The blog of all and sundry

Best analysis of a PhD I’ve ever read

Found over at Jamie Lawrence’s blog.

I found myself nodding the whole way through.

I remember hearing that, on average, 1.6 people will read your PhD thesis. I’m pretty sure that includes yourself, your spouse, your supervisor, your second supervisor and your examiner (yeah, that’s technically 5 people. If someone says they’ve read your thesis, they’re probably lying – they read page 9). You have to accept, that no one in the world will want to wade through this document. Ever.

Oh, and the glorious days of a constantly clean house:

If you’re like me, when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, boring detailed work of the PhD, you need to remove as many distractions as you can because, at this stage, just about anything is going to be preferable to your PhD. Computer games, good fiction and the Internet are all obvious distractions that can be minimised. Washing up was one of my favourite distractions, which I never found a way to avoid.

Required reading for any potential PhD student.