PhD 101
A growing collection of short lessons, reflections, and practical notes I share with current and prospective PhD students. Topics span research taste, productivity, writing, mentorship, and the parts of academic life that nobody explicitly teaches.
These notes are personal. They reflect what has worked for me in my own training and what I find myself repeating to my students. Take what is useful, discard the rest.
I have also benefited enormously from other faculty who share their wisdom with students openly, and I am certainly not the first person to write this kind of thing down. Two I would particularly recommend reading are Research with Michael, where Michael Bernstein lays out his research mentality and advising philosophy, and the WVisdom Wiki, where Jian Zhao collects practical guides on doing research, writing papers, running user studies, etc.
Chapter 0: Foundations
Why research is fundamentally different from coursework, and how the rewarding mechanisms diverge.
Chapter 1: The Mental Models That Matter Most
The standards, persistence, and sense of direction that shape a research career, and why they are worth settling early.
Chapter 2: Day-to-Day Research Skills
Practical, repeatable techniques for the research craft, starting with how to survey the literature.
Chapter 3: The Architecture of a Research Project
How to build a coherent motivation, formulate a research question, and design a study that holds up under scrutiny.
Chapter 4: Your Wellbeing Is Your Research
Why taking care of yourself is not separate from doing good work, and how to sustain yourself through the long stretches of a PhD.
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