A Happy PhD

A blog about doctoral productivity, supervision and wellbeing..

Looking for tips, tricks and advice to finish your doctoral thesis on time and with high spirits? Baffled by how little information is out there about how to support PhD students to become independent researchers? As an ex-doctoral student now co-supervising five students , I feel your pain.

“A Happy PhD” is a blog where I distil what has worked for me, as well as recent research in doctoral education, psychology and many other fields. Join our newsletter , or follow the blog on Twitter , Facebook , or via RSS .

New to the blog? Start here.

Are you looking for…

Common problems and challenges in doing the PhD, from mental health (e.g., depression or anxiety) or productivity challenges , to writing or dropping out of your PhD .

Mental health and wellbeing tips and advice : common mental health symptoms in the PhD , tips to avoid dropping out of the doctorate , the importance of sleep , holidays or advice from positive psychology to keep yourself motivated during the PhD.

PhD productivity tips and advice : from the classic Pomodoro technique , to avoiding to-do list overwhelm , dealing with multiple projects and priorities , staying productive and motivated , how I manage my daily tasks or how I do my weekly reviews .

PhD-specific tools , like the CQOCE diagram to conceptualize your PhD, the NABC method to structure your research presentations, or the process I use to write scientific papers or make big career decisions .

Supervision tips and advice , about giving feedback on student papers , or supporting a sense of progress in your doctoral students .

What (else) do I write about?

Recent posts.

image from Is Doctoral Productivity Bad?

Is Doctoral Productivity Bad?

In this blog I have written a lot about doctoral productivity tools and advice. Yet, many doctoral students out there may also think that the focus on productivity is exploitative, dehumanizing, and counter to the very spirit of the scientific endeavor. Should we reject the quest for being productive altogether? Should we “quiet quit” our PhDs? This post tries to clarify what I mean by (doctoral) productivity, which may not be the “narrow productivity” view you find in certain research policy or journalistic articles about the topic. That way, you can decide whether it makes sense for you to follow my advice, or get it elsewhere.

image from Tiny idea: To-do lists are menus

Tiny idea: To-do lists are menus

Overwhelmed by your endless to-do list? Stressed because of the many PhD-related tasks you need to “go through”? As we discussed previously in the blog , you are not alone (and ask any already-doctors whether this feeling goes away after graduation). Lately, as I struggle with not-so-new-parenthood-unproductivity in my own research, I have been reminded several times of a mental reframe I first encountered in productivity writer Oliver Burkeman ’s work. This simple metaphor helped me change my relationship with my to-do list, without hurting my productivity (more probably, the opposite).

image from Tiny practice: Beating procrastination with The Right Now List

Tiny practice: Beating procrastination with The Right Now List

One of the top barriers to PhD productivity is procrastination. Have you ever found yourself with a big ugly task getting stale in your to-do list, repeatedly postponed because it is too big, too abstract, or makes you somehow uncomfortable? This tiny practice post gives you an simple trick to beat this sort of procrastination.

image from ChatGPT's doctoral productivity advice... and four ideas the algorithm will (probably) not give you

ChatGPT's doctoral productivity advice... and four ideas the algorithm will (probably) not give you

We know that making progress is a critical motivational factor in finishing a PhD and maintaining good mental health while we do it. In turn, our productivity plays a big role in whether we make progress on our dissertation or not. As the first post in a series on doctoral productivity, I could not help but fall into one of the thèmes du jour : whether ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence (AI) tools can write a good piece about this topic. In this post, I go over a couple of iterations of (pretty good) computationally-generated advice, and finally give you a few ideas that I think are overlooked by the algorithm.

image from Tiny idea: Use the Regret Test for daily decision-making

Tiny idea: Use the Regret Test for daily decision-making

image from Breathing through the PhD: Breathwork in the doctorate

Breathing through the PhD: Breathwork in the doctorate

During the doctorate (and in our later lives as researchers) we have to deal with a wide variety of situations and tasks, some stressful, some requiring focus or calmness. Going to therapy, doing therapy-inspired reflection exercises , journaling , and other practices are all very useful, but they require us to step away from the difficult situation. If only there was a simple, free, portable tool to help us in such situations, something we could do in any occasion and which is evidence-based… Wait, there is ! This post is about breathwork , an array of tools with an increasing body of scientific evidence demonstrating its effectiveness. The post describes how we should breathe for better health and cognitive performance, and how different kinds of breathing patterns can help us cope with common challenging situations throughout the PhD.

Tiny practice: Boost your workday happiness with natural spaces

Tiny idea: subtraction, tiny practice: granny's rule, a happy master thesis: progress and appropriation even before the phd.

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  • CAREER COLUMN
  • 06 November 2018

Twenty things I wish I’d known when I started my PhD

  • Lucy A. Taylor 0

Lucy A. Taylor earned her zoology PhD from the University of Oxford, UK. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at Save the Elephants in Nairobi, Kenya, and a visiting researcher in the Department of Zoology at Oxford.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Starting a PhD can be tough. Looking back, there are many things I wish I’d known at the beginning. Here, I have curated a list of advice from current PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from the Department of Zoology at my institution, the University of Oxford, UK, to aid new graduate students.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07332-x

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged. You can get in touch with the editor at [email protected].

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30 Best PhD Blogs and Websites

  • The Thesis Whisperer
  • Northeastern University PhD Education
  • Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD Blog
  • FInd PhD Blogs
  • The Professor Is In Blog
  • Foster Blog » PhD
  • IMISCOE | PhD Blog
  • Get a Life, PhD
  • PhD Assistance Blog
  • Olga Degtyareva, PhD
  • Research Degree Insiders Blog
  • The Dutch PhD coach Blog
  • A Happy PhD
  • Thrive PhD Blog
  • The Slow Academic
  • How to Write a Phd in a Hundred Steps (or More) Blog
  • How to PhD Blog
  • The PhD Careers Blog
  • From PhD to Life Blog
  • PhDStudent Blogs
  • Finish Your Thesis Blog
  • Hanna Erickson, MD, PHD Blog
  • patter » starting the PhD
  • Anuja Cabraal (PhD) Blog
  • Adventures of a PhD
  • PhD Academy Blog
  • Fearless Grad Blog

PhD Bloggers

  • PhD Newsletter

Here are 30 Best PhD Blogs you should follow in 2024

1. The Thesis Whisperer

The Thesis Whisperer

2. Northeastern University PhD Education

Northeastern University PhD Education

3. Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD Blog

Raul Pacheco-Vega, PhD Blog

4. FInd PhD Blogs

FInd PhD Blogs

5. The Professor Is In Blog

The Professor Is In Blog

6. Foster Blog » PhD

Foster Blog » PhD

7. IMISCOE | PhD Blog

IMISCOE | PhD Blog

8. Get a Life, PhD

Get a Life, PhD

9. iLovePhD

iLovePhD

10. PhD Assistance Blog

PhD Assistance Blog

11. PhD Life

PhD Life

12. Olga Degtyareva, PhD

Olga Degtyareva, PhD

13. Research Degree Insiders Blog

Research Degree Insiders Blog

14. The Dutch PhD coach Blog

The Dutch PhD coach Blog

15. A Happy PhD

A Happy PhD

16. Thrive PhD Blog

Thrive PhD Blog

17. The Slow Academic

The Slow Academic

18. How to Write a Phd in a Hundred Steps (or More) Blog

How to Write a Phd in a Hundred Steps (or More) Blog

19. How to PhD Blog

How to PhD Blog

20. The PhD Careers Blog

The PhD Careers Blog

21. From PhD to Life Blog

From PhD to Life Blog

22. PhDStudent Blogs

PhDStudent Blogs

23. Finish Your Thesis Blog

Finish Your Thesis Blog

24. Hanna Erickson, MD, PHD Blog

Hanna Erickson, MD, PHD Blog

25. patter » starting the PhD

patter » starting the PhD

26. Anuja Cabraal (PhD) Blog

Anuja Cabraal (PhD) Blog

27. Adventures of a PhD

Adventures of a PhD

28. PhD Academy Blog

PhD Academy Blog

29. Fearless Grad Blog

Fearless Grad Blog

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10 Essential Dissertation Blogs for Ph.D. Students

phd advice blogs

If you are anything like me, then having a few blogs and podcasts to follow is essential to every project – and dissertation blogs are no exception.

In this post, I’ll share ten of my favorite research blogs for dissertation students, including academic, writing, and humorous options. (Don’t worry – we’ll get to podcasts another day!)

Dissertation blogs are great, because you can get everything from instructional tips on research and writing to motivational daydreaming and validation for your frustrations. I think these ten blogs offer a good range of what you need to survive the dissertation research and writing process – but let me know what you think!

(And yes – the ReadWritePerfect Dissertation Advice blog also offers these things – but it’s nice to have options, right?)

phd advice blogs

The Thesis Whisperer

This blog offers ten years of humorous and supportive content from professor inger mewburn..

Director of Researcher Development at The Australian National University, Professor Mewburn writes The Thesis Whisperer with candor, humor, and more than a little bit of inside knowledge. her tips on writing, surviving the dissertation process, and staying motivated are user-friendly and filled with empathy.

Nick Hopwood

Associate professor at the university of technology, sydney, hopwood shares insight on research, academic work, writing, and more..

More formal and authoritative than the Thesis Whisperer, Nick Hopwood is a site for readers who prefer an all-business approach to academia. As well as the blogs, readers can find podcasts and instructional videos on the site.

Get a life, PhD

Although the last post was in 2021, this dissertation blog offers years of blogs on everything from how to find a life-work balance to general tips on academic writing..

Get A Life, PhD is all about finding the balance between letting your PhD fall to the wayside and letting your PhD consume you, mind, body, and soul. I especially love the practical, realistic tips on time management.

Research to Action

This collaborative site offers a synthesis of instructive blogging, online community, and academic debate, all focused on improving research strategies..

The Research to Action site is a pretty comprehensive one-stop-shop for researchers at all levels, from PhD candidate to seasoned researcher. The site itself is well-designed, as as well as instruction, readers can find reading lists, calls for submissions, and even job opportunities.

The Professor Is In

This dissertation blog offers guidance and resources for graduate students and academics from a range of contributors..

Slightly more commercial than some of the other blogs listed here, the key strength of The Professor is In lies in the range of contributors lending their voices and expertise to the content, from a productivity coach to a graduate director to an editor to several professors and assistant professors. Between them, they know everything there is to know about thriving in academia.

The Research Whisperer

This research blog is similar to the thesis whisperer, but more recent and more funding-focused..

The bloggers at The Research Whisperer address topics related to all aspects of academic research. While they “don’t just talk about funding,” there is a real emphasis in the content on the business side of research (such as getting grants and being a union member), as their tag line suggests: “Just like the Thesis Whisperer – but with more money.”

From PhD to Life

This dissertation blog covers topics that help phd students prepare for and transition into life after academia..

Even if you’re not quite ph(inishe)d yet, From PhD to Life will definitely give you something to look forward to – and tips to help you plan practically for it. I particularly like the light, conversational style – it’s a nice break from academia-speak.

Writing for Research

In this research blog, professor patrick dunleavy writes about academia, offering some higher-level insight into the processes and culture of higher education institutions..

Writing for Research  does offer some basic writing and research advice, but what really helps it stand out from other sites is the focus on how academia ticks. There are posts on everything from university organization (why exactly is an academic discipline called a “discipline”?) to open-access and fair reviewing practices – really interesting stuff, in other words.

Tress Academic

Aimed at beginners and dedicated to simplifying things and getting you through the job, this site provides various resources for researchers and phd students..

Not every dissertation student is interested in a lifetime devotes to academia – some just want to get on and get done. Tress Academic offers easy-to-digest advice posts broken down into manageable steps, as well as useful worksheets, checklists, and free training videos. Again, this one has a commercial feel, but it’s still got a wealth of useful material if you need to get the job done quickly.

Supervising PhDs

This is a community research blog from various professors and academics. topics cover doctoral supervision relationships and pedagogies..

Admittedly, a lot of the really useful stuff on Supervising PhDs is aimed at professors and supervisors. However, there’s nothing to say you can’t gift some of the useful checklists, guides, and articles to your supervisor the next time they’re being particularly frustrating…

Need More Help?

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Top 50 Blogs for PhD Students

50 best blogs for ph.d students.

Whether the most rewarding or alienating of times, whether your job prospects are good or grim, you’re one of the best and brightest, and you’re being given years to research what you find most fascinating. Here are the best blogs for your unique struggles, needs, triumphs and entertainment. Here’s to you, Ph.D candidates.

  • Gradhacker : this Inside Higher Ed blog focuses on general trials, tribulations, tips, tricks, and thoughts on the process of seeking your Ph.D.
  • Ph.D. Life : while this blog is British, there are still tons of tips, tricks, insights, and some humor regarding the process of being a Ph.D student.
  • Ph.D works : this blog focuses on everything you need to know for writing dissertations and theses. From effective research, to writing tips, to submitting papers for publication, this blog covers it all.
  • Ph.D 2 Published : similarly to Ph.D works, this blog focuses on academic writing for theses and dissertations, but focuses more on academic publishing, particularly for the first timers.
  • Get a Life Ph.D : this blog focuses on general productivity and life tips for writing your thesis. It also focuses on how you can have a family, and perhaps (gasp!) a life while a Ph.D student.
  • The Thesis Whisperer : thoughts on the Ph.D process, writing a dissertation, humor, and general life hacks for Ph.D candidates, edited by director of research at ANU, Dr. Inger Mewburn.
  • The Dutch Ph.D Coach : this blog, from the Netherlands, offers both life, writing, teaching, and general well-being tidbits for Ph.D candidates and students.
  • Schoology : this blog offers general thoughts on heading to graduate shool, obtaining a Ph.D, and most particularly, how technology and educational media plays a roll in the process.
  • Grad Resources : this blog focuses on a number of areas of support and advice for all 2.5 million graduate students in America. General topics include time management, balance, finances, productivity, your community, dissertations, and relationships.
  • The Grad Cafe : this forum offers a vibrant community sharing insights and camaraderia for those in graduate school. Sign in to view and share content on a variety of topics.
  • My Graduate School : this blog is written for anyone in the process of preparing for or trying to gain acceptance into a graduate school. The blog is told by Dave G. Mumby Ph.D, a professor at a major university in Montreal.
  • Terminal Degree : this honest and oftentimes humorous blog centers around the quest for tenure in the south, also includes a look into life dealing with students, and advice.
  • the Graduable : this blog is provided by a Victorianist who blogs about navigating academia, practical advice for being in grad school, education in general, and personal musings.
  • The Stingy Scholar : as you might have guessed, this blog focuses on the intersection of saving money and academia. Particular discussions focus on obtaining texts cheaply, politics that affect the cost of education, and online education opportunities.
  • Iterating towards openness : this blog focuses on the goal of educational openness, and emphasizes “pragmatism over zeal.” Posts include personal stories from school as well as larger policy thoughts.
  • Ph.D Comics : this site offers humor in the form of comics on being a Ph.D student. Other entertaining aspects of the site include the Ph.D movie as well as a merchandise store.
  • the Grad Student Way : this blog is maintained by Dr. Ryan Weaver, a Ph.D graduate in cellular and molecular pathology. The blog is filled by humor about the ups and downs of graduate school, as provided by a number of sources.

Productivity

  • Academic Life : this blog focuses on productivity tips for aspiring and established academics, including reading suggestions, and a free e-book titled 4 Common Mistakes Every PhD Student Should Avoid.
  • To Do: Dissertation : this blog offers advice, support, and general thoughts about making it through the process of writing a dissertation.
  • Phinished : this forum is an attempt to keep members accountable and making progress as they write dissertations, theses, chapters, or books. There are also sections focusing on advice for navigating academic after you have obtained your degree.
  • Pro Quest : this platform allows for graduate students to communicate about finishing their dissertations, as well as to upload their work to be cross referenced and commented on by other grad students.
  • Faculty Focus : this blog, put on by Magna Publications, is offered in the hope that it will help promote quality higher education teaching strategies from graduate students as well as full professors.
  • Constructing the Academy : this blog focuses on those in the early stages of working in the humanities, with tips on how to balance research and teaching, productivity, and what you might not have learned in graduate school.
  • Practical Ethics : this blog presents up-to-date analysis of the ethics of technology, science, environmental policy, public health, and information ethics. The blog is maintained by researchers at the University of Oxford.
  • Girl Scholar : this blog follows a tenured “Associate Professor of Medieval Stuff” as she talks about moving up in the academic world, tips for academics, and just general thoughts on life.
  • Academic Cog : this blog follows the journey of a Ph.D level literature student, with humorous anecdotes, thoughts on grad school in general, and tips on higher education.
  • Epistemic Value : this blog focuses on epistemology, the philosophical branch focused on theory of knowledge, with employment information, up-to-date news from the field, and general grad school thoughts.
  • The lyf so short the craft so long to lerne : this blog follows the life of Melissa Ridley Elmes, doctoral candidate at UNC in English and women’s studies. The blog covers a variety of angles about teaching including Melissa’s teaching philosophy, as well as thoughts on the grad school process.

Natural Sciences

  • Benchfly : this platform enables science marketers, researchers, and teachers to collaborate through educational videos. The site has tons of food for thought, quick ways to refamiliarize yourself with scientific concepts and experiments, and great videos to share with students.
  • Occam’s Typewriter : this blog is a network of scientists who like to blog about the latest science developments, humorous anecdotes, the state of academic science today, and teaching tips.
  • Happy Science : this blog has entertaining science tidbits, musings on being a Ph.D student, science writing tips, and academic productivity in general.
  • Swans on Tea : this blog focuses on a mixture of physics, technology and humor, with a focus on what it’s like to be a scientist.
  • Looking at Nothing : this blog gives up to date data on recent chemistry research and breaks down basic concepts to graduate level work for the layman.

Social Sciences

  • The Monkey Cage : this blog was named the Week’s top blog of the year in 2010, and seeks to publicize political science research, provide commentary, and provide some non-academic distractions.
  • PhDiva : this blog focuses on items reported lost by the government, and re-locating them through research. The blog is maintained by a published Archeologist named Dorothy King.
  • Grad Psych Blog : this blog is presented by the American Psychological Association of Graduate Students, and offers general graduate studies and dissertation advice that is tailored–in particular–to graduate level study of psychology.
  • Grad School Guru : this blog, presented by Psychology Today, offers tips on preparation and gaining acceptance to graduate schools in psychology.
  • Chaos and Noise : this blog is by a PhD student exploring Australian small business owners’ use of social media to promote their businesses online. Research, trade talk, and the life of a Ph.D student are all tackled on this blog.
  • Ph.D Blog (dot) Net : this blog focuses on a PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham who is in the process of examining how doctoral practice and identity development are facilitated by social and participatory media.
  • Cognitive Daily : this blog focuses on developments and neat tidbits in neuroscience. Whether Ph.D students wish to look inside how other students learn, or they personally learn, neuroscience and education are the focal points of this blog.
  • Math Ed : this blog focuses on the intersection of research, policy, and practice, with a special emphasis on mathematical teaching.
  • Reidar Mosvold’s Blog : this blog is by a professor at the University of Stavanger, and pulls you into the world of mathematics research and teaching.
  • PhD Plus : this American Mathematical Society blog is provided by an early career mathematician as she experiences the challenges of being an early career academic at Bates College.

Computer Science

  • Communications of the ACM : this blog centers around the leading publisher for computing and information technology fields both in print and online.
  • Matt Might : this blog focuses on both computer science specific posts, as well as general productivity, study, and thesis defense tips.
  • Vivek Haldar : the blog of a back end programmer at Google who received his Ph.D in computer science some years ago, the blog features trends within the Ph.d in computer science industry, thoughts on industry developments, and some academic thoughts as well.
  • The Professor is In : this blog is presented by a one time department head, and tenured professor at a R1 institution. She has since left academia, yet offers advice to those not sure if it is the right path, or having trouble. The Ph.D debt survey is particularly valuable.
  • Leiter Reports : this blog is centered on philosophy grad school, and is one of the best locations for finding out detailed employment and placement data post grad school.
  • How to leave Academia : this blog focuses on providing peer to peer support for students looking for a post-academic future.
  • Alternative Ph.D : this blog centers around alternative (non-academic) career paths for graduate students. A particularly valuable list of other blogs covering those who have forged their own paths after academia is a centerpiece of the blog.

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Social Media Syllabus

how to start a phd blog

The Ultimate Guide to Starting an Academic Blog Today

This post contains affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, if you click a link and make a purchase, I will make a commission. Please read my disclosure for details.

Table of Contents

How to Start an Academic Blog Today

Are you a researcher, faculty member, or PhD student considering starting a blog? Good, because the best professor websites are blogs. And this is the post is for you!

There are many reasons why academics should blog. But getting started can be tough. You’ve got a lot on your plate and are probably wondering if blogging is worth the time investment. You may be wondering what to even blog about.

Have no fear! In the below post, I’ve put together my ultimate guide to starting an academic blog, whether you’re a PhD student, a university professor, a post-doc, or other scholar. This guide contains everything you need to start a blog today.

It includes:

  • Reasons why academics should blog.
  • Examples of successful academic blogs – both from PhDs and PhD students.
  • A step-by-step guide for planning a successful academic blog.
  • Resources for finding a web host and setting up your blog.
  • WordPress plugins that make blogging easier.

Why Should Academics Blog? Building Your Personal Brands

I always tell people that it has been the number one, most important thing that I have done for my personal brand is start an academic blog.  But the truth is, I didn’t get into blogging thinking any of these things would happen.

Here are my top 8 of the many ways this blog has helped my academic career since I started blogging in 2013.

ultimate guide to starting an academic blog

Why start an Academic Blog as a Professor and/or Scholar

Academic Blogs and SEO

  • Building Your Personal Brand – A blog serves as your professional academic identity. It tells people what you’re about and helps you share your professional passions. Think of your blog as your hub and your social media channels as your spoke. Yes, you want to be active on social media as a way to build your personal brand. But why not let everyone else (the people you don’t interact with on social media) find you too? Search engines are where we go when we want to find something, right? So you want to show up on search engines. In fact, most of my traffic (somewhere around 80%) comes from search traffic and that traffic is from all over the globe. That means, most of the people who I am reaching and helping with my content are likely not people who I already know. Instead, they are searching about a social media teaching problem that my blog helps them solve. Just think about all the ways you can help more people!
  • Have an Impact On Your Field – A blog helps you establish yourself as a thought leader on a topic. It provides a way to contribute to the field in a way that is more permanent than a Tweet or story post. Blogs also provides a chance for more long-form writing that you cannot do on social media. Many academics complain that their research doesn’t reach a wide enough audience. I agree – I wish more people read the research I’ve spent thousands of hours working on. That’s what makes a blog great. It can be much more widely read than academic journal publications. Plus, that blog post you wrote last week or last year, can still be accessed by your colleagues around the world today. Talk about being able to have an impact across time and space!
  • Networking and Friendships – I have met more people as a result of this blog than any Tweet or Facebook post I’ve ever sent. Those connections have opened doors for research, service, and speaking opportunities. But, most importantly, they’ve helped me be part of a community of educators. It feels strange to say this, but I’ve been at conferences and people who I did not previously know have told me, “I read your blog.” That is still mind-blowing to me. What a great way to connect with someone.
  • Research opportunities – Because people have gotten to know my professional interests and find common interests with theirs, I’ve been invited to participate in several research projects. Here’s one such example .
  • Speaking opportunities – I’ve been invited to speak locally, regionally, and internationally because people have gotten to know my work through my blogging.
  • Service opportunities – I’ve been given wonderful opportunities to serve on committees for international organizations because of my blog.
  • Promotion & Tenure – Universities generally don’t consider a blog on par with teaching, service, and research. But as you can see, the doors that a blog opens can be vital to building a strong portfolio.

Why start a PhD Journey blog

Many of the above reasons to start a blog apply to PhD students. And while some of from the above list do not, there are plenty of other reasons that PhD students should start a PhD journey blog. Before we look at them, let’s define a PhD journey blog.

A PhD journey blog documents the first-person experiences of a PhD student through the process of entering graduate school on through defending one’s dissertation. Often, these blogs transition into academic blogs upon the student becoming a faculty member.

Here are a few to start a PhD journey blog while working on your PhD:

  • A Community of Support – Getting a PhD is really hard. PhD motivation can get low at times. But being part of the PhD blogging community can help you find a community of people facing many of the same challenges that you are. Sharing your thoughts, struggles, and experiences can feel therapeutic. Just keep in mind that what you post is public and the PhD community is a fairly small community.
  • Pay it Forward for Other PhD Students – Bloggers are sharers. They share tips and ideas to help one another out. PhD bloggers have likely been through what you’re going through. In that same way, by sharing your experiences, you are passing on PhD tips to the students who will come after you. Blogging while working on your PhD is a great way to give back.
  • Prepare for the Job Market – You can establish yourself as an expert in your field as a PhD student. You are part of the next generation who will bring new ideas, new research, and new innovations to your field. Because academia tends to be focused on areas of specialty, there is a good chance that your readers may be your future colleagues. So this may be an opportunity to show them your knowledge and help them get to know a little about you. The reputation you build can help your future colleagues get to know you when it comes time to apply for faculty jobs.

Academic Blog Examples

Faculty and researcher blog examples.

  • Your research. Your life. Your Story – a mix of stories by PhD students and academics on the publishing platform Medium.
  • Linking Learning: The Professional Portfolio of Kay Oddone – The blog of lecturer and researcher, Kay Oddone, at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. The blog sheds light on pedagogy, professional networks, and social technology.
  • Karen Freberg’s Blog – Karen is a leading voice in social media pedagogy. Her blog covers trends, perspectives, experiences, and advice in the social media, sports communication, and public relations domains.
  • Sophie Talks Science – What started as a PhD journey blog, is now the blog of Sophie, a science communication officer from Portsmouth, UK.
  • The Academic Society – This one’s a bit different and I love it. Toyi Alli, a mathematics faculty member at the University of Georgia, focuses on providing tips and resources to help grad students and faculty excel in academia.
  • Matt Might’s Blog – A popular blog from Matt Might, director of the Hugh Kaul Personalized Medicine Institute at the University of Alabama.
  • The Thesis Whisperer – Written by Inger Mewburn, the director of research training at the Australian National University. Mewburn shares knowledge for graduate students on completing a PhD.

PhD Journey Blog Examples

A PhD blog, or PhD Journey blog, is a blog written by a graduate student that explores the process of earning a PhD. Here are a few great reasons to start one as well as some example PhD blogs.

  • How to Write a PhD in a Hundred Steps or More – A former PhD journey blogger, Sherran began documenting her journey as a PhD student, full-time worker, and mom and has continued this journey on into her post-graduate school life.
  • Dr. Of What – A very popular PhD journey blog that tells the journey of a PhD student from Australia. What’s so great about this blog is that it also provides looks at the lives of other PhD students in various stages of their journey. Dr. Of What has a great series of ‘day in the life of a PhD student’ episodes.
  • Sophie Talks Science – While Sophie is no longer a PhD student, you can see her archives of her PhD journey posts here .
  • Waste Free PhD – The journey of Laura, a PhD student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Syracuse University. This blog leverages her expertise in waste reduction to inform the public and drive change in how we use… well, everything. I love this blog because it takes Laura’s expertise and focuses on application to the wider public.

[Want more examples? Editage has a list of 40 academic blogs to start reading today .]

Now that we’ve talked about why you should blog and covered several different types of academic and PhD journey blogs, let’s get to the fun stuff: Designing & starting your blog!

There are two steps to this.

  • Figure out what you want to blog about.
  • Create the blog

How to Start an Academic Blog – Part 1: Find Your Purpose and Plan Your Blog

In Part 1 below, I’ll talk you through the process of deciding what you want to blog about.

Don’t rush through Part 1. It is important that you think about the WHY of blogging before jumping into the academic blogging world!

How do I decide What My Blog Should be About?

What is the purpose of your blog?

Grab a piece of paper and jot down the first thing that comes to mind.  Okay. Now that you got that out.  Let’s focus on key things to consider.

What’s the Connection Between my Blog and my Personal Brand?

If you already have a personal brand, then you likely want to tie your blog into your brand. Remember, your blog is your hub and your social media content works as spokes, driving traffic back to your blog.

If you don’t have a personal brand, or aren’t sure about your personal brand, then you may want to develop a personal brand statement. This statement can help ground your online identity into a common thrust or focus. You may find it helpful to write a personal brand statement .  A personal brand statement helps identify your core benefit to your audience and helps differentiate you from others. So it makes sense that your blog houses an aspect of what you’re offering your audience – your core benefit – and what makes you unique.

Here’s an example personal brand statement for me:

Matt Kushin is a professor, author, and blogger who specializes in helping social media educators Teach Confident in today’s digital landscape. He help them build engaging classes that prepare students for careers as professional communicators today.

Take time to develop your personal brand statement if you don’t already have one. Establishing this can help clarify what to blog about.

How Do I Pick a Core Topic for My Blog?

Now that we’ve considered your personal brand, we need to decide what your blog is going to be about. This is your core blog topic. You can decide this by focusing on one or a combination of several key areas of your life:

  • Research Interests – A blog that shares your research and other research emerging in your field.
  • Teaching Interests – A blog that shares teaching assignments, activities, and advice in your field. Hint: That’s the core focus of this blog.
  • Lifestyle Interests – A blog that shares your interest in a hobby, passion, or other aspects of your lifestyle.
  • Identity or Life Stage Interests – A blog that focuses on a unique feature of your identity or stage of life. Often these blogs intersect with another topic of focus, such as your teaching or research. Identity aspects may include culture, gender, race, ethnicity, relationship status, parenting status, among others. A life stage circumstance may be where you live, such as a big city.

The good news is that your blog’s core topic can grow and change as you do.  You can also stray and write other blog content and see how your audience reacts to it. For example, I am writing this blog post which is outside of my core focus because I’ve had lots of people ask me about academic blogging. So I figured my audience could benefit from this knowledge.

How Do I Establish A Goal for My Blog?

What are your goals for this blog?

Examples: To establish yourself as a thought leader in your field; To offer advice to other PhD students about earning a PhD while living in a small town; To share your passion for your research topic; To build connections and friendships with fellow students who share your passion for budget-friendly cooking and decor; To discuss the pedagogy of your field; To offer an academic’s perspective on key issues facing your field which are often discussed in the news media.

Jot down 1-3 goals. Remember, a goal is a broad statement of what you want to accomplish. Return to the list “why start an academic blog…” at the top of this post if you need some help.

How Do I Identify My Target Audience for My Blog?

Who is your target audience for your blog?

Likely, it falls into one of the below categories. Of course, you may reach multiple audiences from this list. So start with your primary audiences – the one or two groups that you are most interested in reading. Then, list your secondary audiences – those who would also benefit from your blog.

  • Other PhD students (for PhD journey bloggers)
  • Other academics
  • Educators – both in and outside of higher education. For example, many of the readers of this blog teach outside of the university setting.
  • The Public – this may be the general public or a part of the public interested in your area of expertise (e.g., if you’re a biologist and you want to reach those in the public who are passionate about sustainability).
  • The Media – Your area of expertise may be a hot topic in the news. Here’s your chance to establish yourself as a thought leader and potentially earn your way into media coverage.
  • Potential Clients and Customers – Are you an academic who also does consulting? Are you an academic with something to sell, such as a book? A blog can help you attract clients / customers.

Let’s think a little more about your audience.

What do you want your audience to think, feel, do?

If you are writing an advice-based blog, then you want your audience to take some sort of action. If it’s a cooking blog for academics, for example, you want your fans to try the recipes and share in your love of cooking. You may also want them to have a warm, welcomed feeling when they’re on your blog, giving them a sense of the comfort and warmth that resonates through your personality.

How Do I Succeed at Blogging?

What does success look like for your blog? First, make your blog a success by defining what success means to you. Your blog doesn’t have to compete with any other blog. This is your corner of the Internet. So sit back and think about what you want out of this investment.

Examples: Do you want a lot of web traffic – e.g., readers  – and thus possible influence? Do you want to feel part of a community? Do you want to build intimate connections with a small group of readers that can generate conversations and build relationships? Do you feel that success is the opportunity to express your identity?

For me, success is measured a few ways:

  • Comments, emails, social media and offline conversations that I have with people who have read my blog and have told me anecdotally that I have assisted them in some way. Also, I get requests for materials and questions that offer me opportunities to help.
  • Traffic – I monitor my Google Analytics and look at various traffic metrics that indicate the number of people I am reaching and thus potentially helping.
  • Book sales – See below.
  • Relationships – The relationships and connections I build with others. These are vital to me. They make me happy.
  • Opportunities – These are opportunities I get to speak or be a part of cool projects because of this blog.

More recently, I’ve thought about book sales. Since my blog is the primary way in which I sell my book, I’ve tracked how the blog generates leads to the Amazon buy page (I cannot track completed sales because Amazon does not offer tracking codes all the way through to sales).

  • Book Sales – The number of books I sell in a month. These sales help me measure my People Helped because my book helps people teach social media.

Return to your goals. What does achieving those blog goals look like for you? How might your blog advance your personal brand and what would be a measurement of your personal brand being advanced? Jot some things down.

What Should I Write About?

You’ve figured out what you want to blog about and what success looks like for you. You’ve tied your blog into your personal brand. Now, comes the big question: What will you write about?

Be realistic with your answer. Most bloggers suffer burnout. They crank out dozens of posts in the first few months and then struggle to write anything. The reason is that they thought they were passionate about something only to find out, they didn’t have as much to say as they thought they did.

Don’t fall into this trap. Before committing to a blog topic, spend 20 minutes jotting down as many blog topic ideas as you can. Your topic ideas don’t have to be fully formed. Just get the broad idea on paper.

Some great places to start are by reviewing the list of blog topic ideas below, browsing some of the academic blogs listed above in this post, or looking over your own research, teaching, or other areas of interest a bit before sitting down to come up with your list.

If you can’t come up with 20 topic ideas that you are passionate about writing, then maybe it is time to consider a different topic.

I keep a running list of blog topic ideas on my to-do-list app. I jot them down as the idea comes to me. Then, when it is time to write, I always have a few good ideas to work from.

Blog Topic Ideas

In my experience, the two big reasons academics don’t blog are 1) A perceived lack of time, and 2) The “I don’t know what to write about” reason.

Matt Might provides a great list of 6 different blog posts that academics can write.  They are:

  • The lecture post
  • The “reply to public” post
  • The advice post
  • The vented steam post
  • Blog as code repository (for those who teach coding. But, this could be expanded to other disciplines. The idea is sharing your work).
  • The post as long-term memory

To Matt’s great list, I would like to add a few additional types of academic blog posts:

  • The Pedagogy Post – The pedagogy post talks about the teaching of your field of expertise. It be philosophical or reflective in nature. It may discuss issues or trends your field is facing in terms of pedagogy. It may discuss challenges in preparing your students for success in the field.
  • The Assignment Post – This is a form of pedagogy post. It focuses specifically on an activity or assignment that you use to teach your subject expertise. By writing this type of post (which is the type of post I mostly write), you can help others dedicated to teaching your subject area. Here’s an example assignment post I wrote. 
  • The Announcement Post – This post shares your upcoming activities with your readers. It may let them know about an upcoming presentation you are giving at a conference. It may announce a recent publication that may be of interest to your readers. Here’s an example announcement post I wrote .
  • The Takeaway Post – This post shares with your readers key takeaways from a conference or other attended event. Here’s an example of a takeaway post I wrote.
  • The Book, Article, Software (or other Tool) Review Post – A great way to contribute to the field is to write reviews of article, books, or tools that are pertinent to your field.

How Often Should I Publish?

There is no right answer here. But keep in mind blogger burnout. Rather than publishing a ton and running out of gas, space your posts out.

Be realistic with your expectations of yourself. Publishing more than twice a month may not be realistic with all the demands you have on your plate.

When I started, I published every 2 weeks during the academic year. Over time, I have slowed that down to my squishy self-requirement: At least once a month during the academic year. I try to publish more often if possible. But I do not expect myself to, and that’s an important distinction.  I rarely publish during the summer because I’ve noticed my readership falls off during those months, as academics have their time and attention focused elsewhere.

A related question is: When should I publish?

I’ve experimented with this for my audience. I’ve found that Monday mornings work best for me. Academics are eager to get back into the fold as the week starts. But experiment and try what works for you. I believe that being consistent about the day of the week you publish helps set expectations for yourself and your readers.

How to Start an Academic Blog: Part 2 – Building the Blog

Now that you have a core blog topic, blog goals, a defined target audience(s), a list of topics to write about, and a posting plan and schedule, it is for the fun part! It is time to build your blog!

What Do I Need to Get Started?

The great news is that it’s easy and inexpensive to start a blog.

phd advice blogs

You will need:

  • A blogging content management platform – e.g., WordPress, Blogger.
  • A domain name

When it comes to content management platforms, I am personally a fan of WordPress and have run sites on both WordPress.com and WordPress.org – more below. So that’s what I will focus on. But keep in mind that there there are other platforms out there, such as Blogger and Typepad .

If you go with WordPress, there are two options. Below are some pros and cons to each.

Option 1: WordPress.org

The open-source self-hosted version of WordPress.

  • The software is open-source and free
  • Customizable URL. Example: https://myawesomeacademicblog.com
  • Fully customizable website with plugins and custom themes
  • The data and the website belong to you
  • Build storefronts for selling products
  • Run ads and earn a percentage of revenue
  • Free of ads run by WordPress
  • Google Analytics can be added via plugins
  • Need to buy a domain and pay for hosting. As a starting point, this generally costs somewhere between $3 – $10 a month. Discussed further below.
  • Responsibility for backing up website is on you.
  • Responsible for updates to WordPress (which often is done by your host) and your plugins and themes (which is generally done by a push of the button when logged into WordPress)

Option 2: WordPress.com

The hosted version of WordPress by the WordPress team.

  • Free (up to 3GB of space)
  • Easy to set up and use
  • Website is hosted for you
  • No domain or URL purchases needed
  • Paid upgrade options
  • Domain is not fully customizable with the free version. That is, you’re stuck with something like https://myawesomeacademicblog. wordpress .com
  • No plugins, which allow you to customize your blog
  • No custom themes
  • Ads placed all over your site that you have no control over
  • Limited access to web traffic metrics

With that said, there are paid plans to have WordPress.com host your site for you with different pricing options. This makes things easy, and the plans offer custom domains.

Building Your Academic Blog on a WordPress.org Site

If you go with WordPress.org, you will need a host to  host the WordPress software and a domain where users can find your site (like how you are on MattKushin.com right now). It may be easiest to buy the domain and the hosting from the same company.  But I’ve put options for both below.

Picking a Domain

When you get started, you will want to decide on a website domain (that is, what your URL is for your site).

A lot of academics use their names as their domains – like me! –  and others use titles related to their blog topic. Think about what people might be searching on the Internet that will lead them to your blog. NameMesh offers a free tool that will generate domain name ideas for you.

Website Hosting

Web hosts generally allow you to bring your own domain (purchased elsewhere) or easily and efficiently purchase a domain as part of your hosting package. They sometimes offer a free domain as a part of your purchase. Here are a few popular options (note: Both are affiliate links):

  • SiteGround – Host your WordPress site on Siteground. They have different pricing options and often run deals.
  • BlueHost – Host your website on BlueHost. Like Siteground, tehy offer different pricing options and promotions depending on when you sign up.

Each web host has its own way of installing WordPress. They generally make them as simple as possible to help you get started. You’ll just want to follow their instructions and they offer support if needed.

WordPress Plugins

Plugins are one major reason to host your own WordPress site. Plugins are not required but they are desired because they allow you to customize your site and really boost what your site can do. A quick look at the WordPress plugin page shows that there are plugins for seemingly anything you would want to do with a website from email marketing to page builders to form builders to data backups to SEO and beyond. You can add a Facebook pixel to track traffic to your website for remarketing purposes. Many plugins are free, and some are paid, while others are freemium. I’ve linked to a few popular plugins below for you to research. Most of them are free, but some are freemium:

  • Google Analytics  – There are a few ways to add Google Analytics to a WordPress site. Plugins are one of them. There are several popular plugins for connecting your Google Analytics to your WordPress site.
  • SEO – Yoast SEO Plugin is certainly a popular SEO plugin with a free option that provides a lot of functionality.  Table of Contents plugins such as the Easy Table of Contents Plugin can also offer some SEO boosts because, the argument goes, they help readers see what’s on your site while offering some signals to Google. Adding Google Search Console to your website is a great way to help with SEO efforts. One way to add search console is through Yoast .
  • GDPR Cookie Consent – Given GDPR laws, you probably see GDPR cookie consent popups on many of the websites you visit. GDPR Cookie plugins or Complianz , among others, can help you inform your readers about information you are collecting through Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc.
  • Website Speed – Slow load times hurt search results ranking and thus traffic and SEO. There are a number of plugins out there that attempt to speed up your site load time. A few include WP Super Cache , SG Optimizer (for those using SiteGround as a host), Hummingbird , and others .
  • Website Security – Security is definitely an issue when it comes to any website. Plugins. These sorts of plugins also have premium (paid) versions that may very well be worth the investment. A few popular security plugins include  JetPack , All In One , Wordfence Security.
  • Site Backups – Backing up your website provides peace of mind. As before, you’ve got options – both free and paid – including JetPack , UpDraft , BackWPup , among many others.
  • Academics – If you will be discussing research on your blog, a handy plugin is the Academic Blogger’s Toolkit.

Alright, time to get started on building your blog!

If you do start an academic blog, please  post the URL to your blog in the comments below with a brief description of your blog. That way, other readers will be able to see them.

I first had the idea to write this post in fall 2019 when I realized I was getting a lot of questions about academic blogging and how to start an academic blog.  The post took on a life of its own, growing and growing as I worked on it.  I hope it offered some help and motivation.  I hope to update this post in time with more resources and information. So bookmark it so you can come back to it.

– Cheers!

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2 thoughts on “The Ultimate Guide to Starting an Academic Blog Today”

I am graduating with my masters in December and am just starting out with my blog. My first post goes live soon. What is considered acceptable citation practice? Do I just provide the title, author, with a link attached? Some of my sources are not available online. I’ve read several blogs and I don’t see hardly any with an actual reference list (like you would in a paper). I guess it’s my library background and citation training that has me overthinking it. Would love some feedback. Thanks.

Jayme, thanks for your comment. I apologize for the delayed reply. It sounds like your blog is focused on sharing and discussing research? In that case, I would use your field’s citation norms. For example, in my field we tend to use APA. You can cite directly out to the source with a reference list at the bottom or use internal bookmarks so that a person can click on a link and be taken down to your reference list. Here is an example of how internal links work: https://www.yourhtmlsource.com/text/internallinks.html .

That said, often in blogging, authors are less formal. They will often just hyperlink directly to the source. Another idea is to keep a running list of references on a separate page in addition to your posts. That way, your readers can also be referred to your running list of sources if you plan to discuss an area of research in several posts over a long period of time.

My biggest piece of advice would be consistency: Find what works for you and make it the format of your blog. Your readers will come to understand your approach and get comfortable with it. Happy blogging!

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How to Read a Paper by Srinivasan Keshav

How to Read a Technical Paper by Jason Eisner

How to write a good CVPR submission by Bill Freeman

Ten Simple Rules for Mathematical Writing by Dimitri Bertsekas

Notes on writing by Fredo Durand

How to write a (hopefully good) paper by Martin Vetterli

PhDLife Blog - A collection of blog posts from Warwick University

Reviewer Tutorial by CVPR 2022

How to write a good review by CVPR 2020

How to write a reviewer report by Stanley Chan

Giving an Academic Talk by Jonathan Shewchuk

How to give a technical presentation by Michael Ernst

(coming soon, send PR!)

How to Be a Teaching Assistant by Jason Eisner

Tips for the NSF GRFP Application by Danielle Perry

NSF GRFP Advice by Christine Liu

NSF Fellowship by Alex Lang

Tips by Tara Safavi

Public examples: [Extensive NSF collection by Alex Lang] , [Victoria Dean (NSF personal)] , [Victoria Dean (NSF research)] , [Tara Safavi (NSF)] , [Paul Liang (Facebook)] , [Devendra Chaplot (Facebook)] , [Sai Rallabandi (Facebook)]

Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional Skills for PhD Students by Phil Agre

Hitchhiker’s guide to organizing an academic workshop by Ben Eysenbach and Surya Bhupatiraju

Nine things I wish I had known the first time I came to NeurIPS by Jennifer Vaughan

NeurIPS 2018 through the eyes of first-timers by Fangyu Cai

How To Make A Plan To Attend International Academic Conferences

Tips for Computer Science Faculty Applications

How to Ask for a Letter of Recommendation

Interview Questions for Computer Science Faculty Jobs

The Ph.D. Job Hunt - Helping Students Find the Right Positions by Ed Lazowska

The N Things I wish I Knew Before the Job Search, by Maria Ebling, Guerney Hunt, Lily Mummert, Bill Tetzlaff, and John Davis

The academic job search for computer scientists in 10 questions by Nicolas Papernot and Elissa Redmiles

Checklist for faculty job-hunting in Stat/ML by Aaditya Ramdas

Tips on the interview process by Jeannette Wing

Getting an academic job by Michael Ernst

Computer science graduate job and interview guide by Wes Weimer, Claire Le Goues, Zak Fry, Kevin Leach, Yu Huang, and Kevin Angstadt

Academic job search advice by Matt Might

I loved graduate school by Peter Bailis

What my PhD was like by Jean Yang

How to get a Ph.D. in computer science if you're me by Chris Martens

The N=1 guide to grad school by Adam Marcus

Contributors 4

A Survival Guide to a PhD

Sep 7, 2016

This guide is patterned after my “Doing well in your courses” , a post I wrote a long time ago on some of the tips/tricks I’ve developed during my undergrad. I’ve received nice comments about that guide, so in the same spirit, now that my PhD has come to an end I wanted to compile a similar retrospective document in hopes that it might be helpful to some. Unlike the undergraduate guide, this one was much more difficult to write because there is significantly more variation in how one can traverse the PhD experience. Therefore, many things are likely contentious and a good fraction will be specific to what I’m familiar with (Computer Science / Machine Learning / Computer Vision research). But disclaimers are boring, lets get to it!

Preliminaries

First, should you want to get a PhD? I was in a fortunate position of knowing since young age that I really wanted a PhD. Unfortunately it wasn’t for any very well-thought-through considerations: First, I really liked school and learning things and I wanted to learn as much as possible, and second, I really wanted to be like Gordon Freeman from the game Half-Life (who has a PhD from MIT in theoretical physics). I loved that game. But what if you’re more sensible in making your life’s decisions? Should you want to do a PhD? There’s a very nice Quora thread and in the summary of considerations that follows I’ll borrow/restate several from Justin/Ben/others there. I’ll assume that the second option you are considering is joining a medium-large company (which is likely most common). Ask yourself if you find the following properties appealing:

Freedom. A PhD will offer you a lot of freedom in the topics you wish to pursue and learn about. You’re in charge. Of course, you’ll have an adviser who will impose some constraints but in general you’ll have much more freedom than you might find elsewhere.

Ownership. The research you produce will be yours as an individual. Your accomplishments will have your name attached to them. In contrast, it is much more common to “blend in” inside a larger company. A common feeling here is becoming a “cog in a wheel”.

Exclusivity . There are very few people who make it to the top PhD programs. You’d be joining a group of a few hundred distinguished individuals in contrast to a few tens of thousands (?) that will join some company.

Status. Regardless of whether it should be or not, working towards and eventually getting a PhD degree is culturally revered and recognized as an impressive achievement. You also get to be a Doctor; that’s awesome.

Personal freedom. As a PhD student you’re your own boss. Want to sleep in today? Sure. Want to skip a day and go on a vacation? Sure. All that matters is your final output and no one will force you to clock in from 9am to 5pm. Of course, some advisers might be more or less flexible about it and some companies might be as well, but it’s a true first order statement.

Maximizing future choice. Joining a PhD program doesn’t close any doors or eliminate future employment/lifestyle options. You can go one way (PhD -> anywhere else) but not the other (anywhere else -> PhD -> academia/research; it is statistically less likely). Additionally (although this might be quite specific to applied ML), you’re strictly more hirable as a PhD graduate or even as a PhD dropout and many companies might be willing to put you in a more interesting position or with a higher starting salary. More generally, maximizing choice for the future you is a good heuristic to follow.

Maximizing variance. You’re young and there’s really no need to rush. Once you graduate from a PhD you can spend the next ~50 years of your life in some company. Opt for more variance in your experiences.

Personal growth. PhD is an intense experience of rapid growth (you learn a lot) and personal self-discovery (you’ll become a master of managing your own psychology). PhD programs (especially if you can make it into a good one) also offer a high density of exceptionally bright people who will become your best friends forever.

Expertise. PhD is probably your only opportunity in life to really drill deep into a topic and become a recognized leading expert in the world at something. You’re exploring the edge of our knowledge as a species, without the burden of lesser distractions or constraints. There’s something beautiful about that and if you disagree, it could be a sign that PhD is not for you.

The disclaimer . I wanted to also add a few words on some of the potential downsides and failure modes. The PhD is a very specific kind of experience that deserves a large disclaimer. You will inevitably find yourself working very hard (especially before paper deadlines). You need to be okay with the suffering and have enough mental stamina and determination to deal with the pressure. At some points you will lose track of what day of the week it is and go on a diet of leftover food from the microkitchens. You’ll sit exhausted and alone in the lab on a beautiful, sunny Saturday scrolling through Facebook pictures of your friends having fun on exotic trips, paid for by their 5-10x larger salaries. You will have to throw away 3 months of your work while somehow keeping your mental health intact. You’ll struggle with the realization that months of your work were spent on a paper with a few citations while your friends do exciting startups with TechCrunch articles or push products to millions of people. You’ll experience identity crises during which you’ll question your life decisions and wonder what you’re doing with some of the best years of your life. As a result, you should be quite certain that you can thrive in an unstructured environment in the pursuit research and discovery for science. If you’re unsure you should lean slightly negative by default. Ideally you should consider getting a taste of research as an undergraduate on a summer research program before before you decide to commit. In fact, one of the primary reasons that research experience is so desirable during the PhD hiring process is not the research itself, but the fact that the student is more likely to know what they’re getting themselves into.

I should clarify explicitly that this post is not about convincing anyone to do a PhD, I’ve merely tried to enumerate some of the common considerations above. The majority of this post focuses on some tips/tricks for navigating the experience once if you decide to go for it (which we’ll see shortly, below).

Lastly, as a random thought I heard it said that you should only do a PhD if you want to go into academia. In light of all of the above I’d argue that a PhD has strong intrinsic value - it’s an end by itself, not just a means to some end (e.g. academic job).

Getting into a PhD program: references, references, references. Great, you’ve decided to go for it. Now how do you get into a good PhD program? The first order approximation is quite simple - by far most important component are strong reference letters. The ideal scenario is that a well-known professor writes you a letter along the lines of: “Blah is in top 5 of students I’ve ever worked with. She takes initiative, comes up with her own ideas, and gets them to work.” The worst letter is along the lines of: “Blah took my class. She did well.” A research publication under your belt from a summer research program is a very strong bonus, but not absolutely required provided you have strong letters. In particular note: grades are quite irrelevant but you generally don’t want them to be too low. This was not obvious to me as an undergrad and I spent a lot of energy on getting good grades. This time should have instead been directed towards research (or at the very least personal projects), as much and as early as possible, and if possible under supervision of multiple people (you’ll need 3+ letters!). As a last point, what won’t help you too much is pestering your potential advisers out of the blue. They are often incredibly busy people and if you try to approach them too aggressively in an effort to impress them somehow in conferences or over email this may agitate them.

Picking the school . Once you get into some PhD programs, how do you pick the school? It’s easy, join Stanford! Just kidding. More seriously, your dream school should 1) be a top school (not because it looks good on your resume/CV but because of feedback loops; top schools attract other top people, many of whom you will get to know and work with) 2) have a few potential advisers you would want to work with. I really do mean the “few” part - this is very important and provides a safety cushion for you if things don’t work out with your top choice for any one of hundreds of reasons - things in many cases outside of your control, e.g. your dream professor leaves, moves, or spontaneously disappears, and 3) be in a good environment physically. I don’t think new admits appreciate this enough: you will spend 5+ years of your really good years living near the school campus. Trust me, this is a long time and your life will consist of much more than just research.

Student adviser relationship . The adviser is an extremely important person who will exercise a lot of influence over your PhD experience. It’s important to understand the nature of the relationship: the adviser-student relationship is a symbiosis; you have your own goals and want something out of your PhD, but they also have their own goals, constraints and they’re building their own career. Therefore, it is very helpful to understand your adviser’s incentive structures: how the tenure process works, how they are evaluated, how they get funding, how they fund you, what department politics they might be embedded in, how they win awards, how academia in general works and specifically how they gain recognition and respect of their colleagues. This alone will help you avoid or mitigate a large fraction of student-adviser friction points and allow you to plan appropriately. I also don’t want to make the relationship sound too much like a business transaction. The advisor-student relationship, more often that not, ends up developing into a lasting one, predicated on much more than just career advancement.

Pre-vs-post tenure . Every adviser is different so it’s helpful to understand the axes of variations and their repercussions on your PhD experience. As one rule of thumb (and keep in mind there are many exceptions), it’s important to keep track of whether a potential adviser is pre-tenure or post-tenure. The younger faculty members will usually be around more (they are working hard to get tenure) and will usually be more low-level, have stronger opinions on what you should be working on, they’ll do math with you, pitch concrete ideas, or even look at (or contribute to) your code. This is a much more hands-on and possibly intense experience because the adviser will need a strong publication record to get tenure and they are incentivised to push you to work just as hard. In contrast, more senior faculty members may have larger labs and tend to have many other commitments (e.g. committees, talks, travel) other than research, which means that they can only afford to stay on a higher level of abstraction both in the area of their research and in the level of supervision for their students. To caricature, it’s a difference between “you’re missing a second term in that equation” and “you may want to read up more in this area, talk to this or that person, and sell your work this or that way”. In the latter case, the low-level advice can still come from the senior PhD students in the lab or the postdocs.

Axes of variation . There are many other axes to be aware of. Some advisers are fluffy and some prefer to keep your relationship very professional. Some will try to exercise a lot of influence on the details of your work and some are much more hands off. Some will have a focus on specific models and their applications to various tasks while some will focus on tasks and more indifference towards any particular modeling approach. In terms of more managerial properties, some will meet you every week (or day!) multiple times and some you won’t see for months. Some advisers answer emails right away and some don’t answer email for a week (or ever, haha). Some advisers make demands about your work schedule (e.g. you better work long hours or weekends) and some won’t. Some advisers generously support their students with equipment and some think laptops or old computers are mostly fine. Some advisers will fund you to go to a conferences even if you don’t have a paper there and some won’t. Some advisers are entrepreneurial or applied and some lean more towards theoretical work. Some will let you do summer internships and some will consider internships just a distraction.

Finding an adviser . So how do you pick an adviser? The first stop, of course, is to talk to them in person. The student-adviser relationship is sometimes referred to as a marriage and you should make sure that there is a good fit. Of course, first you want to make sure that you can talk with them and that you get along personally, but it’s also important to get an idea of what area of “professor space” they occupy with respect to the aforementioned axes, and especially whether there is an intellectual resonance between the two of you in terms of the problems you are interested in. This can be just as important as their management style.

Collecting references . You should also collect references on your potential adviser. One good strategy is to talk to their students. If you want to get actual information this shouldn’t be done in a very formal way or setting but in a relaxed environment or mood (e.g. a party). In many cases the students might still avoid saying bad things about the adviser if asked in a general manner, but they will usually answer truthfully when you ask specific questions, e.g. “how often do you meet?”, or “how hands on are they?”. Another strategy is to look at where their previous students ended up (you can usually find this on the website under an alumni section), which of course also statistically informs your own eventual outcome.

Impressing an adviser . The adviser-student matching process is sometimes compared to a marriage - you pick them but they also pick you. The ideal student from their perspective is someone with interest and passion, someone who doesn’t need too much hand-holding, and someone who takes initiative - who shows up a week later having done not just what the adviser suggested, but who went beyond it; improved on it in unexpected ways.

Consider the entire lab . Another important point to realize is that you’ll be seeing your adviser maybe once a week but you’ll be seeing most of their students every single day in the lab and they will go on to become your closest friends. In most cases you will also end up collaborating with some of the senior PhD students or postdocs and they will play a role very similar to that of your adviser. The postdocs, in particular, are professors-in-training and they will likely be eager to work with you as they are trying to gain advising experience they can point to for their academic job search. Therefore, you want to make sure the entire group has people you can get along with, people you respect and who you can work with closely on research projects.

Research topics

So you’ve entered a PhD program and found an adviser. Now what do you work on?

An exercise in the outer loop. First note the nature of the experience. A PhD is simultaneously a fun and frustrating experience because you’re constantly operating on a meta problem level. You’re not just solving problems - that’s merely the simple inner loop. You spend most of your time on the outer loop, figuring out what problems are worth solving and what problems are ripe for solving. You’re constantly imagining yourself solving hypothetical problems and asking yourself where that puts you, what it could unlock, or if anyone cares. If you’re like me this can sometimes drive you a little crazy because you’re spending long hours working on things and you’re not even sure if they are the correct things to work on or if a solution exists.

Developing taste . When it comes to choosing problems you’ll hear academics talk about a mystical sense of “taste”. It’s a real thing. When you pitch a potential problem to your adviser you’ll either see their face contort, their eyes rolling, and their attention drift, or you’ll sense the excitement in their eyes as they contemplate the uncharted territory ripe for exploration. In that split second a lot happens: an evaluation of the problem’s importance, difficulty, its sexiness , its historical context (and possibly also its fit to their active grants). In other words, your adviser is likely to be a master of the outer loop and will have a highly developed sense of taste for problems. During your PhD you’ll get to acquire this sense yourself.

In particular, I think I had a terrible taste coming in to the PhD. I can see this from the notes I took in my early PhD years. A lot of the problems I was excited about at the time were in retrospect poorly conceived, intractable, or irrelevant. I’d like to think I refined the sense by the end through practice and apprenticeship.

Let me now try to serialize a few thoughts on what goes into this sense of taste, and what makes a problem interesting to work on.

A fertile ground. First, recognize that during your PhD you will dive deeply into one area and your papers will very likely chain on top of each other to create a body of work (which becomes your thesis). Therefore, you should always be thinking several steps ahead when choosing a problem. It’s impossible to predict how things will unfold but you can often get a sense of how much room there could be for additional work.

Plays to your adviser’s interests and strengths . You will want to operate in the realm of your adviser’s interest. Some advisers may allow you to work on slightly tangential areas but you would not be taking full advantage of their knowledge and you are making them less likely to want to help you with your project or promote your work. For instance, (and this goes to my previous point of understanding your adviser’s job) every adviser has a “default talk” slide deck on their research that they give all the time and if your work can add new exciting cutting edge work slides to this deck then you’ll find them much more invested, helpful and involved in your research. Additionally, their talks will promote and publicize your work.

Be ambitious: the sublinear scaling of hardness. People have a strange bug built into psychology: a 10x more important or impactful problem intuitively feels 10x harder (or 10x less likely) to achieve. This is a fallacy - in my experience a 10x more important problem is at most 2-3x harder to achieve. In fact, in some cases a 10x harder problem may be easier to achieve. How is this? It’s because thinking 10x forces you out of the box, to confront the real limitations of an approach, to think from first principles, to change the strategy completely, to innovate. If you aspire to improve something by 10% and work hard then you will. But if you aspire to improve it by 100% you are still quite likely to, but you will do it very differently.

Ambitious but with an attack. At this point it’s also important to point out that there are plenty of important problems that don’t make great projects. I recommend reading You and Your Research by Richard Hamming, where this point is expanded on:

If you do not work on an important problem, it’s unlikely you’ll do important work. It’s perfectly obvious. Great scientists have thought through, in a careful way, a number of important problems in their field, and they keep an eye on wondering how to attack them. Let me warn you, `important problem’ must be phrased carefully. The three outstanding problems in physics, in a certain sense, were never worked on while I was at Bell Labs. By important I mean guaranteed a Nobel Prize and any sum of money you want to mention. We didn’t work on (1) time travel, (2) teleportation, and (3) antigravity. They are not important problems because we do not have an attack. It’s not the consequence that makes a problem important, it is that you have a reasonable attack. That is what makes a problem important.

The person who did X . Ultimately, the goal of a PhD is to not only develop a deep expertise in a field but to also make your mark upon it. To steer it, shape it. The ideal scenario is that by the end of the PhD you own some part of an important area, preferably one that is also easy and fast to describe. You want people to say things like “she’s the person who did X”. If you can fill in a blank there you’ll be successful.

Valuable skills. Recognize that during your PhD you will become an expert at the area of your choosing (as fun aside, note that [5 years]x[260 working days]x[8 hours per day] is 10,400 hours; if you believe Gladwell then a PhD is exactly the amount of time to become an expert). So imagine yourself 5 years later being a world expert in this area (the 10,000 hours will ensure that regardless of the academic impact of your work). Are these skills exciting or potentially valuable to your future endeavors?

Negative examples. There are also some problems or types of papers that you ideally want to avoid. For instance, you’ll sometimes hear academics talk about “incremental work” (this is the worst adjective possible in academia). Incremental work is a paper that enhances something existing by making it more complex and gets 2% extra on some benchmark. The amusing thing about these papers is that they have a reasonably high chance of getting accepted (a reviewer can’t point to anything to kill them; they are also sometimes referred to as “ cockroach papers ”), so if you have a string of these papers accepted you can feel as though you’re being very productive, but in fact these papers won’t go on to be highly cited and you won’t go on to have a lot of impact on the field. Similarly, finding projects should ideally not include thoughts along the lines of “there’s this next logical step in the air that no one has done yet, let me do it”, or “this should be an easy poster”.

Case study: my thesis . To make some of this discussion more concrete I wanted to use the example of how my own PhD unfolded. First, fun fact: my entire thesis is based on work I did in the last 1.5 years of my PhD. i.e. it took me quite a long time to wiggle around in the metaproblem space and find a problem that I felt very excited to work on (the other ~2 years I mostly meandered on 3D things (e.g. Kinect Fusion, 3D meshes, point cloud features) and video things). Then at one point in my 3rd year I randomly stopped by Richard Socher’s office on some Saturday at 2am. We had a chat about interesting problems and I realized that some of his work on images and language was in fact getting at something very interesting (of course, the area at the intersection of images and language goes back quite a lot further than Richard as well). I couldn’t quite see all the papers that would follow but it seemed heuristically very promising: it was highly fertile (a lot of unsolved problems, a lot of interesting possibilities on grounding descriptions to images), I felt that it was very cool and important, it was easy to explain, it seemed to be at the boundary of possible (Deep Learning has just started to work), the datasets had just started to become available (Flickr8K had just come out), it fit nicely into Fei-Fei’s interests and even if I were not successful I’d at least get lots of practice with optimizing interesting deep nets that I could reapply elsewhere. I had a strong feeling of a tsunami of checkmarks as everything clicked in place in my mind. I pitched this to Fei-Fei (my adviser) as an area to dive into the next day and, with relief, she enthusiastically approved, encouraged me, and would later go on to steer me within the space (e.g. Fei-Fei insisted that I do image to sentence generation while I was mostly content with ranking.). I’m happy with how things evolved from there. In short, I meandered around for 2 years stuck around the outer loop, finding something to dive into. Once it clicked for me what that was based on several heuristics, I dug in.

Resistance . I’d like to also mention that your adviser is by no means infallible. I’ve witnessed and heard of many instances in which, in retrospect, the adviser made the wrong call. If you feel this way during your phd you should have the courage to sometimes ignore your adviser. Academia generally celebrates independent thinking but the response of your specific adviser can vary depending on circumstances. I’m aware of multiple cases where the bet worked out very well and I’ve also personally experienced cases where it did not. For instance, I disagreed strongly with some advice Andrew Ng gave me in my very first year. I ended up working on a problem he wasn’t very excited about and, surprise, he turned out to be very right and I wasted a few months. Win some lose some :)

Don’t play the game. Finally, I’d like to challenge you to think of a PhD as more than just a sequence of papers. You’re not a paper writer. You’re a member of a research community and your goal is to push the field forward. Papers are one common way of doing that but I would encourage you to look beyond the established academic game. Think for yourself and from first principles. Do things others don’t do but should. Step off the treadmill that has been put before you. I tried to do some of this myself throughout my PhD. This blog is an example - it allows me communicate things that wouldn’t ordinarily go into papers. The ImageNet human reference experiments are an example - I felt strongly that it was important for the field to know the ballpark human accuracy on ILSVRC so I took a few weeks off and evaluated it. The academic search tools (e.g. arxiv-sanity) are an example - I felt continuously frustrated by the inefficiency of finding papers in the literature and I released and maintain the site in hopes that it can be useful to others. Teaching CS231n twice is an example - I put much more effort into it than is rationally advisable for a PhD student who should be doing research, but I felt that the field was held back if people couldn’t efficiently learn about the topic and enter. A lot of my PhD endeavors have likely come at a cost in standard academic metrics (e.g. h-index, or number of publications in top venues) but I did them anyway, I would do it the same way again, and here I am encouraging others to as well. To add a pitch of salt and wash down the ideology a bit, based on several past discussions with my friends and colleagues I know that this view is contentious and that many would disagree.

Writing papers

Writing good papers is an essential survival skill of an academic (kind of like making fire for a caveman). In particular, it is very important to realize that papers are a specific thing: they look a certain way, they flow a certain way, they have a certain structure, language, and statistics that the other academics expect. It’s usually a painful exercise for me to look through some of my early PhD paper drafts because they are quite terrible. There is a lot to learn here.

Review papers. If you’re trying to learn to write better papers it can feel like a sensible strategy to look at many good papers and try to distill patterns. This turns out to not be the best strategy; it’s analogous to only receiving positive examples for a binary classification problem. What you really want is to also have exposure to a large number of bad papers and one way to get this is by reviewing papers. Most good conferences have an acceptance rate of about 25% so most papers you’ll review are bad, which will allow you to build a powerful binary classifier. You’ll read through a bad paper and realize how unclear it is, or how it doesn’t define it’s variables, how vague and abstract its intro is, or how it dives in to the details too quickly, and you’ll learn to avoid the same pitfalls in your own papers. Another related valuable experience is to attend (or form) journal clubs - you’ll see experienced researchers critique papers and get an impression for how your own papers will be analyzed by others.

Get the gestalt right. I remember being impressed with Fei-Fei (my adviser) once during a reviewing session. I had a stack of 4 papers I had reviewed over the last several hours and she picked them up, flipped through each one for 10 seconds, and said one of them was good and the other three bad. Indeed, I was accepting the one and rejecting the other three, but something that took me several hours took her seconds. Fei-Fei was relying on the gestalt of the papers as a powerful heuristic. Your papers, as you become a more senior researcher take on a characteristic look. An introduction of ~1 page. A ~1 page related work section with a good density of citations - not too sparse but not too crowded. A well-designed pull figure (on page 1 or 2) and system figure (on page 3) that were not made in MS Paint. A technical section with some math symbols somewhere, results tables with lots of numbers and some of them bold, one additional cute analysis experiment, and the paper has exactly 8 pages (the page limit) and not a single line less. You’ll have to learn how to endow your papers with the same gestalt because many researchers rely on it as a cognitive shortcut when they judge your work.

Identify the core contribution . Before you start writing anything it’s important to identify the single core contribution that your paper makes to the field. I would especially highlight the word single . A paper is not a random collection of some experiments you ran that you report on. The paper sells a single thing that was not obvious or present before. You have to argue that the thing is important, that it hasn’t been done before, and then you support its merit experimentally in controlled experiments. The entire paper is organized around this core contribution with surgical precision. In particular it doesn’t have any additional fluff and it doesn’t try to pack anything else on a side. As a concrete example, I made a mistake in one of my earlier papers on video classification where I tried to pack in two contributions: 1) a set of architectural layouts for video convnets and an unrelated 2) multi-resolution architecture which gave small improvements. I added it because I reasoned first that maybe someone could find it interesting and follow up on it later and second because I thought that contributions in a paper are additive: two contributions are better than one. Unfortunately, this is false and very wrong. The second contribution was minor/dubious and it diluted the paper, it was distracting, and no one cared. I’ve made a similar mistake again in my CVPR 2014 paper which presented two separate models: a ranking model and a generation model. Several good in-retrospect arguments could be made that I should have submitted two separate papers; the reason it was one is more historical than rational.

The structure. Once you’ve identified your core contribution there is a default recipe for writing a paper about it. The upper level structure is by default Intro, Related Work, Model, Experiments, Conclusions. When I write my intro I find that it helps to put down a coherent top-level narrative in latex comments and then fill in the text below. I like to organize each of my paragraphs around a single concrete point stated on the first sentence that is then supported in the rest of the paragraph. This structure makes it easy for a reader to skim the paper. A good flow of ideas is then along the lines of 1) X (+define X if not obvious) is an important problem 2) The core challenges are this and that. 2) Previous work on X has addressed these with Y, but the problems with this are Z. 3) In this work we do W (?). 4) This has the following appealing properties and our experiments show this and that. You can play with this structure a bit but these core points should be clearly made. Note again that the paper is surgically organized around your exact contribution. For example, when you list the challenges you want to list exactly the things that you address later; you don’t go meandering about unrelated things to what you have done (you can speculate a bit more later in conclusion). It is important to keep a sensible structure throughout your paper, not just in the intro. For example, when you explain the model each section should: 1) explain clearly what is being done in the section, 2) explain what the core challenges are 3) explain what a baseline approach is or what others have done before 4) motivate and explain what you do 5) describe it.

Break the structure. You should also feel free (and you’re encouraged to!) play with these formulas to some extent and add some spice to your papers. For example, see this amusing paper from Razavian et al. in 2014 that structures the introduction as a dialog between a student and the professor. It’s clever and I like it. As another example, a lot of papers from Alyosha Efros have a playful tone and make great case studies in writing fun papers. As only one of many examples, see this paper he wrote with Antonio Torralba: Unbiased look at dataset bias . Another possibility I’ve seen work well is to include an FAQ section, possibly in the appendix.

Common mistake: the laundry list. One very common mistake to avoid is the “laundry list”, which looks as follows: “Here is the problem. Okay now to solve this problem first we do X, then we do Y, then we do Z, and now we do W, and here is what we get”. You should try very hard to avoid this structure. Each point should be justified, motivated, explained. Why do you do X or Y? What are the alternatives? What have others done? It’s okay to say things like this is common (add citation if possible). Your paper is not a report, an enumeration of what you’ve done, or some kind of a translation of your chronological notes and experiments into latex. It is a highly processed and very focused discussion of a problem, your approach and its context. It is supposed to teach your colleagues something and you have to justify your steps, not just describe what you did.

The language. Over time you’ll develop a vocabulary of good words and bad words to use when writing papers. Speaking about machine learning or computer vision papers specifically as concrete examples, in your papers you never “study” or “investigate” (there are boring, passive, bad words); instead you “develop” or even better you “propose”. And you don’t present a “system” or, shudder , a “pipeline”; instead, you develop a “model”. You don’t learn “features”, you learn “representations”. And god forbid, you never “combine”, “modify” or “expand”. These are incremental, gross terms that will certainly get your paper rejected :).

An internal deadlines 2 weeks prior . Not many labs do this, but luckily Fei-Fei is quite adamant about an internal deadline 2 weeks before the due date in which you must submit at least a 5-page draft with all the final experiments (even if not with final numbers) that goes through an internal review process identical to the external one (with the same review forms filled out, etc). I found this practice to be extremely useful because forcing yourself to lay out the full paper almost always reveals some number of critical experiments you must run for the paper to flow and for its argument flow to be coherent, consistent and convincing.

Another great resource on this topic is Tips for Writing Technical Papers from Jennifer Widom.

Writing code

A lot of your time will of course be taken up with the execution of your ideas, which likely involves a lot of coding. I won’t dwell on this too much because it’s not uniquely academic, but I would like to bring up a few points.

Release your code . It’s a somewhat surprising fact but you can get away with publishing papers and not releasing your code. You will also feel a lot of incentive to not release your code: it can be a lot of work (research code can look like spaghetti since you iterate very quickly, you have to clean up a lot), it can be intimidating to think that others might judge you on your at most decent coding abilities, it is painful to maintain code and answer questions from other people about it (forever), and you might also be concerned that people could spot bugs that invalidate your results. However, it is precisely for some of these reasons that you should commit to releasing your code: it will force you to adopt better coding habits due to fear of public shaming (which will end up saving you time!), it will force you to learn better engineering practices, it will force you to be more thorough with your code (e.g. writing unit tests to make bugs much less likely), it will make others much more likely to follow up on your work (and hence lead to more citations of your papers) and of course it will be much more useful to everyone as a record of exactly what was done for posterity. When you do release your code I recommend taking advantage of docker containers ; this will reduce the amount of headaches people email you about when they can’t get all the dependencies (and their precise versions) installed.

Think of the future you . Make sure to document all your code very well for yourself. I guarantee you that you will come back to your code base a few months later (e.g. to do a few more experiments for the camera ready version of the paper), and you will feel completely lost in it. I got into the habit of creating very thorough readme.txt files in all my repos (for my personal use) as notes to future self on how the code works, how to run it, etc.

Giving talks

So, you published a paper and it’s an oral! Now you get to give a few minute talk to a large audience of people - what should it look like?

The goal of a talk . First, that there’s a common misconception that the goal of your talk is to tell your audience about what you did in your paper. This is incorrect, and should only be a second or third degree design criterion. The goal of your talk is to 1) get the audience really excited about the problem you worked on (they must appreciate it or they will not care about your solution otherwise!) 2) teach the audience something (ideally while giving them a taste of your insight/solution; don’t be afraid to spend time on other’s related work), and 3) entertain (they will start checking their Facebook otherwise). Ideally, by the end of the talk the people in your audience are thinking some mixture of “wow, I’m working in the wrong area”, “I have to read this paper”, and “This person has an impressive understanding of the whole area”.

A few do’s: There are several properties that make talks better. For instance, Do: Lots of pictures. People Love pictures. Videos and animations should be used more sparingly because they distract. Do: make the talk actionable - talk about something someone can do after your talk. Do: give a live demo if possible, it can make your talk more memorable. Do: develop a broader intellectual arch that your work is part of. Do: develop it into a story (people love stories). Do: cite, cite, cite - a lot! It takes very little slide space to pay credit to your colleagues. It pleases them and always reflects well on you because it shows that you’re humble about your own contribution, and aware that it builds on a lot of what has come before and what is happening in parallel. You can even cite related work published at the same conference and briefly advertise it. Do: practice the talk! First for yourself in isolation and later to your lab/friends. This almost always reveals very insightful flaws in your narrative and flow.

Don’t: texttexttext . Don’t crowd your slides with text. There should be very few or no bullet points - speakers sometimes try to use these as a crutch to remind themselves what they should be talking about but the slides are not for you they are for the audience. These should be in your speaker notes. On the topic of crowding the slides, also avoid complex diagrams as much as you can - your audience has a fixed bit bandwidth and I guarantee that your own very familiar and “simple” diagram is not as simple or interpretable to someone seeing it for the first time.

Careful with: result tables: Don’t include dense tables of results showing that your method works better. You got a paper, I’m sure your results were decent. I always find these parts boring and unnecessary unless the numbers show something interesting (other than your method works better), or of course unless there is a large gap that you’re very proud of. If you do include results or graphs build them up slowly with transitions, don’t post them all at once and spend 3 minutes on one slide.

Pitfall: the thin band between bored/confused . It’s actually quite tricky to design talks where a good portion of your audience learns something. A common failure case (as an audience member) is to see talks where I’m painfully bored during the first half and completely confused during the second half, learning nothing by the end. This can occur in talks that have a very general (too general) overview followed by a technical (too technical) second portion. Try to identify when your talk is in danger of having this property.

Pitfall: running out of time . Many speakers spend too much time on the early intro parts (that can often be somewhat boring) and then frantically speed through all the last few slides that contain the most interesting results, analysis or demos. Don’t be that person.

Pitfall: formulaic talks . I might be a special case but I’m always a fan of non-formulaic talks that challenge conventions. For instance, I despise the outline slide. It makes the talk so boring, it’s like saying: “This movie is about a ring of power. In the first chapter we’ll see a hobbit come into possession of the ring. In the second we’ll see him travel to Mordor. In the third he’ll cast the ring into Mount Doom and destroy it. I will start with chapter 1” - Come on! I use outline slides for much longer talks to keep the audience anchored if they zone out (at 30min+ they inevitably will a few times), but it should be used sparingly.

Observe and learn . Ultimately, the best way to become better at giving talks (as it is with writing papers too) is to make conscious effort to pay attention to what great (and not so great) speakers do and build a binary classifier in your mind. Don’t just enjoy talks; analyze them, break them down, learn from them. Additionally, pay close attention to the audience and their reactions. Sometimes a speaker will put up a complex table with many numbers and you will notice half of the audience immediately look down on their phone and open Facebook. Build an internal classifier of the events that cause this to happen and avoid them in your talks.

Attending conferences

On the subject of conferences:

Go. It’s very important that you go to conferences, especially the 1-2 top conferences in your area. If your adviser lacks funds and does not want to pay for your travel expenses (e.g. if you don’t have a paper) then you should be willing to pay for yourself (usually about $2000 for travel, accommodation, registration and food). This is important because you want to become part of the academic community and get a chance to meet more people in the area and gossip about research topics. Science might have this image of a few brilliant lone wolfs working in isolation, but the truth is that research is predominantly a highly social endeavor - you stand on the shoulders of many people, you’re working on problems in parallel with other people, and it is these people that you’re also writing papers to. Additionally, it’s unfortunate but each field has knowledge that doesn’t get serialized into papers but is instead spread across a shared understanding of the community; things such as what are the next important topics to work on, what papers are most interesting, what is the inside scoop on papers, how they developed historically, what methods work (not just on paper, in reality), etcetc. It is very valuable (and fun!) to become part of the community and get direct access to the hivemind - to learn from it first, and to hopefully influence it later.

Talks: choose by speaker . One conference trick I’ve developed is that if you’re choosing which talks to attend it can be better to look at the speakers instead of the topics. Some people give better talks than others (it’s a skill, and you’ll discover these people in time) and in my experience I find that it often pays off to see them speak even if it is on a topic that isn’t exactly connected to your area of research.

The real action is in the hallways . The speed of innovation (especially in Machine Learning) now works at timescales much faster than conferences so most of the relevant papers you’ll see at the conference are in fact old news. Therefore, conferences are primarily a social event. Instead of attending a talk I encourage you to view the hallway as one of the main events that doesn’t appear on the schedule. It can also be valuable to stroll the poster session and discover some interesting papers and ideas that you may have missed.

It is said that there are three stages to a PhD. In the first stage you look at a related paper’s reference section and you haven’t read most of the papers. In the second stage you recognize all the papers. In the third stage you’ve shared a beer with all the first authors of all the papers.

Closing thoughts

I can’t find the quote anymore but I heard Sam Altman of YC say that there are no shortcuts or cheats when it comes to building a startup. You can’t expect to win in the long run by somehow gaming the system or putting up false appearances. I think that the same applies in academia. Ultimately you’re trying to do good research and push the field forward and if you try to game any of the proxy metrics you won’t be successful in the long run. This is especially so because academia is in fact surprisingly small and highly interconnected, so anything shady you try to do to pad your academic resume (e.g. self-citing a lot, publishing the same idea multiple times with small remixes, resubmitting the same rejected paper over and over again with no changes, conveniently trying to leave out some baselines etc.) will eventually catch up with you and you will not be successful.

So at the end of the day it’s quite simple. Do good work, communicate it properly, people will notice and good things will happen. Have a fun ride!

EDIT: HN discussion link .

phd advice blogs

Ten great blogs for PhD students

  • June 28, 2012
  • evalantsoght_uw8lmy
  • Uncategorized
  • 36 Comments

Since I started reading blogs at 6 months into my PhD program, I’ve gained some valuable insights from my favorite blogs. An exhaustive list would only lure you into getting more clutter into your information stream – so here are my 10 favorites (in no particular order)

1. Happy Science Cheek-in-tongue blog on science, social media, and pharma-research. If the thought of seeing your make-up under a microscope makes you giggle, don’t hesitate and head to Happy Science.

2. Peoplegogy This blog reads like a magazine, with a wide range of topics that I enjoy reading very much. You particularly might like the “Doctoral Confessions” series.

3. The Dutch PhD Coach I was planning to drop the link to Arjenne’s “Louter Promoveren” blog in Dutch when I discovered there is now an English offspring too. Great content – these articles might as well come from a book with advice on the PhD process.

4. Only a model A website and blog by a fellow PhD student in Structural Engineering. Interesting posts on finite element modeling, workflow processes and academic teaching.

5. Dr Sustainable Only about a month old, this blog has managed to provide some great content and a lively forum with comments. I have high expectations of seeing more interesting content coming up here.

6. Get a life, PhD Combining a career in academia with a family, and still finding time for yourself? I enjoy reading this blog while wondering how my future self will relate to these issues.

7. Gradhacker Life- and studyhacking for graduate students – with contributions from a large authorship.

8. Matt Might’s blog While the computer science in there is all Greek to me, the articles on graduate school and productivity are very much worth reading.

9. PhD2Published With a wealth of wisdom on academic writing in its archives, this blog also provides a Weekly Wisdom sections on Everything You Wanted to Know in Academia.

10. Thesis Whisperer We don’t need to introduce this one, right?

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Thanks Eva!

Hi, nice list! some good additions to my reader. I'm fairly new to blogging as I'm a first year PhD student in child development/genetics and thought I would post on some of the things I learn along the way. It's probably not classed as one of the great blogs but feel free to check it out at: http://squirreledthoughts.wordpress.com/

Thanks for pointing me to your blog, Joanna!

Eva,Thanks for including my blog. I am humbled. I am always surprised that people actually read my blog, especially since my blog features such a \”buffet\” of content. Thanks again,Will

ooh thanks for the inclusion Eva!!

Apart from my own blog Next Scientist , which I think is awesome, I have compiled a list with great science blogs , some of which we share.

Thanks for sharing your links, Julio!

Thanks for these useful links:)

Also checkout sachristopher.wordpress.com

I love reading PhD blogs especially the first blog site hosted by a certain Happysci, Happy Science. And it's good to know that she just finished her PhD. Me? I'm just starting so it will still be a long way but I'll enjoy my time. http://www.collegepaper.org

Here is one on how to save money while doing a PhD: http://www.onefrugalscholar.blogspot.com

New, and I mean NEW to blogging–still figuring out blogger.com–that new. I'm also a new doctoral student–just started this month. I'd like so share my blog with others in the Education arena–I'm in education and don't want to bore anybody with the inside scoop on an education doctoral journey. If possible, post the reply, and I'll follow directions. Thanks.

Would you be interested in writing a guest post for PhD Talk on your doctoral journey?

Hope My Blog http://guruofmovie.blogspot.in Will Also Achieve This Milestone

Great post!!

Im intresting eve lansoght

Great post… I am fairly new to blogging as well, I began last month http://adamchehouri.blogspot.ca/ and find it amazing the impact a simple blog can have and the experience you gain from it.

I have developed a simulator in ns-2 for heterogeneous mobile and wireless networks that makes vertical handovers between wlan, wimax, umts according vertical handover decision algorithms. If some PhD student in the beginning phase is interested to research in this area this simulator is excellent for getting results and simulate different scenarios. Write me on [email protected] for any help.

Enjoyed this, thanks. Shameless plug – I have just started a blog on my recent transition from research to industry. Maybe I'll make your next top ten! http://drtipper.blogspot.co.uk/

This comment has been removed by the author.

I would like to introduce to you a new place where you can have full access to ways to increase the quality of your scientific artwork. keepcalmandpublishpapers.com keepcalmandpublishpapers.com is a new site that contains tutorials, guidelines and more. Whether you are a researcher, a student or just a science enthusiast, you may find resources for yourself. Please have a look and leave us any feedback on the new site at keepcalmandpublishpapers.com – and I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for the list of blogs, Im half way through them so far so ive bookmarked this page A+

Good luck with the second half of your PhD!

I found your post when looking for Ph.D blogs similar to mine – I find it's really helpful to see what other Ph.D candidates are up to, to keep me motivated and inspire me to write more. Writing about my research, and life in general, actually pushes me to get more done. I'm just coming to the end of my first year, and hoping to continue blogging throughout my Ph.D journey.

Thanks for sharing this PhD. blog list. Some of them look really interesting.

Great List Eva, Thanks for sharing. I have also started blogging about career options after PhD on http://www.gradcompass.com . would be great to hear your views.

The documents are highly efficient and convenient to read. Reviews are one types of experience in custom essay writing . It describes and highlights the writer's piece of writing. In this reviews are expressing the value of something from the writer.

Great gift for PhD students! https://www.etsy.com/listing/491992296/seize-the-data-academic-mug-phd-gift-11?ref=shop_home_active_4

Hi everybody, I'm also a new doctoral student in technical field-just started this month. and I need some advices to start my research

Hi Azamat, welcome to reading my blog! Hope you find interesting information here.

Thanks for providing this helpful article.

Great list! This site might be helpful too for PhD students. Expontum ( https://www.expontum.com ) – Helps researchers quickly find knowledge gaps and identify what research projects have been completed before. Thanks!

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Studying for a PhD with ADHD – tips and advice from one student

Amarpreet abraham was 29 years old when she received an adhd diagnosis. she explains how this diagnosis impacted on her phd work and the measures she uses to manage her workload.

Amarpreet Abraham's avatar

Amarpreet Abraham

Illustration showing different brains with different contents

For as long as I’ve known about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), I’ve suspected I have it. I would make jokes about it and downplay how much it really affected me.

Previous patterns and past life experiences, both personally and academically, have always led me to wonder about how and why I work the way I do. I’ve found myself unable to focus when multiple tasks are at hand, assignments taking longer than expected, and with a feeling of being misunderstood.

In 2021, as a 29-year-old, I threw in the towel and said, “What’s the harm in getting tested?” And voila – I was given the shiny new title of someone with ADHD.

It was another diagnosis I could add to the list of conditions I had: chronic depression, chronic anxiety – and now, ADHD. A lot of behaviours I had attributed to laziness, procrastination , boredom or random bursts of excitement and anger started to make sense.

Going to university with dyspraxia Going through university with autism Going to university with cerebral palsy

I would always convince myself that I was using ADHD as an excuse and that I was just a forgetful/lazy/chronic procrastinator. During 2020 and 2021, working collaboratively with others as part of my PhD studies at Monash University , and experiencing a lot of big changes in my personal life led me to realise that the way I functioned on a day-to-day basis was different from others – personally and professionally.

I reached out to a friend who had shared their diagnosis of ADHD on social media and I asked them about the process and how to get started, and they really encouraged me to talk to a specialist and seek a diagnosis.

I often get asked questions surrounding productivity, such as how I cope with periods of procrastination as a PhD student, as well as if I have any helpful tips for people in a similar position. The issue here is that there is no “one size fits all” approach in this scenario.

Everyone experiences neurodivergence in a different way, and it’s always worth experimenting and trying to find your own ways of working. However, although my methods might not work for everyone, they might help kickstart someone else’s journey into discovering their own methods.

In short, a few things that have helped me persevere and overcome my own barriers are:

  • It’s OK to disclose and talk about your diagnosis (at your own pace and when you feel comfortable). Once you are done processing the diagnosis and have attributed behaviours and experiences to ADHD, explore discussing your diagnosis, and use it to support yourself and explain to others how it affects you.
  • Progress looks different for different people and on different days. It is incredibly difficult to not compare yourself to others, but it is important to exercise self-kindness and remember that every day won’t look the same as the last.
  • My PhD is not one big project; instead, it’s multiple little projects that can be further broken into smaller bits. I went from tackling each of my chapters as one big task to breaking them down into manageable smaller chunks so that I wouldn’t overwhelm myself.
  • Sensory overload is real. It’s difficult to explain sensory overload, and it works differently for everyone. I now use noise-cancelling earmuffs to avoid noise and disturbances or listen to binaural beats as I work.

Having ADHD doesn’t come without its misconceptions, however. A lack of knowledge or training on the matter can lead to myriad stereotypes surrounding neurodivergence. One example is the misapprehension that people with ADHD are lazy, and it is used as an excuse for their procrastination.

Having ADHD and battling with time-blindness, as well as periods of mental blocks, is a constant struggle, and any effort made towards completing a task, whatever it might be, should be commended.

My diagnosis has been liberating and challenging. Not only because I finally knew what was “wrong” with me, but because I felt validated. I started listening to podcasts about ADHD in adults, reading books and blogs, and joined groups on Facebook and Discord to share my experiences with others who were in a similar boat.

If I was to sum up my experience with ADHD in one sentence, I’d say that it has been a largely positive but also daunting and overwhelming experience.

It’s OK if there are days where I don’t make any progress, or I sit and stare at my screen and seriously consider dropping out of my PhD. But I won’t let my PhD be added to the list of hobbies and tasks that were started but never finished.

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Closing Costs for Buying a Home Have Risen Along With Rates

These mortgage fees increased 22 percent from 2021 to 2022. One likely factor is the greater use of discount points to nudge interest rates down.

An illustration shows a silhouette of a person looking at a house rising from the ground with a huge red arrow attached to one side of it.

By Ann Carrns

A pricey housing market and higher interest rates have made it harder to afford a house, but related expenses known as closing costs also add to the home-buying challenge.

Typical loan closing costs when completing a home purchase — for items like loan origination fees, discount points, appraisal and credit report fees, and lender title insurance — rose almost 22 percent from 2021 to 2022, according to a report that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau highlighted in a blog post last week.

Borrowers typically paid about $6,000 for such costs in 2022, up from about $4,900 in 2021. That was on top of a down payment and other costs.

The average monthly payment for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose 46 percent, to $2,045 at the end of 2022 from $1,400 a year earlier, the bureau found. The median price of a single-family home in January was $383,500, up 5 percent from a year earlier, the National Association of Realtors reported.

Often, lenders simply add loan closing costs to the mortgage amount, increasing the borrower’s costs over time. Home buyers can pay closing costs out of pocket, but that may eat into their cash for a down payment and end up costing them more in other ways — such as higher premiums for private mortgage insurance, which protects the lender if you fail to pay. (Typically, a 20 percent down payment is needed to avoid mortgage insurance.)

One likely factor in higher closing costs, the bureau’s report said, was a rise in the use of discount points — optional fees that home buyers pay upfront to reduce the interest rate charged over the life of the loan. This is known as “buying down” the rate.

In 2022, half of home buyers paid at least some discount points, up from roughly a third the year before, the bureau said. That was the largest proportion of buyers using discount points since the government began collecting data on them six years ago. The typical amount paid for discount points in 2022 was $2,370, up from $1,225 in 2021.

One discount point costs 1 percent of the mortgage, and generally reduces the interest rate by 0.25 points, although the amount can vary by lender. On a $300,000 mortgage, one discount point would cost $3,000. If the interest rate was 3.5 percent, paying for one point would lower the rate to 3.25 percent. The number of points that borrowers can buy also varies by lender.

The bureau said in the blog post that it was monitoring the rise in discount points as part of its campaign against what it calls “junk” fees. The way in which points are sold to borrowers, and whether they reduce costs as much as people think, “causes us some concern,” said Diane Thompson, a senior adviser to the bureau’s director, Rohit Chopra. “There is not a lot of transparency in the market about discount points,” she said in an interview.

Ms. Thompson pointed to research from the mortgage financing giant Freddie Mac, which found that the difference in average rates between home buyers who pay discount points and those who don’t is very small. That “seems to suggest that paying discount points may not be worth it from the consumers’ point of view,” Freddie Mac said in a recent report .

Adam DeSanctis, a spokesman for the Mortgage Bankers Association, a trade group, said in an email that with loan rates and home prices high, it wasn’t surprising that more buyers would purchase discount points. Few borrowers “felt the need to ‘buy down’” their rate in 2021, when mortgage rates were around 3 percent, he said. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 6.74 percent from a week earlier, FreddieMac reported Thursday. Despite the recent dip, mortgage rates remain high, the report said.

The association, in a statement objecting to the consumer bureau’s labeling of closing costs as “junk” fees, deemed the post “politically motivated.” Fees associated with mortgage closings pay for services that are “integral” to the home loan market, the statement said, and “are clearly disclosed to borrowers well before a home purchase” on forms developed by the bureau.

The bureau’s post also highlighted the cost of lender title insurance. The coverage, which buyers are usually required to pay for, protects the lender in case of potential claims against the property, including from previous liens or back taxes. The cost is typically 0.5 to 1 percent of the home’s purchase price.

Some housing experts say the cost of title insurance is often high in relation to the risk of a claim. Sharon Cornelissen, director of housing at the Consumer Federation of America, said claims under title insurance were “very uncommon.” About 5 percent of title insurance premiums go toward payment of claims, compared with 70 percent or more for other types of insurance, an Urban Institute report noted.

Real estate agents and lenders typically suggest loan settlement providers and insurance agents they are familiar with, but borrowers don’t have to go with their recommendations and can shop around, Ms. Cornelissen said.

Steve Gottheim, general counsel with the American Land Title Association, which represents the title insurance industry, said the cost of the insurance had fallen about 8 percent nationally over the past two decades. Most of the cost of title insurance pays for searches of county deed records, he said.

The consumer bureau’s post also said higher fees for credit reports, for which mortgage lenders have recently reported steep fee increases, “warrant further scrutiny.” Home buyers have no say over these fees, which credit bureaus charge to lenders.

Here are some questions and answers about loan closing costs:

What is the best way to hold down home-buying costs?

The most effective thing that home buyers can do is to shop for mortgage quotes from multiple lenders, Ms. Thompson of the consumer bureau said. “Most people don’t,” she said. But research shows that if they do, they can get lower rates, saving up to several thousand dollars over the life of their loan.

How can I tell if it’s worth paying for discount points?

Calculate the “break even” point for your loan. On a $300,000 fixed-rate mortgage at 6.5 percent over 30 years, your monthly payment for principal and interest would be about $1,896. If you bought one discount point for $3,000 and lowered your rate to 6.25 percent, you would pay about $1,847, saving $49 a month. Dividing $3,000 by $49 means you would need to own the home roughly five years before selling or refinancing for the extra fee to pay off. (Financial sites like Nerdwallet offer calculators .)

Are discount points tax-deductible?

Costs for discount points are generally deductible, according to TurboTax. You must itemize deductions on your return, however, rather than taking the standard deduction.

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There are few challenges facing students more daunting than paying for college. This guide can help you make sense of it all .

Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Tool Time

phd advice blogs

There are spoilers ahead. You might want to solve today's puzzle before reading further! Tool Time

Constructor: Marc Raila

Editor: Jared Goudsmit

What I Learned from Today’s Puzzle

  • POT (24A: Vessel for cooking chupe) and EAT (19A: Enjoy some chupe) Chupe is a generic name used in South America – particularly in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile – to refer to stew. There are many varieties of chupe. Chupe de camarones , made with seafood, is popular in Peru. Although I wasn't familiar with the term chupe, the answers here were inferable from the context.
  • HONEY (33A: Char siu sweetener) Char siu is a style of barbecued pork that originated from Guangdong, China. Five-spice powder is used in this Cantonese dish, and honey is used as a glaze.
  • MOMMY (30D: "___ Issues" (2021 film starring Pokwang)) Filipino comedian and actress Pokwang portrays the MOMMY in the 2021 movie MOMMY Issues . The movie, which centers on the rocky relationship between a mother and daughter, is available on Netflix. I wasn't familiar with this movie, and was thankful for the help of crossing answers.

Random Thoughts & Interesting Things

  • LEONA (15A: "Glassheart" singer Lewis)  In 2006, LEONA Lewis won series three of  The X Factor , a British reality TV music competition. "Glassheart" is the title track of her third studio album, released in 2012.
  • HAMMER THROW (38A: Track-and-field event with a ball on a steel wire) The HAMMER used in the HAMMER THROW does not resemble anything you would find in a TOOL chest. This HAMMER, which weighs either 8.8 lbs. (women's) or 16 lbs. (men's), consists of a metal ball attached to a grip by a steel wire. Athletes stand in a designated circular area, and spin the hammer three to four times before releasing it in an upward arc toward the target. If you've never seen the HAMMER THROW, I recommend taking a bit of time to watch some or all of the Women's HAMMER THROW Final from the 2022 World Athletic Championships.
  • A-HA (40A: "Take on Me" band) Thank you to the puzzle for this earworm! "Take on Me" is a song by the Norwegian synth-pop band A-HA (the band's name is usually styled as a-ha). The song was first released in 1984, but a second version was recorded and release in 1985 as part of A-HA's debut album, Hunting High and Low . It is this second version that became an international hit and remains well-known today. The music video for "Take on Me" won six MTV Video Music Awards.
  • LION (43A: Big cat such as 57-Across) and MUFASA (57A: Simba's father) and PURR (24D: Pleased cat's sound) MUFASA and Simba are, of course, characters in Disney's The LION King . My cat, Willow will definitely PURR about this crossword; she is pleased by the abundance of cat content.
  • ENT (7D: Doctor hidden in "sci ent ist") An ENT is a doctor specializing in "ear, nose, and throat." I'm a fan of hidden word clues, and this is a fun one.
  • ELMO (31D: Muppet who sings "Seven Goldfish") "Seven Goldfish" is a Sesame Street counting song featuring ELMO counting goldfish, while also tap dancing (though ELMO'S feet aren't shown). ELMO has a pet goldfish named Dorothy, but she didn't make her first appearance until several years after ELMO first sang "Seven Goldfish" on Sesame Street .
  • DESERT (45D: Maranjab or Gobi) The Maranjab DESERT is located in Iran. The Gobi DESERT covers parts of northeastern China, and the southern part of Mongolia. This clue provides two examples, and solvers only need to be familiar with one of these DESERTs to be successful.
  • IDES (52D: "Beware the ___ of March") In the Roman calendar, IDES referred to a day near the middle of the month - the 15th of March, May, July, or October, and the 13th of any other month. The IDES of March coincided with several Roman religious observances. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar was assassinated on the IDES of March, making the date notorious. Alas, this warning to "Beware the IDES of March," is two days late for us this year.
  • MEME (57D: Thumbs Up Crying Cat, e.g.) Even more cat content! As you might guess from its name, the Thumbs Up Crying Cat MEME features a photo of a cat with teary eyes giving a thumbs up (paws up?). Since 2019, Thumbs Up Crying Cat has been used as a reaction MEME.
  • LAS (59D: ___ Cruces, New Mexico) LAS Cruces is a city in southern New Mexico. It is situated less than 45 miles from both the New Mexico-Texas border, and the U.S.-Mexico border (where New Mexico and the Mexican state of Chihuahua meet). New Mexico State University is located in LAS Cruces.
  • EPA (60D: One Cleanup Program org.) One Cleanup Program is an initiative of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The effort is aimed at coordinating the efforts of multiple agencies involved in the cleanup of contaminated sites.

Crossword Puzzle Theme Synopsis

  • SAW THE LIGHT (18A: Had an epiphany)
  • HAMMER THROW (38A: Track-and-field event with a ball on a steel wire)
  • LEVEL-HEADED (59A: Calm and sensible)

The first word of each theme answer is a TOOL: SAW, HAMMER, and LEVEL.

TOOL TIME is the show-within-a-show on the TV sitcom Home Improvement . Today, TOOL TIME is an appropriate title and theme for this puzzle. Congratulations to Marc Raila making a USA TODAY crossword debut! Thank you, Marc, for this enjoyable puzzle.

For more on USA TODAY’s Crossword Puzzles

  • USA TODAY’s Daily Crossword Puzzles
  • Sudoku & Crossword Puzzle Answers

COMMENTS

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