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.
Chapter 0: Foundations
Why research is fundamentally different from coursework, and how the rewarding mechanisms diverge.
- Ep. 1 Research Is Not Homework Why the coursework mindset breaks in research, and the two failure modes I see most often.
- Ep. 2 Why Would Anyone Want to Do Research? (Except It Sounds Cool) Two answers from my own experience, and a question to you?
- Ep. 3 PhD = Permanent Head Damage? Why research's critique-centric feedback feels so different from coursework.
- Ep. 4 Self-Motivation is Not Optional What mental model is needed to thrive in research.
Chapter 1: Day-to-Day Research Skills
Practical, repeatable techniques for the research craft, starting with how to survey the literature.
- Ep. 1 How to Survey the Literature A practical method for searching, snowballing, and classifying the literature.
- Ep. 2 How to Read a Paper How to read papers at the right depth, take notes that stay useful, and avoid reading 100 papers when you only needed 30.
- Ep. 3 The Literature Survey as Self-Directed Learning How the papers you've already collected serve as a permanent library for teaching yourself the craft of research.
- Ep. 4 The Weekly Project Meeting A five-part structure for weekly project meetings, and what leading a project actually means.
Chapter 3: In-Depth Advice for the PhD Journey
Longer-form reflections on quality, peer pressure, and sustaining yourself through the PhD.
- Ep. 1 Your Standard Should Never Be Paper Acceptance Borderline Why you should hold yourself to a standard much higher than the acceptance line of a top-tier venue anyway.