Engineering Success: Delivering Your Ph,D. on Time, on Budget, and Ready for Your Career

摘要

Successfully completing a doctorate degree takes a lot of hard work, perseverance, and determination. Throughout my time as a doctoral student, I searched for the key to success. I read books and blogs, sought advice from mentors, and learned through trial and error. I found that the skills that helped me succeed in undergrad were not enough for graduate school. In this paper, I will convey three main lessons: time management tricks, managing your financial and health budgets, and setting goals. My first lesson includes time management tricks that I found to be useful. While pursuing a graduate degree, time is much more flexible. Depending on your habits, this can be a blessing or a curse. The second lesson is in managing budgets. A budget in graduate school could mean several things: the number of years of your funding, the grant that is funding your research, or your emotional health. The first two are straightforward: they are about managing a budget of time or money to achieve goals in your graduate career. Your emotional health might not be as straightforward to manage. Graduate school has emotional highs (e.g. success in research, accepted papers) emotional lows (e.g. rejected papers, failed tests) and stress. I learned that my emotional health is not something I could ignore. Taking time for yourself is important during your graduate school career. The last lesson of the paper is about setting goals and finding opportunities to achieve your goals. A common goal for earning your doctorate should be preparing you for your career in either academia or industry.