Personal actions

According to the Helmholtz Juniors survey, job satisfaction and good supervision are the most important factors regarding PhD student well-being. But how can you improve your own PhD journey? We have collected some general advice that can help ease your PhD journey.

Also find some advice for early career researchers to support their mental health by BIH here. 

An individual PhD comes with many freedoms, but also demands a high degree of personal initiative and responsibility. Traditionally, the PhD candidate works independently on a subject while being supervised by their professor. If you do an individual PhD, there are some steps to consider to take responsibility off your shoulders and decrease your own mental burden. Every PhD is different so there is no one-size-fits-all solution but we collected some basic advice that can help you through your PhD journey with more ease:

• Consider to sign a supervision agreement in which responsibilities and tasks of the supervisor and supervisee are defined (Example1, Example2)
• Approach your supervisor and involve them in day-to-day project planning as well as long-term project management
• Ask for regular (e.g. weekly) meetings with your supervisor where progress is discussed
• Agree together on a realistic long-term timeline and potentially on rough publication plans
• Always make a plan B (e.g. analyses on already collected data) in case milestones cannot be reached

Structured PhD programs usually provide a clearly structured study program which includes participating in seminars or lectures as well as training in scientific methods and softskills. Most likely, you will have a supervision committee and a time frame for your project. Nonetheless, also the structured PhD program comes with challenges and is often perceived to be rather competitive. Therefore, we have collected some additional advice you might want to consider, if you are part of a structured PhD program:

• If there are technical topics your supervisor has less expertise in, find other researchers to ask for their expertise (e.g. in your supervision committee) and get them involved
• Ask senior PhDs and postdocs from your lab or institution for their opinion/help on your work
• Attend self-management courses (e.g. offered by the HU Graduate School, they often offer left-over places even for non-affiliated students)
• If you run into problems, address your program coordinators. Probably, they have dealt with similar problems before or know where to get further help.

If you are an international PhD student, you are most likely part of a structured PhD program. These programs are usually strongly internationally oriented with English as general communication language. All advice given for PhD students in structured programs also applies for international students. However, an international PhD might come with additional cultural and language barriers. Therefore, we tried to collected some more advice which we consider specifically useful for international students:

• There are specific courses on intercultural communication offered by a lot of institutions (e.g. the HU Graduate School and Dahlem Research School).