• Question: Is doing a PhD particularly hard in comparison to previous work or is it more of an extension of what you've done before?

    Asked by pja09i to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 8 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      What a great question! It’s really an extension of what you’ve done before – much as A-levels build on what you did at GCSE. The best advice I read about getting a PhD was that it’s application and determination – not brilliance – that will get you one. of course, I am brilliant too 🙂

    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      It definitely builds on what you have done before, but it is unlike everything that came before. The hard thing is being in charges of your own work, but that’s the best thing too as you get to decide what you want to do and can follow your own interests (to a point, you have to make your supervisor happy).

    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      It is building on all your previous knowledge and things you’ve done before at school and university. But it is also a new project, a new idea, it is something nobody has done before, so it is definitely hard work!

      To be a scientist you don’t have to do a PhD. There are many different career options after school or university.

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      I found it difficult to start a PhD in science after studying something different (maths) for my degree. But I was really interested in what I was doing and had a lot of support from other people. Now I am nearing the end of it and finding it very hard. Getting to the end of something always needs hard work though, and so I wouldn’t say it’s any worse than doing other exams at school.

    • Photo: Yalda Javadi

      Yalda Javadi answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      Absolutely an extension of what you’ve done.

      In my final year of my Chemistry degree I did my final year project, which was a 9-month long project, in an Organic Chemistry lab. It was only because of this experience that I decided to do a PhD. I loved being in a lab, doing experiments, getting results, trying to make sense of them! A PhD was pretty much the same as that, only a few years longer!

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