I have a really nice office this semester. It is beautiful. It has a tiny anteroom past the door – enough space to store the shoes that are too uncomfortable to wear when I’m walking around campus and three of the four coats I’ve brought from home in preparation for the unpredictable Massachusetts weather. Beyond the anteroom is an L-shaped mahogany stained desk with a Nespresso machine. I’ve always wanted one of those. They are, however, too extravagant when I have my old reliable carafe-style coffee maker. Beyond the desk is a gray couch with leather footstools, and at my feet is a blue shag area rug. On the walls are real paintings. Years' worth of lovingly collected books line the walls – I can almost map the semesters of classes taught in their organization.

This is not my office. It’s a temporary office, on loan to me courtesy of a professor on sabbatical. My temporary office while I teach my temporary class and am, temporarily, a professor. I love this space. It’s the most comfortable space I have had on campus in the five years I have been a graduate student. But the office, just like the life it represents, is not my own. It’s just temporary.

It has been two years since I successfully completed my  Ph.D. My thesis, entitled "Well-being and romantic relationships in Andalusian adolescents" explored both topics from the Positive Psychology approach, focusing on this developmental period. During those years I learned a lot, but I also went through some very difficult times. That's why I realized that looking back, there are many things I wish I’d known before starting my Ph. D. path  which would have helped me to make the most of the experience.

Here I go through some of my top tips in the hope that they will be useful to you:

1. Doing a Ph.D. is not easy and takes years of effort and dedication. At first, you will probably find yourself wondering what on earth it is you are doing. Take it easy, don’t think you have  to learn everything at once. You have a lot to learn, and you are not going to do it in a day, a week, or a month (or even a year). Knowledge is not acquired quickly. Patience and perseverance are your greatest allies. One step at a time. One day at a time. Go at your own pace. Don't compare yourself to anyone. Everyone is different, has a different life, different resources, and different qualities. Don't want to be like anyone else. Be yourself.

Doing a PhD is about so much more than the thesis you produce at the end that lets you proudly utter the words “Actually, it’s doctor.”

But at some point, you’ve got to take the ideas, doodles, scrawls and sketches and turn them into a thesis. When I got to that point, I wasn’t bowled over by the support available. After a while, you want to move from “everyone’s different!” and “there’s no one way to write up!” to “no, really, please tell me: how on Earth do I go about this?”

Don’t get me wrong – there is no one way to write up, and there’s almost certainly not a single best way. But this blog is my writing-up “write-up” which I hope, at best, might help others find what works for them (and, at worst, might help them rule out one option as a horrifying exercise in academic masochism.) Now that I’ve written it up, it sounds even more ambitious than it did when I first devised it – but I promise this worked for me.

​On the 18th of December 2020, I started writing my PhD thesis. On the 9th of December 2021, I submitted it to my faculty for examination. I never set myself a concrete due date, but I’m rather pleased that I was able to accomplish the task in just under a year. Writing is an arduous task for many PhD students, and Twitter is awash with tweets asking for advice, tips, and tricks to make the task easier. I myself have shared some advice on Twitter and on my blog with the hope that I could be of some help to those seeking it. Some people have also got in touch with me on Twitter to ask how I managed to complete my thesis in a year. So, after I was invited to contribute an article to The PhD Place, I eventually decided to share my writing journey with other PhD students. Hopefully, my experience will be able to give you some ideas or inspiration to help you write your own thesis.

This month marks the third anniversary interviewing for my PhD and it had me wondering, what advice would I give the person I was back then? My 23-year-old self sat outside of the interview room, the most nervous I had ever been in my life, considering getting up and walking away before being asked to come in. Perhaps part of my advice would be to invest in face masks amongst other PPE, and to enjoy the company of friends and family over the coming months. Aside from the obvious pandemic warnings, upon reflection, there are a few pieces of advice that I would give myself that may help those now embarking on a similar journey.

Firstly, perspective is key. During my PhD I began to set a reminder on my phone. The date would be set to the 17th of every 3 months, serving as a day to reflect on events during the time that had elapsed. There was nothing significant about the 17th, only that this was the day that I had decided to begin reflecting. After a few months, I found the process quite cathartic, not only from an academic stance, but from a personal one too. This was particularly poignant on the 17th May 2020, given the different appearance of livelihood three months prior. Nevertheless, from an academic view, time flies, and because of this it is extremely easy to lose perspective of your progression. As my head of department recently said to me, “there is never an end to research, it just keeps going and going”. Academia can be an isolating environment with little feedback of how you are doing and engaging in mindfulness exercises, such as the one I have described above, allows you to look back on what you have achieved in that period. Without this, a PhD can become very blurred, and it can be difficult to distinguish all the great things you have been doing. 

My name is Karl Miller, I’m a 3rd year PhD student in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. Broadly my research area is the psychology of driving, with my specific PhD research focusing on cultural differences in drivers’ visual attention.

I became interested in this topic and started thinking about the research questions for my PhD towards the end of my undergraduate degree, and sat on these ideas for 2 years before starting my PhD. Once I got started in October 2019 I was so excited to do this research, design my studies, and start collecting my data. But only 6 months after starting, we were told to work from home as the UK entered its first national lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdown and restrictions had a huge impact on everyone’s daily lives, and there was a particular impact for so many PhD students. This is a short summary of my own experience of working on my PhD during the pandemic, the challenges faced, and what I have taken away from this going forward with my research.