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I recently ran a poll on Twitter, asking people for their experience on what they considered the hardest stage of the PhD. The results, and personal stories, are quite interesting. For 45%, the end of the PhD and the writing stage are the most difficult phase - I had expected this percentage to be higher (say 67%), based on my perception. For myself, the hardest stage was at the end - not the actual writing, but the patience I needed until my promotor had time to read my draft. Patience is a virtue, but unfortunately not one that I possess... [ View the story "The hardest part of the PhD" on Storify ]

Today, I am hosting Dr. Maureen Berg in the "Defenses around the World" series. Maureen is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, and received a BS in Biology at the University of Dayton. Maureen recently graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in Integrative Biology, and is currently applying for and interviewing for non-academic research positions in the Bay Area. You can follow her on twitter @MaureenBug . The majority of PhD programs in the US require a written dissertation, as well as an oral defense. However, the various biology departments at Berkeley do not require a formal defense. Most do require some sort of “finishing talk,” which is essentially a seminar where you present your all of the work in your dissertation. For my department, we form our dissertation committee after passing our qualifying exams (taken at the end of year 2), and meet with that committee at least once per year until graduation. To submit your completed dissertation, all you need to do is have each ...

I recently ran a poll about the number of conferences academics attend, and the results are in: the vast majority travel to 1 - 4 conferences per year. I tend to attend a bit more than 4 conferences per year, because there are a number of conferences that I don't like skipping - but my conference travel schedule tends to be packed and exhausting. And as a new mom, it's time to reconsider and evaluate where my priorities lie. Over the past years, I've attended these conferences: ACI Conventions : twice per year, always in North America - and I don't like to skip these because I serve on committees that meet at these conventions. TRB Annual meeting : every January, in DC - which I don't like to skip because of the committee meetings IABSE - holds symposium once per year and a conference once per year. I attend every now and then. IABMAS - holds a conference every other year, which I try to attend every time. IALCCE - holds a conference every other year, which I try...

Today, I am inviting Dr. Susan Bartos to talk about her defense. Susan completed her BS degree at Moravian College, graduating with honors in Nursing. Upon graduation from Moravian, she enrolled in the BS to PhD program at the University of Connecticut. She completed the program and successfully defended her dissertation in 2016 entitled, "The Self-Care Practices of Women with Heart Failure: A Mixed Methods Study." She has experience practicing in acute, adult medical/surgical and remains a practicing critical care nurse. She has obtained her Critical Care Registered Nurse certification through the American Association of Critical Care Nurses. She sits on a hospital wide committee that strives to bring Nursing Research and Evidence Based Practices to the bedside. In 2014, she joined the Fairfield University faculty to spread her passion of nursing to a new generation of students. I sat in the classroom and listened as everyone introduced themselves. “I have 13 years of exper...

At some point during your PhD or in your years after your PhD, you will be asked to review a paper. I've done a fair amount of reviews by now, and have started to keep track of the reviews I write about a year ago by using Publons. You can see my Pulons profile here. If you receive an invitation to review paper, you need to ask yourself the following questions: 1. Do I have sufficient technical knowledge to review this paper? If not, can I recommend a colleague? 2. Do I have enough time to write this review by the deadline? 3. Do I have a conflict of interest that prevents me from writing an unbiased report? If you have the time and knowledge it takes to review the paper, and no conflict of interest, you can go ahead and review the paper. As you read the paper, you need to keep in mind how you will review the paper. A typical review report follows a certain standard form. If you know which elements you need to discuss in your review report, you can pay attention to these while you ...

Many journals require that you write a cover letter that accompanies your paper upon submission. However, it may not be clear from the guidelines for authors what is expected for this cover letter. In general, your cover letter should contain the following elements: It should be addressed to the editor of the journal. It should mention that you prepared the manuscript according to the guidelines. If the formatting guidelines have a limiting word count, mention the word count of your manuscript. It should contain a short description of why you consider your work interesting for the readers of the journal. It should mention that the manuscript is original and has not been published previously. If you’ve shown a preliminary analysis of these results in a conference paper, you should mention this fact. Print your cover letter on official university paper and include your signature. For your convenience, I've developed a template that you can use to write a cover letter. Just copy and...

Let's bring some more Q&A to you! Today, I'm focusing on the following comment that came to my blog: Not sure about the comment "what does not kill you". I have seen several candidates suffer mental breakdowns. This comment came together with the question from another reader: How tough is necessary grad school? At that time, I replied as follows: There's a big difference between building up some friction and being able to push through, and getting a mental illness. I'm not a psychologist, but I think a toxic environment, difficulties with an advisor etc. might be factors that can cause serious damage to a person's health (mental AND physical), instead of the actual research itself. But maybe I'm totally wrong? So, how hard is graduate school really? How mentally challenging is it? How emotionally challenging is it? How psychologically challenging is it? As always, let's look at all different aspects - keeping in mind the comment I made previous...

This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer , your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those of you interested in pursuing a research position in the Netherlands. If these posts raise your interest in working as a researcher in the Netherlands, even better - and feel free to fire away any questions you might have on this topic! When you start your PhD trajectory, you may at times feel a bit bored, as you spend the entire day on one single task. But at some point during your PhD, you will find yourself juggling a number of tasks: supervising students, teaching, carrying out your own research, writing abstracts, writing papers, helping your supervisor with smaller tasks, and preparing deliverables for your funding institution. As the number of tasks that come your way increase, you may feel a mild sense of panic. ...

Today, I have invited Konstantin Okonechnikov, who received his PhD in Germany, to the "Defenses around the world" series. Konstantin is currently a bioinformatics PostDoc in the Pediatric Neurooncology division at German Cancer Research Center. He is also quite interested in blogging and has a personal blog about bioinformatics . You can l earn more about his research on his Google Scholar page . Bioinformatics is an astonishing and developing science that it is becoming really important in molecular biology and medicine due to amazing novel technologies like Next Generation Sequencing, where a lot of data analysis is required to understand the functionality of genome, transcriptome and proteome. After finishing my bioinformatics Master in Novosibirsk State University in Russia I decided to search for a PhD position in this area as well. I performed several visits to research institutes in Europe, and decided to do my PhD in the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Infection Bio...