A good chunk of the general skills, at least when summarized like this:
It seems plausible that general training in things like “what to do when you’re stuck on a problem”, “how to use your network to effectively find solutions”, “when & how to ask for help”, “how to stay motivated even when you’re lost”, “how to lead meetings with your research mentors”, and “how to generally take care of your mental health” could be useful.
seem like things that I would learn in a PhD program (granted, some of them seem like things you would need to figure out for yourself, where the advisor can’t help a ton).
I’m not sure a PhD is the most efficient possible way to learn these things, but at least it has a blueprint I can follow, where I will probably end up at where I want to be.
Since you have a first-hand perspective on this, would you say I’m off the mark here?
As Sam says, PhDs are notoriously hard on mental health, and I think this is very not conducive to learning for most people.
For example, as someone who was a PhD student, I think I learned how to do these things:
“what to do when you’re stuck on a problem”, “how to use your network to effectively find solutions”, “when & how to ask for help”, “how to stay motivated even when you’re lost”, “how to lead meetings with your research mentors”, and “how to generally take care of your mental health”
only in the few months after leaving my PhD, though a lot of the learning was based on experiences in my PhD.
I mostly agree, but it’s messy. I don’t think it’s obvious that a PhD is anywhere near the ideal way to pick up some of these skills, or that earning a PhD definitely means that you’ve picked them up, but PhD programs do include lots of nudges in these directions, and PhD-holders are going to be much stronger than average at most of this.
In particular, like Johannes said, doing a PhD is notoriously hard on mental health for a number of reasons, even at a more-supportive-than-average lab. So to the extent that they teach ‘taking care of your mental health’ and ‘staying motivated when you’re lost’, it’s often by throwing you into stressful, confusing work situations without great resources and giving you the degree if you figure out how to navigate them.
I have not done a PhD. But my two cents here are that none of these skills seem very teachable, by traditional teaching methods. I would be surprised if people try to teach modern half of these things explicitly in a PhD. And I don’t expect that they will teach them very well. I expect that you will need to figure out most of these things yourself. I have heard that most PhD students get depressed. That doesn’t sound like they have good models of how the mind works and how to take care of their mental health. Though all off it depends on how good the people around you are of course.
A good chunk of the general skills, at least when summarized like this:
seem like things that I would learn in a PhD program (granted, some of them seem like things you would need to figure out for yourself, where the advisor can’t help a ton). I’m not sure a PhD is the most efficient possible way to learn these things, but at least it has a blueprint I can follow, where I will probably end up at where I want to be.
Since you have a first-hand perspective on this, would you say I’m off the mark here?
As Sam says, PhDs are notoriously hard on mental health, and I think this is very not conducive to learning for most people.
For example, as someone who was a PhD student, I think I learned how to do these things:
only in the few months after leaving my PhD, though a lot of the learning was based on experiences in my PhD.
I mostly agree, but it’s messy. I don’t think it’s obvious that a PhD is anywhere near the ideal way to pick up some of these skills, or that earning a PhD definitely means that you’ve picked them up, but PhD programs do include lots of nudges in these directions, and PhD-holders are going to be much stronger than average at most of this.
In particular, like Johannes said, doing a PhD is notoriously hard on mental health for a number of reasons, even at a more-supportive-than-average lab. So to the extent that they teach ‘taking care of your mental health’ and ‘staying motivated when you’re lost’, it’s often by throwing you into stressful, confusing work situations without great resources and giving you the degree if you figure out how to navigate them.
I have not done a PhD. But my two cents here are that none of these skills seem very teachable, by traditional teaching methods. I would be surprised if people try to teach modern half of these things explicitly in a PhD. And I don’t expect that they will teach them very well. I expect that you will need to figure out most of these things yourself. I have heard that most PhD students get depressed. That doesn’t sound like they have good models of how the mind works and how to take care of their mental health. Though all off it depends on how good the people around you are of course.