Lecturer: Jutta Kretzberg
Fields: Personal development / career advice
Content
Are you a student? Are you thinking about a PhD? And maybe even about a career in academia?
Does “doing a PhD” sound like fun? Or rather like pain?
Many Master students struggle with the decision if a PhD would be the right choice for their career. And a considerable percentage of PhD students continue wondering if their decision was right until they graduate (or even beyond).
There is no general advice who should pursue a PhD. The decision for or against a PhD is a personal one – it depends on many factors including your personality, your personal situation and the available job opportunities. The goal of this workshop is to help you to develop a clearer personal perspective on this decision.
Session 1: External perspectives
In the first session, I will start with a brief overview of different options how to do a PhD in Germany. After that, we will interactively explore the perspectives of different stakeholders: What do Master students expect from doing a PhD? What do PhD supervisors expect from their PhD students? What do employers expect from applicants with a PhD versus a Master’s degree? And what is the perspective of family and friends?
Session 2: Your personal perspective
In preparation of the second session, you will write cards with your hopes, neutral expectations, and fears concerning yourself doing a PhD. Teaming up with one of the other participants, both of you will cluster these cards into the categories “tasks / skills”, “topics / scientific questions”, “working environment”, and “personal factors”. Explaining your thoughts (and listening to the thoughts of your teammate) can sharpen your personal perspective and help you to identify core aspects of your career decisions.
Please note: This workshop consists of two sessions and will be offered two times for a maximum of 20 participants each. Please register for one of the two workshop iterations via the list at ‘Glaskasten’ during IK.
The main target group of this workshop are Master’s and advanced Bachelor’s students. However, the method to develop your personal perspective is also applicable to further career steps. PhD students, PhD holders, and positive non-PhDs who are willing to share their perspectives are highly welcome!
Literature
- Chris Woolston: “Graduate survey: A love-hurt relationship” Nature 550, 549-552 (2017) https://www.nature.com/articles/nj7677-549a https://doi.org/10.1038/nj7677-549a (Nature’s survey of more than 5,700 doctoral students worldwide)
- Lars Kiewidt, PhD: “To PhD or not to PhD?” (2019) https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/to-phd-or-not-to-phd-4312cdb862c5 (Evaluation of this survey data set concerning PhD student’s motivation, skills and satisfaction across fields in natural sciences.)
- Chris Woolston: ‘I don’t want this kind of life’: graduate students question career options Nature 611, 413-416 (2022) doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03586-8 (Newest version of nature’s PhD survey, but not open access)
- Katie Mitzelfelt, PhD: “To Be or Not To Be a PhD Candidate, That Is the Question” (Association for Women in Science Magazine, 2021): https://awis.org/to-phd-or-not-phd/ (Individual perspectives of 6 persons on their own decision to be or not to be a PhD.)
- Charlotte King_: “To PhD or not to PhD, that is the question…” https://www.postgrad.com/blog/to-phd-or-not-to-phd/ (Rather old, but still helpful blog post)
Lecturer
Jutta Kretzberg is professor for Computational Neuroscience and head of the MSc program Neuroscience at University of Oldenburg. She studied applied computer science and biology at University of Bielefeld, where she also did her PhD in Biology. After being a postdoc (and having a baby) in San Diego, California, she came back to Germany to be a junior professor and became a professor some years (and another baby) later. Nowadays, while juggling her family, teaching, research and administration duties, her favorite task is mentoring.
Affiliation: University of Oldenburg, Germany
Homepage: https://uol.de/en/neurosciences/compneuro