======= Date Modified 22 51 2010 14:51:50 =======
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Is anyone else fed to the teeth with those smarmy lists online "How to finish your Ph.D."? With advice like "write up as you go along" and "make a detailed plan at the start of your Ph.D." or even - love this - "make sure your supervisor is capable before you accept the project". If any of these applied, we wouldn't be looking at these lists in the first place!

I have not met a single, solitary Ph.D. student who has used these lists. Not _one_. I can't shake the feeling that this is the writer's vicarious wish of what he wished he had done...

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Is anyone else fed to the teeth with those smarmy lists online "How to finish your Ph.D."? With advice like "write up as you go along" and "make a detailed plan at the start of your Ph.D." or even - love this - "make sure your supervisor is capable before you accept the project". If any of these applied, we wouldn't be looking at these ******* lists in the first place!

I have not met a single, solitary Ph.D. student who has used these lists. Not _one_. I can't shake the feeling that this is the writer's vicarious wish of what he wished he had done...

I agree that some advice can seem smug BUT it is crucially important to write as one goes along. A thesis just doesn't happen and cannot be written, even in a year. Certainly in the humanities it is the process of 3-4 years of constant writing. I was talking to my sup today, and he said that is is only in the last 18 months that my work has reached doctoral quality. Now if I am typical (I may not be) that means that the first two years or so are spent writing crap and learning to change it.

I have to agree with you, they are always so generic and obvious. The best advice is usually gleaned from those in the thick of it - I always found the advice of my fellow PhD students on here very useful as would pick up on sometimes less obvious things.

I can't help imagine how things might have turned out differently for me if I'd have followed Shane Hall's 5 step approach to PhD success: http://www.ehow.com/how_5045989_succeed-phd-program.html

I'd probably have finished a year ago and have had plenty to write my own time smarmy list: register for programme, turn up, write often, publish, succeed in viva!

I find your language offensive, quite frankly. And, may I suggest you write up as you go? this is quite possibly the best advice any student can be given or give.