by Franziska Boenisch and Adam Dziedzic

Struggling with the decision of whether or not to pursue a Ph.D. Here are some thoughts that might help you figure this out. To all current Ph.D’s: what was your motivation? Would you do a Ph.D. again?

When you’re wondering if you should pursue a Ph.D., our key advice is to know your goals: What is your personal motivation to follow a Ph.D.? Ph.D. can be a rough time, with lots of work, frustrating reviews, and projects that do not pun out. If you do the Ph.D. for the simple sake of doing a Ph.D., this might not bring you through these times. But these reasons (among many others) might:

  1. You are excited about a topic and want to deeply understand it and push the boundaries further.
  2. You are curious, want to learn about a new field, and eventually become an expert.
  3. You are creative and do not want to do things the way they have always been done. Instead, you want to propose new methods and create new insights.
  4. You want to work with many engaged people. Doing a Ph.D. gives you the possibility to meet, exchange with and learn from extremely smart and inspiring people.
  5. You want to boost your career. Some really exciting (research) positions, even in the industry or with the government require you to have a Ph.D.

What do we think are the main characteristics to bring for a successful Ph.D.? Of course, this is a very subjective list and contains only a subset of all possible characteristics that can make a good Ph.D. candidate. And nobody needs to be perfect in each of them from the beginning. After all, a Ph.D. is for learning.

  1. You are self-driven: In a Ph.D., nobody will give you concrete tasks. After all, you are trying to find new ways, so there might not even be concrete tasks.
  2. You have a high frustration tolerance: in a Ph.D., there will be many frustrating situations. Papers get rejected, your experiments fail, or there is simply no signal to be measured even though you did everything right and worked very hard. Even in such situations, in a Ph.D., you still have to push further, rework, resubmit, and rethink.
  3. You can manage yourself. Again, there might not be some pre-defined tasks for you, so you’ll have to find, assign, and manage your tasks and time.
  4. You are curious and want to learn something new every day.