{"id":1087,"date":"2015-08-05T16:52:55","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T20:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/?p=1087"},"modified":"2015-08-05T17:26:26","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T21:26:26","slug":"2015-advice-for-your-856-year-old-ph-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/niftyc\/archives\/1087","title":{"rendered":"2015 Advice For Your 856-Year-Old Ph.D."},"content":{"rendered":"

(or, What’s New About Getting an Old Degree?<\/strong><\/em>)<\/p>\n

I’m delighted to be teaching an\u00a0intro seminar\u00a0for all the\u00a0new\u00a0Ph.D. students<\/strong> in my department’s graduate program. One of my goals is to give these students a place to talk about the environment of graduate school itself. How does getting a Ph.D. work? What do you need to know?<\/p>\n

This task has\u00a0made me reflective. At first I thought I should pass along\u00a0readings that had been inspirational for me during grad school. That sure didn’t work.<\/strong>\u00a0Here is the advice I apparently once loved:<\/p>\n

Once you have identified some [thesis] topics you are interested in, you can research them rapidly by spending a few hours on the telephone<\/strong> calling up experts in the field and pumping them for information…although it may cost you a few dollars in long-distance bills… \u00a0—Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student’s Guide to Earning a Master’s or Ph.D.<\/a>, p. 182<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or:<\/p>\n

I wrote the paper with which this book begins on a microcomputer<\/strong>. Though this first experience with one frightened me a little at first, writing soon seemed so much less work that I wondered how I had managed before. —Writing for Social Scientists<\/a>, p. 151<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or:<\/p>\n

Having surveyed the basics…it’s time to consider the role that electronic communication<\/strong> can play. The most important thing is to employ electronic media consciously and deliberately as part of a larger strategy for your career. —Networking on the Network:\u00a0A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or:<\/p>\n

Fortunately, these days every legitimate library has a copy machine<\/strong>, and each copy costs about a dime. —How to Write a Thesis<\/a>, p. 86<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The process of getting a Ph.D. is very old. Wikipedia claims the\u00a0first Ph.D. was awarded in Paris in 1150<\/strong>. I thought Ph.D.\u00a0advice would be more likely to stand the test of time.<\/p>\n

These days you’ll find\u00a0better dissertation advice on Tumblr<\/strong>. Or at least you’ll find some comic relief from Tumblrs like\u00a0When in Academia<\/a>…<\/p>\n

\"when<\/a><\/p>\n

(That’s some great tagging<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

The upshot is that it looks like a fair amount of the advice about how to get a Ph.D. has to do with the available communication technology<\/strong> of the time. \u00a0Both the stuff that’s in everyday use, and also the scholarly communication infrastructure (which I’ve also blogged about recently<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Has anyone reading this ever attended a conference paper sale<\/strong>? (No, that’s not about buying pre-written term papers.)\u00a0Or have you ever received an academic journal article “preprint request postcard<\/strong>?” Here’s an image of one:<\/p>\n

\"reprint-request-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: Google Scholar Blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

So far I’ve come up with a list of things that seem to still be helpful<\/strong>. Caveats: I’m aiming to help the social science and humanities students interested in communication and information. Our first year students won’t be teaching yet, so I am not focusing on teaching with this list.<\/p>\n

Hopefully there are some readers who will find this list useful too.<\/p>\n

How to Get a Ph.D. — The\u00a0Draft Reading List<\/h1>\n

Agre, P. (2002). Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students<\/em>.\u00a0http:\/\/vlsicad.ucsd.edu\/Research\/Advice\/network.html<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0I’ll excerpt the following sections:<\/p>\n