I am now into the second year of my PhD program and attended a wonderful seminar last weekend about how to be a successful doctoral student and I thought I’d share my notes from that seminar — the indoctrination process:

Roles and Tasks of Doctoral Students

• Don’t begin to write until you understand conversations going on in the field.
• Develop own sense of authority and raise questions if things don’t make sense.
• Don’t justify things on the basis of authority.
• Justify things on the basis of the quality of question or evidence.
• We need to follow our intellectual path and challenge ourselves and assumptions.
• We need to make an enormous amount of effort to do high quality scholarly work.
• Be open to reading materials from other fields — its from other fields that new insights come.
• Be open to see connections.

Academic Writing

• Take and use feedback.
• Get beyond our own ego.
• Speak to various faculty members to hear their different perspectives.
• Good writing includes these four principles. PACT
  1. Point First–see what you are accomplishing.
  2. Active Voice–put subject first in writing.
  3. Concise–use less words.
  4. Topic Sentences–tell a story.
• Keep reading notes in a word document that includes summary, quotes, and page #’s in a word file. Also, keep and excel file tracking works cited by the author.
• Reading notes will help you not to read something more than once.
• Literature review is the hardest writing for students.
• Start by conceptualizing three main topics.
• When you can’t find literature on something acknowledge that in the literature review.
• Trying to fill the gap with current research — don’t be discouraged when you find a gap.
• Stick to the APA manual.

Committee Selection

• Select people who have knowledge of your field and can direct you to key sources of literature.
• Show your committee chair you know how to get into the literature.
• Inform your committee about your progress and the path you are taking.
• If you choose a committee member from outside the university be clear with them about their role and your expectations.

That’s it for now…on the road to becoming a scholar.