What's your dissertation topic? Ummm...
What do you want to do after your PhD? Uhhh...
What do you want to get out of your PhD program - besides a doctorate? Oh, I can answer that one - I think...
It's been almost exactly 6 months since I started my doctoral studies at UW, and while I'm a few (coughmanycough) steps away from landing on a dissertation topic - let alone knowing exactly what I want to do with my PhD - I recently tackled something I had planned to do awhile ago. I wrote out my PhD hopes and goals within key categories; I mapped out the courses I wanted to take and when they were offered (and then color-coded them by degree program requirement - obviously); and put them all in a Google drive so I could regularly review and update them.
Several people, ranging from formal and informal mentors alike to current and former PhD students/friends/colleagues, had recommended completing this kind of exercise in one way or another. One professor told me to articulate 1-, 5-, 10-, and 25-year goals and then identify what experiences and skills I needed to meet them during my PhD. One of my best friends/former officemate and colleague/current PhD candidate recommended writing out what I hoped to learn and be exposed to over the course of my doctoral studies. And the list went on - clearly this was something I should do.
I drafted up an initial version the weekend after a 40 minute cryfest with my faculty advisor. The aim was to review the courses I had taken already, identify the types of methods and skills I wanted to learn, and then work out what kinds of next steps I should take in terms of projects, research assistantships, summer jobs, and so on. Not surprisingly - ha - I took it to the next level, and sought to find more tangible reasons why I was even doing this whole PhD thingamabob in the first place. Clearly, this was a long time coming.
For anyone currently in and/or starting a PhD program - I highly recommend this process. It's helped me garner greater focus, a better understanding of how I want to mold my doctoral studies, and - bonus - realize I'm already making progress toward real milestones I actually care about (versus benchmarks others were erecting and I inadvertantly got caught up in measuring my performance against them).
I imagine I'll continue to refine this working document, but in case anyone else wants a broader template from which to start their own "PhD goals and planning, 20xx-20xx" reference, here's my current structure (and a few examples):
Spring quarter 2019 - here I come.
Today I learned...
...well, it's more like thought-about-more-deeply than formally-learned-something-completely-new, but I technically learned more about the challenges of conducting truly independent evaluations from a bravely written Viewpoint in The Lancet: Storeng & Palmer, "When ethics and politics collide in donor-funded global health research." I strongly recommend it.
Today I'm grateful for...
My research team's willingness to let me focus on studying for finals and recovering from an obstinate ear/sinus infection over the last week. Further, I'm now the bottleneck for a manuscript we're working on, yet everyone has kindly given me the space to focus on school and then getting closer to 100% health status. I'm incredibly thankful for this, and I look forward to wrangling results and a paper into submission this week (all the puns intended).
Today's best part was...
Honestly, being back in the office. I missed seeing my team and colleagues, and it felt good to back in "my" hotel space. PhD students reserve computer space at our offices through an online system, and I've essentially taken over "Hotel 2" at our northern offices. This is where I left the homemade paperweight the Murphy girls made me as a thank you for coordinating Girl Scout cookie orders at our institute for them (as if this was a huge inconvenience or something...ha). It kind of snuck up on me, but I'm starting to feel like I belong.
What do you want to do after your PhD? Uhhh...
What do you want to get out of your PhD program - besides a doctorate? Oh, I can answer that one - I think...
It's been almost exactly 6 months since I started my doctoral studies at UW, and while I'm a few (coughmanycough) steps away from landing on a dissertation topic - let alone knowing exactly what I want to do with my PhD - I recently tackled something I had planned to do awhile ago. I wrote out my PhD hopes and goals within key categories; I mapped out the courses I wanted to take and when they were offered (and then color-coded them by degree program requirement - obviously); and put them all in a Google drive so I could regularly review and update them.
Several people, ranging from formal and informal mentors alike to current and former PhD students/friends/colleagues, had recommended completing this kind of exercise in one way or another. One professor told me to articulate 1-, 5-, 10-, and 25-year goals and then identify what experiences and skills I needed to meet them during my PhD. One of my best friends/former officemate and colleague/current PhD candidate recommended writing out what I hoped to learn and be exposed to over the course of my doctoral studies. And the list went on - clearly this was something I should do.
I drafted up an initial version the weekend after a 40 minute cryfest with my faculty advisor. The aim was to review the courses I had taken already, identify the types of methods and skills I wanted to learn, and then work out what kinds of next steps I should take in terms of projects, research assistantships, summer jobs, and so on. Not surprisingly - ha - I took it to the next level, and sought to find more tangible reasons why I was even doing this whole PhD thingamabob in the first place. Clearly, this was a long time coming.
For anyone currently in and/or starting a PhD program - I highly recommend this process. It's helped me garner greater focus, a better understanding of how I want to mold my doctoral studies, and - bonus - realize I'm already making progress toward real milestones I actually care about (versus benchmarks others were erecting and I inadvertantly got caught up in measuring my performance against them).
I imagine I'll continue to refine this working document, but in case anyone else wants a broader template from which to start their own "PhD goals and planning, 20xx-20xx" reference, here's my current structure (and a few examples):
- PhD goals and planning: 2018-202x
- When I graduate with my doctorate, I want to...
- Have expertise across impact evaluation methods and analyses
- Have exposure to different phases of evaluation projects
- Have spent time working at organizations and/or with country partners outside of my current research institute
- ...among others
- Topical areas I would like to spend more time on include...
- Vaccine coverage and vaccination determinants
- Malaria control and elimination
- Healthcare utilization (e.g., care-seeking behavior) and intervention effectiveness
- Intersection of quantitative global health and social psychology/sociological factors that affect effectiveness and outcomes
- ...among others
- The technical methods and analytical approaches I want to learn more about are...
- Impact evaluation and policy analysis techniques (e.g., stepped wedge)
- Data synthesis techniques for trend estimation (e.g., methods for combining administrative and survey data)
- Geospatial analysis
- Counterfactual models and simulations
- Qualitative data collection and/or analysis
- Network analysis
- ...among others
- Specific research and coding skills I would like to learn include...
- Becoming proficient in R
- Making maps
- Developing R Shiny tools (I did this!)
- ...among others
- Personal and academic experiences I want to have or benchmarks I want to achieve during my PhD are...
- TA-ing at least 1-2 courses
- Applying to teach (and then ideally treaching) a J-term course on global health measurement and analysis at my alma mater (current target is Winter 2021)
- Applying for at least 1 grant or fellowship
- Writing 1-2 first-author papers per year; supporting 1-2 team papers per year and/or providing regular scientific paper mentorship, coaching, etc. to team members
- ...among others
Spring quarter 2019 - here I come.
Today I learned...
...well, it's more like thought-about-more-deeply than formally-learned-something-completely-new, but I technically learned more about the challenges of conducting truly independent evaluations from a bravely written Viewpoint in The Lancet: Storeng & Palmer, "When ethics and politics collide in donor-funded global health research." I strongly recommend it.
Today I'm grateful for...
My research team's willingness to let me focus on studying for finals and recovering from an obstinate ear/sinus infection over the last week. Further, I'm now the bottleneck for a manuscript we're working on, yet everyone has kindly given me the space to focus on school and then getting closer to 100% health status. I'm incredibly thankful for this, and I look forward to wrangling results and a paper into submission this week (all the puns intended).
Today's best part was...
Honestly, being back in the office. I missed seeing my team and colleagues, and it felt good to back in "my" hotel space. PhD students reserve computer space at our offices through an online system, and I've essentially taken over "Hotel 2" at our northern offices. This is where I left the homemade paperweight the Murphy girls made me as a thank you for coordinating Girl Scout cookie orders at our institute for them (as if this was a huge inconvenience or something...ha). It kind of snuck up on me, but I'm starting to feel like I belong.
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