extremely concise with each of the points. Probably, they need full-on discussions. But, I hope this short checklist of questions will challenge you and guide you to re-think aspects of the path that you are on.

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I wholeheartedly welcome comments — agreements, disagreements, critiques, your own experiences — from current and former PhD students and certainly PhD supervisors who may chance upon this piece. Students who are thinking of going for higher studies are most welcome to query some of the points I have mentioned here.

The image is AI-generated. But, not a single word of the post has been generated using any AI or AI-adjacent tools.